Some times I sit down to write these articles and nothing comes to me; no spark of genius nor pang of outrage.

But sometimes, when I’m sitting in this void of letters - images start to come into my mind.  Rube-Goldberg contraptions of creativity.  Literal idea mills.  I have yet to test any of these mental machines, but I thought it high time that a put them to page.

The Tzolk’in of Craft

The Tzolk’in consists of a pair of large interlocking gears, one with 13 tines, the other with 20.  It is one of two well-known Mayan calendars.  Each day the gears were rotated one notch, matching up new symbols from each gear.

Naturally each symbol on the small wheel came up once every 13 days, and each symbol on the large wheel came up once every 20 days, but because 13 and 20 are mutually prime, it took a full 260 days before you cycled back to the exact same pair.

Okay, so I used to be a mathematics instructor, but what does this have to do with writing?

Well, we all have topics we like to write about.  In fact, we all have topics we should discuss regularly.  Most people learn better from repeat exposure than they do from periods of intense study.  Spread these important topics around one of the wheels to guarantee that they come up periodically without dominating the discourse, then spread creative or rhetorical devices around the other (you can find several in most writing guides).

Each time you write, move the Tzolk’in one notch - you will get a new combination of topic and rhetorical device while ensuring that you do not lose sight of any of the subjects you wish to revisit regularly.

Want to write on your favorite topics more often than once every 13 posts?  You can always shrink the wheels.  I’m sure your local 6th Grader will be tickled pink to have you ask their advice.

The Automated Foil

This technological age we live in has brought about all sorts of automated wonders, including nefarious ones.  When I first mentioned that I would be going into teaching after graduation, one of my college friends warned me to lookout for computer generated papers, and pointed me to a website that made them.

The website advertised instant papers on any topic.  You just gave it the subject and answered a couple of questions that could be about anything, and it used your answers to fill out a two page long Mad-Lib that aped a short-form high school paper.  Of course, it was also some of the most vapid writing I have ever laid eyes on.  The templates were written so that they could apply to any topic, which is another way of saying that they included no details or support whatsoever, just a series of vague statements claiming that the subject you supplied was of some sort of import.

Every so often I’m tempted to try one out again.  Reading a paper which is ostensibly about a topic of interest, but which says nothing of consequence, frequently clarifies in my mind what I think an essay on the topic should cover.

Mechanical Chorus of Memory

In the course of writing for a blog, there have inevitably been ideas which never made it to post.  Some of these ideas never made it past a single sentence, others didn’t hold up to the scrutiny of research, and yet others are sound but are more appropriate for a different time.

Once I realize an idea is not going to get posted, I frequently set it aside and cannot then recall it when I am facing writers block.

So part of the Mechanical Chorus would be a grand catalog, a place to put any idea I work on, no matter how inane or undeveloped.  Along side that would be another grand list, this one covering every article I’ve thought relevant, interesting, or otherwise worth citing.

But it is not sufficient for the ideas to just sit there.  For that I could use a notebook, and be done with it.  Instead the mechanical Chorus of Memory would operate like a social media site (but with a society of one).  Each entry would have it’s own profile - with tags for subject matter, a space for pictures, and the ability to link to other entries when it seems relevant.

In addition, a live feed would rotate through each list even as I looked at one of the entries in more detail.  In this way I might be reminded of older, related ideas mechanically - even when my own gray matter is not up to the task.

The last element would be some sort of measure of completeness.  A way to know at a glance which knots of interconnected ideas are closest to covering all the bases for a blog - though the factors used to determine such a thing would be an article in it’s own right.
What would you build?

If your resources were unlimited, what thought machines would you use to help you through your writer’s block?  Would you tend towards something that could exist physically, like the Tzolk’in, or use a virtual space based on Web 2.0, as the Mechanical Chorus does?