The world of the 21st century is hungry for genius and creative people. Governments of all countries realize that these people create progress, create new products and entire industries!

But what is genius and creativity?

Genius usually refers to a person’s ability to create some new objects that go far beyond the usual perceptions. It can be scientific theories and discoveries, masterpieces of music, painting, literature, architecture, innovations in business etc. Creativity is the ability to create interesting ideas, offer unexpected solutions to problems, deviate from the usual algorithms of thinking. Like genius, this skill always implies developed creative abilities of a person, the level of which is much higher than average.

It is well known that some people are born geniuses, other people become them. This raises the question, “Is it possible to become genius and creative?”

Our answer is “yes”. But you need to change your thinking and learn new skills. To do this, you have to read the right books.

There are many books on the subject of creativity. Some are good, some are less good, and some are even useless. In this review, I want to tell you about one book that have been useful to me personally.

Mark Levy. Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content

For me, this book was iconic in many ways. It influenced my writing format. It influenced my writing in general, and writing a lot. The way I began to write. It influenced my reading, because my interest in books was now easily transformed into a review of what I had read.

Despite its title, this is still a book about creativity, not about how to write better. Yes, there are many useful things in it that can be used perfectly to develop your writing skills. However, that is not what the book is all about.

This book impressed me immediately-the very moment I picked it up off the store shelf a little over a year ago. I immersed myself in reading and working my way through the book almost immediately. A year after my purchase, I return to it periodically and continue to find new details and meanings in it.

There are books that one reads as a beautiful and interesting story. There are books that you almost don’t read and go straight to work on the book. “Accidental Genius” combines both senses.

It is rich in stories, which the author generously shares with us. As you read it, you keep a pen and post-it notes handy for marking interesting places, and a clipboard for recording interesting thoughts and ideas. The idea for the book is based on Peter Elbow’s “Writing with Power”. The difference is that Mark Levy has expanded the practice of freelancing, creating on its basis a number of methods for generating ideas.

The book begins with secrets. Which turn out not to be secrets at all, but more like the rules of freerating by Mark Levy. Then come the chapters that form the basis of the method, which is, in fact, the toolkit that the author proposes to use to generate ideas and insights. In the end, the author goes even further and offers quite effective methods for using freeraiting to generate content for blogs, articles, speeches and many other things related to our desire to convey our thoughts and ideas to others through text.

It is this, the third part, that is of most interest to me. However, it is an inseparable part of the whole book, because in each chapter of the third part, the author shows by examples the application of both individual methods and their combination, to solve certain problems.

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This book would be an ideal helper for people who want to develop their creativity skills and for those who have something to say.

But in true, author don’t always have an explaining of how to do it. Mark Levy offers a series of rules to help develop the habit of pouring thoughts onto paper. Then gives a number of methods to solve problems with freerating. And finally he brings everything together to show how to use these rules and methods to share your ideas with others in articles, books, blogs…

If you want to develop your creative skills, create something unique or genius, this book is definitely worth reading. By the way, it is inexpensive: about $10 if you buy this book on Amazon.