Accidental Genius: Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing

Like any coach worth his salt, Levy aims to train, equip and motivate readers to extend their success in business and life. But the technique he espouses is unusual: private writing. A director of special projects at book distributor Bookazine, Levy provides examples of how he has used the practice of nonjudgmental, quick, exploratory writing to supercharge his own sales and management achievements. His clear, concise directions on honing one's critical thinking, changing focus and quieting one's internal editor will encourage readers to start exploring his method immediately. Levy's advanced exercises--involving thought-sparking phrases, precise details and personal interpretations of buzzwords--should expand the ways in which practitioners can observe their own thinking process and tap into previously inaccessible creative resources. Levy also includes the instructive tale of Tom Wolfe, who was badly blocked and adrift while trying to conceptualize an article on a custom-car designer for Esquire. Wolfe's astute editor told him to stop worrying the project to death and just write him a memo that got all of his notes down. The result of that simple-sounding but perspective-changing instruction was Wolfe's famously innovative article, ""The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby."" With an enthusiastic foreword from Tom Peters that will help draw business readers, Levy's canny guidebook could garner the kind of steady sales of such writing books as Henriette Anne Klauser's Put Your Heart on Paper. Author tour. (Oct.)