Abre los ojos

Today as I was sifting through all the chaff of my various LinkedIn digests for the occasional grain of wheat, I came across a posting from someone else who's writing a book about business writing. Her angle is completely different, but her idea for a chapter totally sparked an idea for something I could do in my book.

It's funny that I've been mostly worried about exposing myself for now to others' work. I didn't want to be too influenced or end up copying them. But I see now how even at this stage it can have the completely opposite effect, inspiring new ideas.

That's generally the way I work anyway. Whatever I'm doing, I'm more likely to tackle it solo than collaborate with a bunch of people. Like for various client projects when I'm working with someone new they'll encourage me to give them a call to brainstorm or if I get stuck or if I want a second opinion or an early review of what I'm doing. And I never do that.

I collaborate at the beginning. Let's all talk about ideas and content and get on the same page. But at that point I really prefer to go off on my own and just get it done. There are pluses and minuses to both ways of doing things. But I do know that if you're over at the extreme end of anything, it's almost always a good idea to switch things up and indulge the opposite instinct once in a while.

So I think I'm ready on this to open my eyes a little bit to what else is around me.