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Keep A Commonplace Book To Save Fleeting Ideas
- Keep a commonplace book to capture fleeting ideas; Read uses notebooks and cites Leonardo's mixed notes as a model.
- He revisits his twenties' commonplace entries and finds forgotten gems worth developing later.
Originality Comes From Combining Unrelated Sources
- Originality often stems from recombination: great creators assemble disparate sources rather than invent ex nihilo.
- Examples: Picasso fused African art into cubism; Lin-Manuel Miranda blended musical theatre forms with hip-hop and biography.
Write Notes By Hand To Unlock New Thoughts
- Write by hand when researching and drafting; Read insists pen-and-paper notes trigger ideas that typing alone doesn't produce.
- He uses spiral notebooks for notes and reserves laptop time for composing drafts.