Real Words

All writers are familiar with the term “flow.” In fact, most artists can be said to create their most relevant and authentic work while in an almost trance-like state. When the words just seem to come effortlessly, we completely lose all sense of time, and we feel energized, excited and refreshed, we are experiencing flow. After writing in a state of flow, we often feel as though we have had a cathartic experience, and, looking back on our work, can even surprise ourselves by the quality and content.

So, how do we, as writers, attempt to re-create this type of experience?

There is no one way to make an experience of flow happen. All writers work differently, and because our work comes from a place within ourselves, the only thing we can do to encourage flow in our writing is to encourage those parts of ourselves to come alive.

Susan K. Perry, a writer and social psychologist who contributes to Psychology Today, became interested in how the best writers accomplish seemingly incomprehensible feats of creativity. She paired with flow researcher Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and interviewed over 75 modern best-selling and award-winning novelists and poets. She published her analysis in a book titled Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity.

If unsure about how to find a state of flow, writers oftentimes attempt good writing techniques until they have found what works for them. Doing this ad nauseum, however, can lead to burn out. The same can be said for listening to writing advice that could potentially do more harm than good.

Perry published a recent article detailing 11 types of bad writing advice. Perry’s tips may be highly useful to all writers, not only as a blueprint of writing techniques to avoid, but also as further direction toward finding your own style and flow.

Here are the top five lessons from what Perry claims to be the worst types of writing advice.

DO NOT follow any advice that:

1. Limits your own potential

Perry mentions a student who once asked her about advice he had read from a famous novelist. The novelist stated that if you’ve left a novel unfinished for years, it is a lost cause. According to Perry, this is nothing further from the truth. The key is not how long a project has been sitting, but whether or not you as a writer feel a revived passion for it. Our writing is up to us, and no matter how old or young a project may be, we must continue to feel passionate about the subject matter in order to write anything worthwhile.

2. Cramps your imagination

Perry states that writers often receive advice claiming that they must only write what they know, from their own perspective, or about a group to which they belong. According to Perry, this type of rigidity can really cramp imagination. She mentions that writing is about pretending, and many credible works of fiction have been written from a point of view other than the author’s own.

3. Insists there is only one way to schedule your creativity

Avoid any advice that starts with “you must.” Writers are constantly advised to force themselves to work everyday, at particular times of the day, or on a full-time work schedule. These techniques work for writers who work well this way, but there is no reason to force yourself into a work pattern that limits your own creative tendencies. Allow yourself, instead, to follow your own artistic urges and, for personal projects, write when you want to write.

4. Makes you feel bad about yourself

Perry mentions a young poet who had felt horrible after receiving the advice that, after finishing a poem, she must put it away for at least ten years until she would know whether or not it was worthwhile. This type of advice is an example of a hindering perfectionism that can make writers feel like they have no grasp on the state or quality of their own work. Loosen up, give yourself a week or so, and you should be able to see your work with fresh eyes.

5. Tells you more about your advisor than your own work

This one, although it seems obvious, can be one of the most difficult types of bad advice to spot, especially when working with a respected advisor. However, if you receive critiques that point more toward what an advisor would personally like you to write about than to what you are actually drawn to, it may be possible that your advisor’s own issues have seeped in. Take what they have to say with a grain of salt.

These example make it clear that, although all writers should attempt different techniques and take on new perspectives until they find their own flow, trying to mold oneself to writing advice and techniques that may or may not hold water can do more harm than good to the artistic process. Ultimately, the best way to reach a state of flow is to tune in to your own process.

You can find more interesting articles on writing and creating in many different forms on Susan Kerry’s blog at Psychology Today.

This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.