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.
I just had to share this amazing book art by Isaac Salazar. Explore more at ArtistADay and Salazar’s Flickr.
Almost all writers are in love with quotes. Some of us are drawn to the most famous quotes that always crop up in literary circles. Others of us like to find our own top quotes every time that we read. We share them with other writers in our blogs, letters, emails and social media accounts. But, most importantly, many of us post them where we can see them on a regular basis.
Why Post Quotes
There are many great reasons to post quotes. For example:
- Quotes inspire our lives.
- Quotes inspire our writing.
- Quotes help remind us of our goals.
- Quotes celebrate the hard work of other authors.
- Quotes celebrate what we love – WORDS.
- In the front pages of your journal. This is a favorite place for me.
- Inside of your favorite books. Write them on bookmark size pieces of paper and you have inspiring, creative bookmarks. Keep blank ones and you can add quotes from books as you read them.
- On desks and laptop stands. This is where you probably do most of your writing.
- On your laptop or laptop sleeve. Adhere them to the outside of your laptop or the sleeve you carry it in.
- On your computer as wallpaper or screensaver.
- As artwork on your walls. I enjoy making collage art and adding my top favorite quotes to it. Then I hang the art around the house.
- Inside of a dresser drawer. Choose a drawer you use daily such as your sock drawer. Read the quotes each day to inspire you.
- In a purse or wallet. Preferably inside of something that you take with you most places that you go.
- Inside of your mobile phone. Add a favorite quote as your phone’s screen saver. Store other quotes inside of the phone as SMS message drafts.
- Taped to the coffee maker or tea pot. Many of us writers fall prey to the need to drink coffee or tea while we do our writing. Since we’re using those machines anyway, let’s make them more useful by adding quotes on to them.
Not too long ago I did a post showing photographs from my mural walk which featured poetry written all over the city. Today I’ve got a video to share that shows Portuguese poetry written along a bike path. What a beautiful idea! I love the thought that you can find writing everywhere that you go … it’s inspiring for writers of all types! TreeHugger has the video along with a written translation.
I’ve started blogging for a really great local Tshirt company called Edgi. Needing to research for that blog gives me a great excuse to read a lot of fashion and t-shirt news. Doing so led me to a post from Cool Hunting which I thought might interest other writers. It’s about a T-shirt company called Out of Print that uses old and out-of-print books as the inspiration for its designs.
The designs themselves are cool and the tees make great conversation starters. After all, people are going to have something to say when they see you sporting a vintage edition of Lolita or some other classic novel that they’ve read (or think they should).
More importantly, however, the T-shirt company is a partner to a company called Books in Africa which aims to bring books to areas of the world where it’s not easy to find them. Imagine not being able to go to your local library to pick up a read. People in other parts of the world don’t have that luxury and this organization tries to help. For every t-shirt that is bought, a donation goes to Books in Africa. Definitely a cool idea.
I recently went on a tour of the Mission District here in San Francisco. (Learn more about that from Diary of a Smart Chick). One of the things that I noticed was that there was a lot of text incorporated into the murals. Combined with the images of the murals and the stories behind them it all looked like poetry (and of course some of it was intended to be that way. Here’s a glance at the writing in murals:
There is an episode of Sex and the City which I only vaguely remember where the girls talk about what they have in the “goodie drawers” beside their beds. They are talking about sex toys, of course, and I recall Samantha joking about how she has a whole goodie closet.
I bought a new bed frame for myself over the summer. It has a bookcase headboard and it has drawers underneath the mattresses. I, too, have a goodie drawer. It is the drawer closest to where I lay my head at night and the drawer which is easiest for me to reach in the morning. It isn’t sex toys that you’ll find in there, though … it’s journals.
I have been keeping a personal journal off and on since I was about ten. Writing in this journal is an important part of my regular routine. I used to hide the journal to make sure that no one would find it. These days I tuck it away so that it’s not tempting to the curious eyes of people who happen to be in my house but I don’t worry much because I don’t think that anyone I let in my house would actually violate my privacy by reading my journal. It’s one of those journals that wouldn’t be that interesting to others anyway; it’s filled with the banalities of life and my thoughts about nothing much. It’s something I do just for me.
This isn’t the only journal that I keep these days. I also try to keep a gratitude journal in which I regularly note the things that I am feeling most thankful for. I don’t do this daily (although I once did and think it’s good to do so) but I do it steadily enough. And I have a journal for affirmations and a journal for writing exercises. I certainly have plenty of private things that I could keep in my goodie drawer but it’s these things that end up being most important to me.
And of course then I have the bookcase headboard which is filled with the latest two dozen books that I’ve gotten out of the library and may read voraciously or may not read at all. I can see them there and be motivated to pick them up and do some reading though and that’s why those are left out in the open instead of tucked away into drawers.
What do you have in your goodie drawer? Where do you keep your private writing?
- Promote your blog. A really cool tag cloud that shows what you write about on your blog is going to entice people to read about it. Generate one and post it on your blog, link to it via Twitter, make it a Flickr photo or send it out as a comment or social networking message. The more readers you have the more inspired you’re going to be to write better on your blog.
- Generate story ideas. You can use a tag cloud to get ideas about what you want to write about next. Just enter any URL or chunk of text into the tag cloud generator and see what comes up. Use the words there to get ideas for your next story line.
- Various creative writing exercises. Writing exercises are really good for you to do to keep your writing fresh. There are any number of writing exercises that you can do involving your tag clouds. For example, choose a paragraph from your favorite book and enter it into the tag cloud. Take the top five words that come up largest on the screen. Write five paragraphs of a story with each paragraph beginning with one of those words. Come up with your own creative writing exercises! (I’d love to hear more suggestions in the comments here!)
- Make poetry. You can use tag cloud generators to create visually interesting poems. Do this daily and you’ll find that your writing benefits from doing so because you get a new look at old words.
- Create inspirational word collages. Generate several tag clouds. Print them out. Cut out the words that appeal to you most. Make your own new word collages. Post these word collages all around the area in which you do your writing. Having them there should inspire you to keep on working at your creativity.
- Generate series of articles easily. People who do their writing for the web (or even for magazines) know that it’s very profitable to take one article and re-write it in a fresh way to create a series of related articles. This is done much more easily when using tag clouds. You enter the text of your article into a tag cloud generator. This shows you which keywords are used most in the article. Take the top five or ten keywords and rewrite the article with your focus on each of those words. For example, let’s say that you wrote an article on Celtic history. Your tag cloud shows that you wrote a lot about myths and about jewelry. Write one article about the history of Celtic myths and one article about the history of Celtic jewelry.
- Use tag clouds as an editing tool. When you are done writing a piece of work, enter the text into a tag cloud generator. See which words come up most frequently. Are these words in line with the thesis of your paper? If not then you’ll want to take the information that you have in the tag cloud and edit the work accordingly to make sure that you’re hitting all of your key points in your article.
I just wanted to send out a quick reminder to all of my writer friends that writing is a gift to be shared with others. It is actually one of the best gifts that you can give to someone else this holiday season. You can write love letters, heartfelt Christmas cards, songs, poems, and stories for the people in your life. You can combine your writing with photographs to make memory books that will touch their hearts.
So often we think of writing as our work. However writing is also our life. It’s what we have to share with others. Those others shouldn’t just be the readers that we have come to love. We should also share our writing with those we love who may or may not be our regular readers. Even if your hubby doesn’t read your blog or your mom doesn’t quite “get” your books, these people will appreciate the writing that is written just as a gift for them.
Check out my recent hub 15 Ideas for Using your Writing as a Gift to get some ideas for word-based Christmas gifts that you can give this year.
I am someone who believes in the power of keeping a journal. I got my first diary when I was about ten years old and have kept one fairly steadily since that time. Although I’ve gone through bouts of not writing for awhile, I always return to keeping a journal because I believe that it benefits me immensely as both a writer and an individual.
Some of the top benefits that I’ve experienced as a result of keeping a journal:
- The many benefits of a daily routine. I believe that having daily rituals helps us to get up and get going in the morning. My morning routine starts my day off right and helps me feel like I’m on track with things. Journaling is one part of that routine for me.
- The power of self-reflection. I think that all people, particularly writers, need time to reflect on life and on themselves every single day. It’s hard to do that when we have so many obligations and distractions, Journaling returns us to ourselves day in and day out.
- Unjudged writing practice. I am trying to get in the habit of not judging any of my writing but rather just letting it happen. This isn’t always easy but I’m able to do it with my journal. As a writer, I think this daily period of unjudged writing time is important.
- A collection of my thoughts. It’s been important for me to have this collection of my thoughts. There are memories that I forget but can then access again in my journals. There are patterns of behavior that I only see when I re-read my journals. There are characters and projects that I thought of in passing that I revive when reminded of them by my journals.
I’m not the only one who believes that a journal offers many benefits. Take a look at some thoughts other people have posted on the benefits of journaling:
- 7 Benefits of Journaling. Thoughts on how journaling helps you to identify, preserve and explore your ideas.
- And another 7 benefits of journaling – this one as it specifically applies to writers.
- The Benefits of Journaling as outlined by two women who created their own powerful journal for others to use.
- Uses and benefits of journaling – this is an academic article on the topic.
- Health Benefits of Journaling (including the benefit of stress management)
- And the ultimate post on the topic – 100 benefits of journaling.
Surely we can all get something out of journaling. Do you journal? Does it help your writing? What has been the great benefit?
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