On Writing Flow
An alternative definition
Lately, I’ve been trying to reflect on my writing process: what works for me? Over the years, I’ve accumulated quite a pile of other people’s advice and practices. When it comes to writing (or probably to any art), each person’s process is their own. We become stymied when we try to fit ourselves into the mold of someone else’s method. We become free when we accept the limitations and possibilities of who we are. It’s important to try out various methods, including those of others, but we should keep only what is useful and beneficial to our own practice.
Recently, I’ve been in a writing groove. While a new year’s kick of discipline may be credited, it is actually a change of mindset which has sustained my writing. This mindset shift has helped me to overcome a key obstacle in my writing life.
The Obstacle, the Myth, the Flow
The obstacle is a lie, an illusion, an impediment built in my head, based on a myth: the myth of writing flow.
The myth of writing flow says that your best writing occurs when the words just keep coming at a steady pace. You are “in the zone” and everything you write is gold. You’re inspired, you’re in touch with some transcendent Muse, you’re articulating your ideas exactly as you desire.
To get into the writing flow—so my particular version of this myth goes—there are a few necessary ingredients.
First, you must have at least a couple hours available—a continuous chunk of uninterrupted time.
To get into the writing flow, one has to be inspired beforehand. The best writing happens when one is inspired from the get-go.
Oh, and when one is in the flow, the first draft is basically the version audiences everywhere will read (and praise!). Perfect first drafts only happen when one is inspired going into the writing session, when one has hours of time available, and when the words fly from my brain to the paper because I am such a genius.
This mindset, of course, creates some problems. If any of the conditions cannot be met, I do not want to write. If I’m not inspired to write, it’s best not to attempt it. If I don’t have hours of time available, it’s not worth even getting started. So I only write when I am “inspired.” If I actually have good writing session, I cannot wait to write again. But it may take weeks or months to get inspired once more. How do I get inspired? Well, the conditions have to be just right: the right ambiance, the right noise level, the right music (maybe), the chores have to be done, the books have to be organized (and perhaps reorganized) on the bookshelf.
I dream about what flow looks like for me. And when a writing session jolts and staggers, when I struggle for half an hour over a single word, when I can’t figure out what comes next in a story, then my inner critic begins to taunt. If you’re a writer, why is this so hard for you? All the good writers write for at least three hours every day. Your first draft is so bad, it will never be published. If you can’t get into the flow, maybe you shouldn’t be a writer.
I’m not sure where I picked up this idea of flow. My guess is that teachers and posters and writing articles and social media posts threw out “inspirational” quotes from famous writers, quotes about the “invisible hand” guiding the author’s words or about how so-and-so wrote their famous novel or short story in one draft over a night or a week or a month. Somehow, I got the message that writers found writing easy, so if I wanted to be a writer and didn’t find writing easy, then maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a writer.
It has only been in the last few years that I’ve heard stories about the challenges that famous writers faced. How insecure they were about their writing. How they struggled to find their own voice. How they wrote sporadically and revised painstakingly.
Exposing the Myth
In his book, Several Short Sentences About Writing (I know, I mention this book a lot!), Verlyn Klinkenborg writes at length about the myth of flow. I read this book for the first time last April, and so much of it resonated with me. But in time, many of his useful ideas faded from my mind.
It wasn’t until I went back to reread my notes that this caught my eye: “Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer” (67). He goes on to describe how hard the writer has to work in order to make sentences that, to the reader, seem to “flow.” “It doesn’t describe the act of writing. It describes the effect of writing” (72).
He spends several pages deconstructing the “damaging and obstructive cluster of ideas … related to the idea of ‘flow.’ Like ‘genius.’ And ‘sincerity.’ And ‘inspiration.’ Distrust these words. They stand for cherished myths” (78). “For the writer, the word ‘flow’ is a trap” (68).
Klinkenborg sets up a comparison between two kinds of writers:
If you think that writing—the act of composition—should flow, and it doesn’t, what are you likely to feel? Obstructed, defeated, inadequate, blocked, perhaps even stupid. The idea of writer’s block, in its ordinary sense, exists largely because of the notion that writing should flow. But if you accept that writing is hard work, and that’s what it feels like while you’re writing, then everything is just as it should be. Your labor isn’t a sign of defeat. It’s a sign of engagement. The difference is all in your mind, but what a difference. The difficulty of writing isn’t a sign of failure. It’s simply the nature of the work itself (68).
This is a good description of my shift in writing mindset. For most of my life, I’ve written according to the first model. I’ve had productive writing times, but I’ve chalked it up to “inspiration.” In the last few months, but particularly the last two weeks, I’ve been transitioning into the second model.
A New Appreciation of Flow
Klinkenborg argues that if your writing “flows,” then it’s probably not all that great.
Writing doesn’t flow, unless you’re plagiarizing or collecting clichés (68).
“Flow” means effusion, a spontaneous outpouring of sentences. But what it really, secretly means is easy writing (69).
It’s easy to believe in “flow” if you can’t feel the difference between a dead sentence and a living one. Or see the ambiguities you’re accidentally creating. In other words, “flow” is often a synonym for ignorance and laziness. It’s also a sign of haste, the urge to be done (69–70).
These arguments against the myth of flow are compelling, and seem to align with my experience of writing. However, I wonder if writers could shift their definition of what flow looks like. I’m not sure if this is a “one-size-fits-all” solution, but it seems to be working for me.
The Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, puts forth a theory for what constitutes “flow,” a state of positive engagement characterized by extreme concentration, intrinsic reward, and a sense of attainable challenge. This idea of flow has been applied to and tested in various fields, including the visual and musical arts, the business and tech world, and athletics.
There are three main requirements for a flow state to occur:
The task at hand should have clear goals and observable progress.
The task at hand should provide immediate feedback so the performer can adjust their effort as needed.
There should be a balance between the level of challenge and the level of skill one has. In other words, the task at hand is a challenge, but the performer has confidence in their skills. It takes hard work, but success is attainable.
Csikszentmihalyi’s technical definition of flow is distinct from the more popular understanding of “writing flow” that Klinkenborg argues against. But you can probably see how these aspects of a “flow state” might relate to the writing process. Perhaps with some generous borrowing from the technical, we can redefine the popular.
Flow as Slow. What if, for writers, “flow” is not about how productive and inspired one is in the moment of writing? If we base our “flow” on word count and speed, then our writing will fall back on what Klinkenborg calls “volunteer sentences”: sentences easy and quick, but full of clichés, readymade phrases, and bland constructions. Instead, writers could focus on the “challenge” of writing well. This means we would have to slow down, consider the structures and words of our sentences carefully. It may mean that we step away from the paper or screen to think about a particular sentence.
Flow Beyond the Act of Writing. What if writing flow involves more than the actual writing? A couple weeks ago, I wrote a scene from one of my projects, but it happened over the course of several hours, none of it continuous. I wrote in iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets. It was very fun to write. I would write a line or two, then I would step away to play with my kids, or do the dishes or make lunch. I wrote a little at a time—not very productive, speed-wise—but the whole day, the scene was on my mind. Could I say I was in a flow state the whole day? I may not have physically written that many lines (about 30), but I was thinking about how to write those lines in the interim. Thinking about how to write sentences is part of the writing process, too.
Flow as Process, not Product. Instead of thinking about flow in terms of “inspired” or “perfect” writing, where words just “flow” from our minds to the paper, let’s consider flow as a mindset. Flow is engagement with the challenge of writing, a challenge which requires us to attend to the power of words and their arrangement. We may still write terrible sentences. In a first draft, that’s okay. But we shouldn’t be content with them. We shouldn’t assume that because our words “flowed,” or because we were “inspired,” what we wrote is good writing. Revision can be part of the flow state, too.
In Csikszentmihalyi’s work, “flow” is about engagement and focus, hard work and adequate challenge. The “flow” that Klinkenborg refutes is about ease and speed, a disengagement from the challenge of writing well.
By acknowledging that writing is hard work, and believing myself to be up to the challenge, I’ve recently been able to escape the “trap” of writerly flow. Instead, I’ve found a different kind of flow, a heightened engagement that stays with me even when I’m not actively writing. This allows me to write for fifteen minutes, five minutes, two—I don’t need two-hour blocks every time I sit down to write. I’m thinking about the words, the sentences in my head, and when I have opportunity, I write them down. Don’t get me wrong, two-hour chunks are nice. But they are not the only space where good writing can happen.
I don’t need to be “inspired” to write well. If nothing else, I can try to write the next sentence every day. And maybe (hopefully!) I will write more. But a good writing session does not need to be defined by word count. Nor does a writing session need to be measured by how fast or easy the words flowed. A good writing session may be a painstaking start-and-stop twenty lines. “Flow” should be understood in terms of attention, focus, engagement, challenge—not in terms of easiness.
So here’s to your hard work, your challenge, and your flow in whatever writing (or other activity) you do this week!