Reading time: Less than 1 minute
This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss a blog post about how to get in the flow….
Have you ever struggled to ‘get in the flow’ with your writing? Being ‘in the flow’ means writing easily and fluently and not feeling stumped or blocked.
Novelist and publisher Rosale Morales Kearns offers some tips in a post on Jane Friedman’s blog.
I like many of her suggestions, although I draw the line at candles. Lighting candles around paper just seems like a fire risk to me! Her other suggestions make a lot more sense. They include:
- Looking at image-filled books
- Doing jig-saw puzzles (as in the image, above)
- Listening to audiobooks, or even to the ambient noise where you are
- Listening to ‘healing music’ on YouTube
- Looking at crystals or gemstones
- Eating a treat of some sort.
Here is how Kearns summarizes her thoughts:
We hope to reach a state of mind where we’re dreaming the scene, where images, dialogues, entire scenes come effortlessly. An altered state of consciousness. Flow.
What I especially love about these [suggestions] is that they don’t involve reading and writing. They engage your senses—touch, hearing, taste, sight—and feed you as an artist.
The next time you need to get in the flow, consider doing something radically different so that your tightly-held linear, logical mind relaxes and lets go.
Then, and only then, will your creative brain be able to take over.
An earlier version of this post first appeared on my blog on Oct. 21/19.
