Episode 166: Creative Flow

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This week on Fable and the Verbivore, we’re sharing a special episode we did on creating and writing in flow.

We open by giving a loose definition of flow through a quote from positive psychologist and “father of flow” Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi. “Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.”

In this episode, we talk about our own experiences with and ideas about writing in and finding creative flow. Things like:

  • Leaning into and following the things that spark our creative curiosity

  • Creating space for thought and getting quiet through activities like yoga, taking walks, and showers

  • Looking at writing as we do cooking, allowing the ingredients to be brought together slowly over time and for the ideas to come to a boil without forcing them

  • Connecting with our bodies, our intuition and gut, and listening to ourselves - especially paying attention to when something is grinding and when something is flowing

  • Paying attention to our own rhythms and what we know is ours

  • Treating experiences as an experiment, looking back at how something went to determine what worked well and what didn’t, and what depleted us and what nourished us

  • Digging deeper by asking questions of ourselves and our characters/work as we get more honest and vulnerable

  • Taking off the pressure and shame to allow for desire and passion to return

  • Without forcing something - showing up, sitting down, and just trying and seeing if something is ready to be written

  • Reframing anxiety as excitement in our minds, challenging messages that we’ve internalized about what we’re capable of accomplishing

  • When things aren’t working as we hoped, using a practice that author Sally Thorne uses and setting out to write the worst thing we can is a way to break through the fear or creative block

  • Following joy and the things that entertain us, without forcing them to serve our ego as writers

Towards the end of this conversation, Fable makes the connection between our writing work and a storyline from a sitcom where a couple take sex off the table to reduce the pressure to perform. We both felt this was a great metaphor, how temporarily removing the option to write can help a sense of play to return and for excitement to write a given idea to build.

We hope you enjoy this conversation. This is one of our favorite episodes that we’ve ever recorded and we’re thrilled to be able to share it with you!

Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

The Verbivore read a quote at the beginning of the episode. Those words are from a co-founder of positive psychologist and the “Father of flow” Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi. Here are those words:

  • Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. - Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi

The Verbivore references a post that Fable had on her Insta. That post is available here and features the quote:

  • DON’T BORE THE READER… Remember, you can bore readers in a lot of different ways. It doesn’t necessarily take a dearth of action; too much action can get you the same result. Everything in writing, as in life, requires balance… A good rule of thumb is this one: If you bore yourself with your writing, you will probably bore your readers, as well. When you feel boredom start to set in, step back and reconsider what you are doing. - Terry Brooks Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

We mention that we feel that this episode is a strangely appropriate one to share during NaNoWriMo as it could help with a Post Mortem review of what worked and what didn’t. If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, here is some information: https://nanowrimo.org/about-nano#nanowrimo

Here are some questions we talked about for a Post Mortem review of an experience:

  • What happened? / What worked? / What didn’t? / What depleted me? / What had a significant cost? / What filled or nourished me? / How can I bring more of that in? / How can I reduce the things that depleted me?

The Verbivore mentions re-framing fear as excitement. This is known in the scientific community as anxiety reappraisal, and studies have supported that individual performance in a task improves when we tell ourselves “I am excited” rather than “I am affraid”. The Ted Talk “You Are Contagious” by Vanessa Van Edwards discusses this study starting at timestamp 16:32.

Here are a few articles and videos we referenced for this conversation:

Books and Films Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
‘Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Bethany Stedman