David Amerland's Blog: David Amerland on Writing - Posts Tagged "writing-mind"
The Writer’s Flow State
Writing is very much like golf or athletics. It takes a lot of hard training to lead to the performance that is a book. And just like in golf you can’t turn out a world class performance at a moment’s notice or break an Olympic record while training in your back yard, a book is the result of a culmination of states that an author is subjected to.
So, how does a book happen? How do you get from the act of writing squiggles on a screen (these days) to suddenly putting together sentences that resonate in the minds of readers sufficiently to not just make sense to them but allow them to use them as scaffolding of their own for their minds to reach higher?
This is the area where writers, golfers and athletes agree. To do what each does takes talent, inclination, will power, persistence and the ability to synthesize everything that is part of what does in a way that effaces the self and allows the act itself to surface. Golfers and athletes call this feeling “being in the zone” and it has given rise to an entire branch of psychology where the concept of Flow is closely examined and the conditions of its emergence analyzed.
MRI scans of the brain, caught in the act of performing at that level, show areas of it lighting up that normally wouldn’t which suggests that what really happens is that many of the obstacles we generate ourselves (the critical monologue inside our heads, the self-doubt, the uncertainty) vanish under the pressure of external circumstances that suddenly require our full attention.
Provided you have a modicum of writing skill and have spent the endless hours required to do your research, think about it, analyze its impact and see where the dots you’ve joined lead you, you’re still not quite done. Writing, like everything else, requires all the false starts where the writer has to forget about what he is and focus on what he is doing, and usually, just as fatigue, desperation, the pressure of deadlines and the tyranny of word counts pile up, the magic kinda happens.
Whatever part of the brain was busy getting in the way, just stops. Exhausted, it shuffles out of the way and what is suddenly left is a writer and his words. A clear road being formed to a conclusion, things falling seamlessly into place seemingly from nowhere: a book being written.
I’ve discussed this with writer friends countless times and it is always the same. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, the process requires that sense of pressure, the focus, that feeling of the world falling away and the vision of the book coming into crisp, clear focus.
So, next time you’ve written your thousand words and feel sorry that you have to scrap them. Or, when you hit a wall and have written yourself into a corner, think that really it’s part of the process. There is a work that needs to somehow be formed. The elusive state of mind required needs to be worked at, to arise.
So, how does a book happen? How do you get from the act of writing squiggles on a screen (these days) to suddenly putting together sentences that resonate in the minds of readers sufficiently to not just make sense to them but allow them to use them as scaffolding of their own for their minds to reach higher?
This is the area where writers, golfers and athletes agree. To do what each does takes talent, inclination, will power, persistence and the ability to synthesize everything that is part of what does in a way that effaces the self and allows the act itself to surface. Golfers and athletes call this feeling “being in the zone” and it has given rise to an entire branch of psychology where the concept of Flow is closely examined and the conditions of its emergence analyzed.
MRI scans of the brain, caught in the act of performing at that level, show areas of it lighting up that normally wouldn’t which suggests that what really happens is that many of the obstacles we generate ourselves (the critical monologue inside our heads, the self-doubt, the uncertainty) vanish under the pressure of external circumstances that suddenly require our full attention.
Provided you have a modicum of writing skill and have spent the endless hours required to do your research, think about it, analyze its impact and see where the dots you’ve joined lead you, you’re still not quite done. Writing, like everything else, requires all the false starts where the writer has to forget about what he is and focus on what he is doing, and usually, just as fatigue, desperation, the pressure of deadlines and the tyranny of word counts pile up, the magic kinda happens.
Whatever part of the brain was busy getting in the way, just stops. Exhausted, it shuffles out of the way and what is suddenly left is a writer and his words. A clear road being formed to a conclusion, things falling seamlessly into place seemingly from nowhere: a book being written.
I’ve discussed this with writer friends countless times and it is always the same. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, the process requires that sense of pressure, the focus, that feeling of the world falling away and the vision of the book coming into crisp, clear focus.
So, next time you’ve written your thousand words and feel sorry that you have to scrap them. Or, when you hit a wall and have written yourself into a corner, think that really it’s part of the process. There is a work that needs to somehow be formed. The elusive state of mind required needs to be worked at, to arise.
David Amerland on Writing
Writing has changed. Like everything else on the planet it is being affected by the social media revolution and by the transition to the digital medium in a hyper-connected world. I am fully involved
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