Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

both the one who writes and the one who corrects at the same time. It is paradoxical, but you have to be paradoxical, otherwise you cannot live in this world.” The creative individual must reject the wisdom of the field, yet she must also incorporate its standards into a strict self-criticism. And for this one must learn to achieve the dialectical tension between involvement and detachment that is so characteristic of every creative process: You must always keep distance from yourself. Don’t you think? It is the change between being quite close and being quite distant. You must always be in it and always see it from the outside. While you are doing it, you are in it. But you must always keep also a distance. And evidently the more you have the skill, the craft, the more you are able to at the same time be in it and also keep the distance and know what you are doing. Like, for example, when you eliminate a word.