The Thursday! Newsletter 1-24: In the Flow or No? Oh No!
Volume 1, Issue 24
I have an embarrassing confession to make.
I didn't write any stories this week. I wrote half a story last Wednesday evening, but it's not even enough to share. I tried to write this week, but...nothing. This is particularly embarrassing because in recent weeks, I've felt good enough about my writing "flow" to brag about it just a little bit. Worse, I've felt good enough about my writing "flow" that I planned to write about "flow" in this very issue.
Then last week happened. I won't go into all the gory details, but from Wednesday on, I've suffered a plague of annoyances that have kicked me out of my writing groove. I've not slept well for several days, woken up grumpy and tired, had scheduled events go awry, and had other scheduled events move days on me so that my end of the week routine became much less like routine and more like just getting through the days without screwing them up completely.
Oh, and my particular Black Dog of dark moods decided to show up and stick around a few days. I don't have a name for him because I don't like calling him.
So here we are. I have a blank section of stuff I should have written and read this week and my plan to write about creative flow isn't looking so good because whatever flow I had is gone right now and I'm not very sure how to get it back.
Except...
The biggest point I had intended to make about creative flow is that you get back to it more quickly every day by practice. Creative flow is like a river's flow. Water goes where the channel is. Creative work goes where the channel is. Now, you can let the water make its own channel, in which case you may or may not get water where you want it, or you can dig a channel. But...wait. Let's start at the beginning.
Creative flow, like The Muse, isn't some mystical force that descends upon gifted artists. It seems that way because when it's working, all your art comes more easily. Words flow from your pen. You can see the sculpture in the piece of stone with more clarity. Your hands paint what your mind sees almost without direct effort. It feels like magic because it feels like you're not expending effort (even though you are) and because there is no obvious communication between your creative mind and your "implementation" mind (even though they are communicating). You probably know this already, but I've found that definitions are useful, just to make sure we're all talking about the same thing.
If flow is not magic, though, then what is it? It feels magical when you use it. It looks magical when you see it from the outside. It's not magical, though. It is a skill and like every other skill, you can improve it through practice. The way you practice flow is to practice you art.
Let's face it, the everyday world is not conducive to the act of creation. Crunching numbers or teaching a classroom or children or driving a truck do not put you in a good frame of mind to write a story about wizards or draw a breathtaking landscape or carve a Yeti out of a chunk of wood. Even the mundanities of life -- paying bills, caring for loved ones, running errands -- take you out of whatever creative frame of mind you need to get your art done. You've doubtless had a day when you were engaged in your art (whatever it happens to be), things were going well, and then you got interrupted by one of those mundanities of life. Maybe someone needed an unscheduled ride. You handled whatever it was and went back to your art only to find yourself out of the flow. You couldn't get back to what you were doing because the mundane thing changed the way you were thinking. Has that happened to you? Probably. I know it's happened to me, quite a lot.
What do you do? The way I see it, we have two choices at that point. We can either give up and pile another failure onto the litany of failures our Inner Critic recites to us nearly every day or we can sit down and start working on our project again.
Let me go back to that river analogy I started earlier. If we think of creative flow as a river that moves from the headwaters of, well, our head to wherever it breaks out into the world, then we know we can guide that flow. As I said earlier, you can diver the course of a river if you want. You can make water flow where it wants to go. You don't have to sit by the bank and pray that the water cuts the course you want by chance. You can get out your pick and shovel and dig.
That digging is regular practice of your art. You create the channel you want by repetition. You wear a groove in your thoughts by going back and doing what you want to do. If you're a writer, you have to write. If you're a singer, you have to sing that song again. If you're an artist, draw or paint or carve or...you get the idea. The more you do the thing you do, the faster the flow will go where you want it to go. That speed is important because the faster you get back into your creative flow, the faster you can come back from various interruptions to get into your art. You won't need as much transition time. You don't need to get into the "creative mood" because the very act of sitting before the thing you want to create will put you at the happy end of the channel you've carved.
But it gets even better! Because flow is a skill, it also degrades like a skill. That is, you don't lose access to it in a day or two or five. The channel may have silted up a bit, but like any river, a brisk flow of water will push that silt along and open the channel up. You may lose a small amount of progress, but you can make it up again by getting back to that thing you do.
By now you might have said to yourself, "Why doesn't Jimmie take his own advice, then?" and I must admit, that's a heck of a good question. The only thing I can say is that I forget. Even though I have a few decades under my belt, I've only thought of myself as a writer for a few very short years. Remembering how to be what you are is also a skill and I'm not nearly as good at it as I want to be. I forgot that flow isn't easily lost because it's not magic. So this evening I'm going to sit down and write. And I'm going to do it tomorrow night, too, when my friend Sarah kicks off her twice-weekly create-along. And Friday, too. And every other day where I have a few minutes to work on digging that flow channel.
Because practice makes flow and I need all I can get. I have a lot of stories to write. How about you?
Grab a shovel. Dig that channel. Do your stuff and get that flow.
(In Jimmie-related news, my birthday is next week. Plan accordingly!)
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What I Wrote and Read Last Week
Hey! I have an idea! How about some stories I wrote in a week that wasn't last week? I won't have a "thing I read" link but a third story might make up for it, huh? Woot woot! Happy dance!
Remember when Murder Hornets were a thing? "Danny and the Distant Sound" remembers.
"When a Villain Retires" answers a question I'm sure you've all asked yourself: Whatever happened to famous supervillain Baron Kaboom?
Last October, I wrote a series of monologues given by monsters and asked artist Rachael Sinclair to illustrate them. I called them The Monsterlogues. "The Scarecrow Maker" was the first.
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Here Are the Arts and/or Letters I Promised
I bet you've seen this picture before in someone's social media timeline. What you may know have known is it comes from a book called The Lances of Lynwood, written by Charlotte Mary Yonge and published in the mid-1850s. Yonge wrote a stirring tale of duty and chivalry and knights defending a castle and also, apparently, one very odd cat-based nightmare. Now you know!
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One Last Thing
This is where I ask you to help me out. I don't like asking for help but there's no way I can share Thursday! far and wide without wonderful people like you who dig what I do and are willing to tell other people about it. Please, feel free to share this newsletter with anyone you think will love it like you do. You can also tell them about my cool book, give it a solid review, or buy an autographed copy (ask and I'll tell you how!).
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