Admit it, what is your inner most desires…mad passionate creative flow or mad passionate sex?
Hard to choose? The two experiences may not be that different and may be connected. They both involve total surrender of control, and create powerful energy full of electricity. Some experts even propose that if you experience one, you are more likely to experience the other more easily.
I have a fun article to share with you this week that describes How Creative Flow is Like Sex, written by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., a social psychologist, writer, and writing consultant, posting on Psychology Today. She has written the book, Writing in Flow: Keys to Enhanced Creativity. Susan states there are four ways that the creative journey is similar to making love:
-
-
- In both creative flow and sexual activity, you surrender control.
- Sex and creativity can each feel blocked.
- How you experience sex and how you enter a flow state both relate to your personality.
- Creating can itself cause an erotic charge.
-
Susan Perry includes several quotes from authors and poets about the creative flow experience in their lives.
A popular novelist (Carolyn See) said it this way: “When I create, I’m not thinking. In a sense, you’re better off not thinking about it. Like sex, you don’t want to think, oh now we’re in foreplay.”
Accessing More Creative Flow
It often feels like creative flow is the holy grail of the creative life. I sometimes wonder if I give enough attention to encouraging and protecting my creative space to access the flow more powerfully in my life. Sometimes writing becomes analytical when I become too concerned with editing too early in the game.
I think a conscious effort to encourage more moments of creative flow is well worth the effort. Those times are so powerful, and it is easy to forget to enter this space in the midst of our busy lives. It is the essence of creative flow that gives us inspiration and energy. It is the open channel of pure creativity that we should be accessing regularly.
In, The Hidden Art of Achieving Creative Flow, written by Everett Bogue, author of The Art of Being Minimalist, as a guest on Zenhabits:Simple Productivity, he explains why flow is so hard to achieve.
Flow is a moment in time when you’re both challenged at the activity that you’re doing, and when you also have complete autonomy in the task you’re conducting.
If you’re not flowing, it’s probably because you aren’t allowing yourself to be challenged, you’re completely overwhelmed, or someone else is holding you back.
Everett continues by describing why is it so important for writers to engage the creative flow state.
I think it’s very important for writers to engage in flow. A lot of writers stop and meticulously edit their work after every sentence, but writing this way (for most people) is counterproductive.
Why? I believe it’s because of the same reason that dancers can’t stop dancing in improvisation. If you just keep writing for 30 minutes without stopping, you give your mind a chance to turn off the ‘conscious of me’ brain functions. This in turn grants more brain power to challenging the boundaries of your writing ability.
You cannot edit while you’re producing work. If you do, you’ll be constantly switching between your right brain and your left brain. Your creative center will be switching off and on and it will be harder to produce anything meaningful.
Everett describes the practice of achieving more flow as crucial to the creative process. It takes time alone and planning to work without distraction – including Twitter. Check out this interesting post to learn about ways you can increase the creative flow in your writing.
Happy Friday to everyone! Is creativity flowing in your life? Or is the muse a bit tired and overwhelmed? How do you actively cultivate creative flow? Let’s talk about how we’re doing this week. Have a chat in the comments or drop us a line on Twitter at #writerlbsOff.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.