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Keeping the Creative Flow Uninhibited

On 20 Feb, 2013 By With 11 Comments

How do you get around the pressure of creating? We all have our own pressures that we have to overcome when trying to make something. What’s yours?

For me, my pressures are largely based on finding the time to create and having the courage to make something that might not be everything I hoped it could be. With every creative endeavor in every type of art I’m capable of trying, I have this assumption that I’ll be able to make something amazing (on my first attempt, of course).

That pressure for finding the perfect solution every time can be a strong preventative to ever creating anything. Forget a creative flow. That’s complete stoppage.

waterfall

Image courtesy of Paul Bica

Close to the end of the year, I unconsciously found a cheat to the system. By writing in a notebook, I found that I could write more freely, knowing that I would have to type up everything before it could go out to the world. By simply creating an extra step, I had newfound freedom. It’s silly, but it really worked for me.

It’s Not About the Tools

The funny thing about that little brain hack is that I didn’t really realize how symbolic the format was. It’s not paper and pen that makes the process easier; it’s simply a creative phase where I don’t stress about what people will think about what I’m saying. It’s a matter of having the creative space where my inhibitions don’t intrude on the process.

In the past week, I adapted a bit to help me start blogging more frequently. Once again, I didn’t consciously set out with the intention of finding a “better” way for me to write. It was just a new idea to break up the stagnant system I’d been trying. See, I’d already forgotten about the notebook-writing that quickly. Probably in the interest of being more efficient, but instead I found myself not writing for longer stretches of time. Not too efficient, right?

I’ve started writing 1,000 words at a time in Evernote. I’ll work on email newsletters, new posts, some fiction, whatever I feel like working on at the time without the pressure of having to have something accomplished other than a word count. Because I picked up writing habits from On Writing by Stephen King and from participating in NaNoWriMo, this process makes sense to me.

And the process enforces an editorial phase where I have to go back and sort out all of the bits and pieces I wrote. I know, it sounds like a headache, but I’m settling into a flow of consciousness style for my first drafts that is allowing me to come up with unexpected ideas. I can add more structure, quotes, punctuation, and all of that good stuff when I move the post to WordPress.

The editing phase is still essential. I’m just separating it from the production phase to completely focus my brain on one form of creation.

What About You?

Does flow of consciousness writing work for you? If not, do you have any new creative hacks you’ve stumbled across recently?

Related posts:

How Creative Types Can Have Patience with the Artistic Process
What We Can Learn from Benjamin Franklin's Failure
Fear, Loss, and Learning in Adulthood
Carrying Creativity into Other Areas of Our Lives
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  • http://www.nurturingcreativity.net/ Denise Urena

    I like writing in a notebook for poetry, but I write too sloppy to attempt that for an entire article. Though, I will hand-write notes/ideas all the time.

    What helps my creative flow most is just habits. Writing daily whether I publish or not – but, I publish at least 5 times a week between 2 blogs. I didn’t have that habit last year. Not really. I committed to the daily writing thing, no matter what, starting this year, and now I have way too much too write about.. it’s almost over-whelming. So, now, I need to learn how to organize my thoughts better. In fact, if you have a hack for that, let me know :)

    • michaelwroberts

      Sounds like a great blog post idea. I’ll get on it!

      I’ve moved up to writing 5 times a week so that I can leave myself a few days to just take care of some of the maintenance of being online… things like adding new sidebars, optimizing content, and all that good stuff. But it’s already been a huge help. It’s great to have a choice of what to publish instead of agonizing over one article for that long.

  • http://twitter.com/sarahemily Sarah Goshman

    Love both of these, Michael! And when I learned that editing and writing were separate things and should be done separately, it was such a huge epiphany for me. I would always get stuck trying to refine my words as I was writing them… I bet writing on paper would really help me get out of that bad habit. :-) Thanks for the ideas.

    • michaelwroberts

      The funny thing is that I’ve always been able to keep the processes separate when writing fiction, but it just didn’t dawn on me that I should be doing the same with non-fiction writing, too. I’m loving the change!

  • http://remadebyhand.com/ Erin Kurup

    Wow. I’ve totally taken a similar approach without realizing what I was doing. So interesting!

    I keep a notebook by my desk full of all kinds of idea snippets, lists, and the like. It’s like the rough draft of what I then sort out and “file” appropriately during my weekly reviews. I know I end up catching a lot more of the little sparks that I’d otherwise ignore because I don’t feel the pressure to figure out where they go and polish them up right away.

    I also draft my posts in a free-writing format in OmmWriter, often with the screen of my laptop tilted closed a bit so that I can’t read what I’m typing as I go. I’ll often do newsletters the same way. I then copy the text over to its proper home (WordPress or MailChimp) for the editing and formatting. But writing it out elsewhere feels more private and easier to me. After all, if it doesn’t end up working as a post, then it’s just another piece of personal writing :)

    • michaelwroberts

      That’s cool. I love that you can’t even see what you’re typing. OmmWriter is a great writing tool, too. I’ve used it a few times, especially at the office when I needed to be able to drown out all of the email and IM’s.

      Since switching my process, I’ve found that I had a couple of posts that were complete clunkers, but I didn’t have to worry about trying to save that one post. I just kept moving and wrote a different one that worked better.

  • http://www.valueofsimple.com/ Joel Zaslofsky

    Efficiency is over-rated. If you efficiency create crap all the time, what does that get you? It’s better to add a step or two to your overall creative process and be happy with the final result.

    I do all my writing digitally after (briefly) experimenting a while back with pen and paper writing of drafts as a starting point. I’ve found I actually get into a flow state faster and more reliability when I keep to the digital space. I think a big part of that is the minimalist in me that doesn’t like to add physical objects to the world – even a piece of paper – if I don’t absolutely have to. Even when I grab a Post It from the desk drawer to jot something down, I feel a twinge of, “Do you really need this?” OK, I digress.

    I have noticed you creating more, even before you publicly acknowledged it. I just assumed you hit a burst of inspiration or found a large chunk of time to write and schedule stuff. I guess your new insight makes this more sustainable than any short-term burst though. That’s awesome (for you and me)!

    • michaelwroberts

      Glad you noticed, Joel. I’m really working at lowering the stress I feel over my writing in general, and that’s helped to open the floodgates.

      I’m definitely with you on post-it notes. I’m doing everything I can to eliminate scraps of paper from my life since I always lose them anyway. Not only do I feel less cluttered, but I can actually find the reminder that I so desperately needed.

  • http://www.creativesomething.net/ tannerc

    Writing like this certainly helps, but I think what ultimately makes or breaks your ability to get into creative “flow” is making it a habit.

    There are a lot of ways to do so, of course, but the best way I’ve found is to set a time during the day (every day) where you just create. Anything. Then do what can be really scary: share what you created with someone. After awhile you start to learn that 1) creating isn’t all that hard, 2) even if what you create is garbage, the world isn’t going to end.

    Good primer.

    • michaelwroberts

      Do you share your creation every day, or do you let some of those creations fall by the wayside?

      The idea of just creating something, whether or not it’s exactly relevant to whatever project is at hand, makes a lot of sense. I find that I dry up when the next stage of whatever I’m working on at the moment doesn’t immediately fall into place. I start overthinking the problem and psych myself out. Moving on to make something else for a while sounds like a great way to keep from coming to a complete halt.

      Thanks for commenting!

  • http://twitter.com/ethanwaldman Ethan Waldman

    I can really identify with this because I try to work the same way, though I haven’t thought through it quite like you have. Basically, if I get the sudden inspiration for an article or post, I’ll fire up Evernote and write as much as of it as will flow at the time (time allowing, too). I learned this from back when I was writing music regularly- when a song idea popped into my brain I had to get it going immediately, otherwise it would be lost forever.