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Finding the Flow State in the Age of Distraction

Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless. – Neal Stephenson

Whenever I read Neal Stephenson’s books (I’m making my way through REAMDE at the moment), I often find myself stopping and checking the dictionary, or Wikipedia, or both, to figure out what he’s talking about. Not that Stephenson is particularly difficult; he just happens to be as dense as Gibson and equally fond of charming-but-colossal infodumps: “The protagonist was playing a game of World of Warcraft. He sent his dwarf in to mine some gold. And now, an extensive historical overview of geology and the mining industry to lend this moment context.”

I appreciate Stephenson’s attention to detail. Having recently finished with a long run of indie novels, REAMDE has called attention to how much detail many other authors skip over for the sake of expediency. Not Stephenson. Before that gun on the mantlepiece gets fired, you can be damn sure you’ll know everything about its manufacture, capabilities, and mechanical quirks. (The only reason this works is because Stephenson rarely does it gratuitously. These trifling details serve the story.)

Anyway, while picking my way through REAMDE, I found myself interested in Stephenson’s mention of the “flow state,” a mental state of mind which one of the characters — a ridiculously profound fantasy author — must achieve in order to get his work done. Since being ridiculously prolific is something I’m in favor of, I decided to find out more about it… and now I feel kind of ridiculous that I’d never heard of it before.

The “flow experience” is defined by psychology professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi by six factors:

1. intense and focused concentration on the present moment
2. merging of action and awareness
3. a loss of reflective self-consciousness
4. a sense of personal control over the situation or activity
5. a distortion of temporal experience, one’s subjective experience of time is altered
6. experience of the activity as intrinsically rewarding, also referred to as autotelic experience (Wikipedia)

All of these add up to a state that a lot of creative types think of as being “inspired” or “struck by the muse”:

These exceptional moments are what I have called “flow” experiences. The metaphor of flow is one that many people have used to describe the sense of effortless action they feel in moments that stand out as the best in their lives. Athletes refer to it as “being in the zone,” religious mystics as being in “ecstasy,” artists and musicians as “aesthetic rapture.” (Psychology Today)

In a curious bit of coincidence, my research into flow found this article, which linked the flow state to the “10,000 Hour Rule,” which I wrote about in yesterday’s blog post:

According to pioneering research by Anders Ericsson at Florida State University in Tallahassee, it normally takes 10,000 hours of practice to become expert in any discipline. Over that time, your brain knits together a wealth of new circuits that eventually allow you to execute the skill automatically, without consciously considering each action. Think of the way tennis champion Roger Federer, after years of training, can gracefully combine a complicated series of actions – keeping one eye on the ball and the other on his opponent, while he lines up his shot and then despatches a crippling backhand – all in one stunningly choreographed second. (New Scientist)

The New Scientist article goes on to talk about the possibility of dramatically shortening the time required to obtain such mastery through acquiring the “flow state” — although, as I said yesterday, I’m less interested in tracking hours than I am achieving greater creative output.

Does all this sound mind-numbingly clinical yet? Boy, I sure hope so.

So in reading all this, I began thinking about my own obstacles when it comes to achieving the “flow state.” Here’s what I came up with.

1) Regular practice. The wealth on contradictory advice on how often and regularly one should write is well-heeled, so I won’t regurgitate it here. In my work, however, I find my gears rust up pretty fast. A few days without writing, and it’s a huge struggle to really find my groove. I started this blog in no small part to address that concern and compel myself to write daily no matter what. It’s turned out to be slightly wanting in terms of execution, but that’s how we learn from our mistakes, I guess.

2) Poor planning. This is basically the cause of 1). My least productive days are the ones where I get up, check my email or voice mail, and then basically react to things until all the time is gone. The days where I block out writing time and stick to the plan are far more productive. I’m sure there’s some clichéd adage about failing to plan being a plan to fail… oh, wait, that’s it.

3) Distractions. This is the big one. And now, an annoying autobiographical interlude!

Photo credit: Jordanhill School D&T Dept on Flickr.

Years ago, when I moved out on my own, my first place was a beaten-down old house in the middle of nowhere. There was no life within a quarter-mile in any direction. I lived on a blasted plain of dead grass and abandoned farm equipment. Now, of course, it’s all been developed into cracker-box condominiums, but back in the day, I was Robert E. Howard. It was just me and my little Apple II. There were long stretches of time when I didn’t even have a working phone.

I lived there for about three years, and in that time, churned out a huge body of work. All of it was garbage — I was young, stupid, and completely ignorant of proper storytelling craft — but I did nothing but write, in no small part because writing was all my little computer did. It had no games, no Internet access. It was a glorified typewriter.

Now, I’d love to say “and that’s the way it was and I liked it,” but in truth, I really love the information age. I love having oceans of data at my fingertips. I like not having to hoof it to the library to do research on some trifling factoid that’s holding up my story. I think the twenty-first century is awesome. But I have far more distractions now than I did then. Creating that kind of isolated environment doesn’t come easy anymore. It means forsaking not only the telephone and the doorbell, but email, Twitter, Facebook, G+, and the churning Sargasso of yummy information that beckons one like a siren onto the jagged shoals of farting around.

For me, finding the flow state means shutting out all distractions as much as possible. Some people can write on buses or in crowded coffee shops. Not me. I’d have to wear earphones and probably blinders. My attention is too easily diverted from the work. My best stuff comes when I slam down all the mental bulkhead doors and quarantine myself with my writing. Only then, after a lengthy struggle, does the flow state happen.

Of course, I’m not about to say that my experience is universal. I stopped writing in groups and at coffee shops because it doesn’t work for me. I think too much about what other people are writing. I worry about how much coffee I have left. I tune in on other people’s conversations. I can’t achieve that lovely fugue where the world recedes into fog and all that’s left is the page. I need to be alone, with nothing to pull me away, for the surly muse to emerge from her abattoir.

But that’s my experience. What’s yours? Can you write amidst distraction? How do you cope with it?

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Your Emergency Minimums

Photo credit: tsaiproject on Flickr.

I have a close friend who’s been going through a very tough time. The kind of tough time that would reduce most other people to a quivering pulp. He’s under pressures I can barely imagine, and is still such a fantastic guy that he takes the time to sit down and listen to my problems.

So when I told him that I’d been having a hard time getting any writing done, he asked me: “what are your emergency minimums?”

He went on to explain that long ago, when his free time suddenly diminished dramatically, he decided on a few “emergency minimums” for his daily routine — things that were important to him that he would do every day / week / month, no matter what. It might be something as simple as a daily meditation, or a bit of reading, or an exercise routine.

He wouldn’t make excuses for himself, or put these things off indefinitely and then feel bad about putting them off. He wouldn’t mourn that he wasn’t able to put as much time as he wanted into his projects. He didn’t concoct elaborate schemes with catchy code names. He’d plan, and then put a little time in, wherever he could, without fail.

And at that point, I had to confess — I didn’t have any emergency minimums. I didn’t have any minimums at all. I had planned to fail by failing to plan, as the platitude goes.

I have clinical depression. I’m on medication for it. My therapist once classified me as “high-functioning” and in general, that’s true — I have it a lot better than a lot of people who struggle with depression on a daily basis. Thanks to medication and therapy, I get through most days just fine.

But there are bleak days when I don’t feel “high-functioning” at all. I’m not talking about feeling a little grouchy, or in need of coffee. That’s a daily occurrence I’m well-equipped to handle (hint: the solution is coffee.) I’m talking about a gray fog being drawn across all of reality, where your own psyche becomes a schoolyard bully who has singled you out for an extended ass-kicking.

I’m not mentioning this to throw a miniature pity-party, complete with kazoos of despair, but rather to give some context. I’m just saying, there are days when even writing the crappiest blog post imaginable might as well be the twelve labors of Hercules. My fiction all starts looking like the worst dross a rabid chimp ever typed by accident. In short, the thought of neglecting one’s work, of just letting it go until things brighten up, becomes downright seductive.

This is not uncommon among writers. Ours is not a special snowflake of pain. Sometimes it’s life, or depression, or fear, or good old-fashioned laziness.

Any writer will tell you that writing daily is essential. Hell, I’ve said it, probably with a lot of pomposity and finger-wagging, too. I talk a big game (like many a blogger), but my money and my mouth often occupy different space-time continua. Balancing writing with our daily lives is something we all contend with, to some degree or another. We all have our excuses, legitimate or not.

This is where emergency minimums come in.

So I’m going to start setting some modest goals. Not sweeping, punch-out-the-universe goals, but manageable tasks that I can reliably complete. I may not be able to spare four hours a day for writing, but I sure as hell can spare thirty to sixty minutes.

A person can get a lot of work done in that time. Or not. But the point is to do the work.

So what are your emergency minimums?

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Writing as MMORPG: Building Your Writing Addiction

World of Warcraft

Back in 2010, Cracked published an article called 5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted. The article explored the science behind keeping people playing long past the point of their own best interest, and how games manipulate people into losing their hard-earned time and money to games.

Also in 2010, Jane McGonigal gave a TED talk about taking the reward strategies in games like World of Warcraft and using them to solve real-world problems.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, nothing yet, but give me a second.

Anyone who’s played World of Warcraft (or any other addictive game) knows how easy it is to lose hours to the game. You sit down to play for a little bit, and your goal of a few minutes of fun becomes the goal of one more level… or one more crafting recipe… or one more quest chain… until it’s one in the morning and you’re looking forward to the next workday with queasy horror.

The addictiveness of this experience is deliberately mechanized. The mechanics of World of Warcraft are designed to keep you playing through a series of small, incremental, easily achieved rewards that lead up to bigger incremental rewards. Getting a new level or achievement gives you a tiny rush of accomplishment, making you want to play more. There’s a huge and ever-expanding market of iPad games whose entire business model relies on exploiting the thirst for a reward and the impatience of the average gamer. Do you want this widget? Well, just click here and wait twelve hours. Or, if you just can’t wait, just pay 99 cents and you can have it now. That kind of thing.

So wait — what does this have to do with the writing process again?

Addictive behavior doesn’t always have to work against you. With some work, you can make it into another tool in your writing toolbox. You can gamify your own writing habits and build your writing addiction. Instead of losing productive hours to a distraction, you can create your own “writing Skinner box” and transform yourself into a veritable juggernaut of productivity. A very small, benevolent, desk-bound juggernaut.

Set Smart Goals

To build your writing addiction, the first thing you should do is break down your goals. Most writers I know tend to look at things in terms of big, daunting, sweeping achievements that must be met. They have to write 70,000 words, or cut 20,000 words, or edit 200 pages. Right now, today! These statements are usually accompanied by a groan of weariness or disgust. Some even say to themselves, “I’ll just play a few minutes of this game first,” and they’re off to the non-writing races. And no wonder. I’m exhausted just hearing about it.

Of course, there’s no way to avoid those big goals entirely, but you can (and should) break them down into smaller, more manageable units, rather than trying to body-check the whole world into the ropes like Atlas on roids.

Let’s go back to World of Warcraft for a second. In WoW, there’s always that one quest that you have to travel all over the map to complete. Collect one widget from here, another from there, and basically spend a ton of time waiting around while your character flies (or runs) from place to place. When players talk about these quests, it’s usually with venom and disdain. Almost no one likes them — and why would they?

Most quests, however, come in easy-to-swallow chunks, with a little reward at the end of each. You can approach your writing tasks in the same way. Instead of saying to yourself that you have to edit 200 pages, set a goal of editing 10 pages a day for 20 days. Collapsing those numbers down can make them seem not quite so daunting — and anyone who’s ever done Nanowrimo knows how fast 20 days can go by.

Applying this to your writing process is easy. You can use a method like the Pomodoro Technique to write in fifteen-minute units of time — or you can join #wordmongering on Twitter and kill a half-hour in friendly, competitive competition.

Give Yourself Tiny Rewards

Attach a small reward to each one of your goals. Write five hundred words, then go get a cup of coffee. Edit ten pages, then go take a walk. Cut five pages, then go play with your cat for twenty minutes. Edit forty pages and take the whole damn weekend off.

Whatever works. Just make the goals small and the rewards proportionate. Don’t set a goal of writing a blog post and reward yourself with two weeks of hard drinking and Simpsons reruns. The goal is to maintain forward momentum and prevent discouragement, not enable bad behavior — a principle that can be surprisingly difficult to keep in mind.

Run the Dailies

World of Warcraft also has “daily” quests, which are repeatable quests that give a set reward. The advantage to these is that they’re a known quantity. You know what the goal is, you know what the reward will be, and it will never change. You can redo the quests until you’re sick in the face, or until they no longer give any meaningful reward.

Again, you can make this work for you. Set yourself some daily, or even weekly goals, and do them no matter what. Make them small and achievable, and grant yourself a reward at the end. Again, keep both these things small and sustainable.

Rinse, Repeat

The whole point of this exercise is to maintain balance and build a habit, retraining your brain to look forward to your writing and not get stalled by the intimidating size of a task (and if you aren’t, why on earth did you read this far?) If you can do this for a few weeks, chances are you can do it forever.

Now go forth and level up.

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Writing Your Rough Draft: The Show Must Go On

Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman performin...
Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman performing the title song of The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many years ago, I attended a showing of The Phantom of the Opera. What does that have to do with writing motivation and your rough draft? Stick with me.

If you’ve ever seen the play, you’re familiar with that bit where the Phantom bellows out the final verse of “The Music of the Night” and reveals the female lead’s creepy-ass animated mannequin. During the performance I watched, the double was hidden beneath a sheet, which the actor had to yank away at the climactic moment. But just then, some yahoo’s cell phone rang out, the actor’s hand slipped, and the sheet didn’t come off.

The actor did the only thing he could do. He tried again, and this time the sheet came off. The moment wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough — it had to be.

Even though this anecdote is about performance art and not writing, it’s gone in my list of motivational stories for a specific reason: Screw-ups happen, but the show must go on. A writer’s rough draft is likely to be full of little problems: continuity errors, poor characterization, a plot that flatlines. An actor working live on a stage doesn’t have the luxury of just stopping when things get tough — writers, unfortunately, often do, unless they’re under a deadline.

If you’re going to maintain forward momentum and beat procrastination on your work, you’ve got to learn to work through the temptation to stop and get everything perfect.

This is something every beginning writer seems to struggle with. You want your first draft to be perfect, so you stop writing and go back to fix your mistakes. Forward momentum stalls while you try to perfect the writing you’ve done, instead of generating new words. Soon, your motivation starts to flag. You put the story away. You attend a writing workshop. You abandon the idea. You write a blog post about your writing problems instead of confronting them. You take up hang-gliding. Your rough draft languishes while you look up motivational quotes on the internet. You know, that sort of thing.

Been there. Done it. Fiction writing can be like a minefield of distractions.

So how do you keep your motivation strong and keep writing even when that rough draft seems like it’s actively mocking you?

  • Accept imperfection. You’re not a machine. No one’s first draft is perfect. Everyone quotes Hemingway for a reason. Realize you’re going to make mistakes and just keep writing. Remember: forward momentum.
  • Resist the temptation to edit. The first draft is for writing. The second and subsequent drafts are for editing and revising. Stick to your guns and just keep writing.
  • Don’t let your ego drag you down. Writers tend to be a fussy, neurotic bunch. We see imperfections in our work and we take it so damn personally. The quality of our writing suddenly becomes the quality of ourselves, and that first draft suddenly becomes some terrifying referendum on our personality. Don’t let it.
  • Remember that a first draft is just the beginning. It’s a common rookie mistake to hang everything on that rough draft as if it’s the ultimate goal. It’s not. You have a lot more work ahead of you. Sorry about that.

Mistakes happen. The show must go on. Keep your head down and keep writing.

 

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