Writers often complain about the painful process of drafting substantial content, like reports, white papers, or book chapters. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Your could be creating great content rapidly and enjoying every moment of it. You just need two things: Planning. And writing time. Writing in flow versus endlessly struggling, typing,…
Today’s thesis is this: Flow is more important to writing than anything else. So you should do everything legally possible to achieve it. What is flow? Flow is the state in which creation seems effortless. It’s like going downhill: there is challenge but no struggle and you make steady progress. As the psychologist who defined…
Last week, the great psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi died. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chik-sent-mee-hai-ee) advanced our understanding of happiness and creativity enormously by codifying the concept of “flow,” a highly pleasurable and concentrated state of mind in which people are enormously productive. Every writer needs to know about flow — what it is, why it is important, and…
Of all the tools and methods that writers use, having a door on your writing space — and closing it — may be the most powerful. A fellow writer about to undertake the months-long process of creating a book recently asked for advice about the need for concentration — and how to balance that with…
Writing can be easy, provided you prepare properly. I’ll show how that applied to the op-ed I placed in the Boston Globe last Sunday. Let’s start by talking about two types of writers, planners and pantsers, a concept I borrow from fiction writers. Planners are the people who map everything out ahead of time, in…
It’s hard to concentrate right now. If you are working at home (as I have been for the last five years), you may have to deal with noise from neighbors, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and people cutting down trees. You may have children at home who need attention. You may have others in the house…
You know the kind of work I mean. It demands skills you don’t have. It’s slow. It’s disagreeable. And you spend half your time taking breaks, complaining, and avoiding it, because it’s just soul-sucking labor. That work is more valuable than you realize. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes about flow, the state you attain as you work…
I have a confession to make. I really enjoy doing the dishes. (And yes, this has something to do with writing advice.) At my house, it is my wife’s job to cook and my job to do the dishes. This is good, because she is an excellent cook and I am terrible. She could do…
Writers follow the flow. But if you don’t keep track of the destination, the flow will lead you astray. Let me explain, using the mathematical concept of a Markov process. What is a Markov Process? You’re familiar with Markov processes, even if you don’t realize it. A Markov process is one in which the likely…