Creating in Flow

Blocked? Make a List, Lift a Brick, Read a Tip

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:19:13 +0000

Is your brain feeling rusty? If being creative feels impossible at the moment, try something more or less "mechanical," suggests Gerald M. Weinberg, author of Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method. Weinberg, a computer industry consultant and author of numerous books and articles, as well as several of what he calls "nerd novels," offers a range of practical tips for entering or re-engaging with a writing project. Once you're in, you have a chance to reach the creative zone.

Don't just sit there, writes Weinberg, but draw up a list of small discrete tasks. "Fieldstoning is about always doing something that's advancing your writing projects. List tasks of all sizes, to fit your mood, resources, whatever amount of time you have." For instance:

Check what you've written thus far for correct spelling and grammar.

Use the Internet to find some supporting material. (One of my own favorites is to search for a more precise term to replace a generic one, such as a particular shade of blue for a character's eyes.)

If you've got an outline of some kind, update it to reflect changes you've made in the process of writing.

When you have to write something for work or school, that is, when you're not writing exactly what you most want to be writing, Weinberg suggests that you ask yourself to describe "an approach to converting the assignment into one you do care about." Flow theory agrees: any activity can be turned into a flow activity if you raise the challenge just enough to engage your interest.

For example, say you've committed to writing an article for a club newsletter. In fact, a friend of mine recently had that experience, and she made it compelling for herself by using analogies from aspects of the current political situation that most interested her. She had great fun with the task, and when she was done, she was utterly shocked that a whole hour had gone by.

WHAT ABOUT THOSE STONES?

The crux of Weinberg's so-called Fieldstone Method is to continually gather stones, which are individual ideas, images, insights, and other bits and pieces that may eventually help you build your wall (the thing you're writing). Many writers put such stones into a writer's journal, which I wrote about previously here. Some of the stones (phrases, concepts, whatever) will soon fit nicely into one of the projects you're working on or have in mind, but others will simply appeal to you generally. He calls it the X pile.

Weinberg, like many other creative artists, recommends working on several projects at a time to avoid getting stuck. And when you do feel temporarily at a loss, ask yourself if you have too many ideas, in which case you need better tools for organizing what you already have), or too few (which suggests it's time to get gathering).

One kind of stone-gathering involves triggering your own memories. The way I do it personally is to make a list of "times I felt shame," "times I felt sorrow," and so on. Such emotional events evoke intense feelings and always offer me something fresh to write about.

Weinberg suggests, as an exercise, to write a series of memories triggered by starting phrases. Examples:

Time (When I was eight years old, I...)

Place (A certain town makes you think of what pivotal event?)

Sound (When you hear a particular piece of music, what do you remember?)

Touch (When you pet your dog, what might you be reminded of?)

And so on through sight, feelings, taste, smell, particular people, and more. You can combine such triggers for even richer cascades of memories.

Weinberg blogs about writing here, and you can listen to him talk about the "myth of writer's block" on YouTube here.

Creative Kids (Part 2): 7 Ways to Teach Flow

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:04:51 +0000

In my previous post, I shared why it's a good idea to help kids learn to enter a flow state more often. Here is the how: 7 tips for helping your (or any) child get the benefits of entering and staying longer in the flow zone:

1. DISCUSS THE CONCEPT OF FLOW. Learn the signs of flow (one way is to keep reading this blog). Point out to your child when she seems to have been most deeply engaged in an activity. For instance, when your child is playing with friends so intently that she forgets to stop for lunch, you might say, "Honey, you were really involved just now, having fun with your friends. When you're in flow like that, it's hard to get back to ordinary stuff, isn't it?"

2. TALK ABOUT YOUR OWN FLOW EXPERIENCES. Express your personal enjoyment of tough challenges, by saying something like, "Wow, that was really hard! I think that's why I enjoyed it so much. It feels great to stick with something long enough to see results!"

3. PROVIDE ENOUGH TIME AND SPACE. Make a point of not filling every moment of your child's day so she has more time to follow her own interests. If she's focused intently on reading or doing a puzzle, let her finish. If she simply won't stop, say, "It looks like you were really involved in figuring out that puzzle. No wonder you didn't answer me right away." When it's time for school or bed, acknowledge her frustration at the need to stop. Encourage a longer attention span by not having the TV on during homework time. Make it a family habit to put away one thing (or place it out of sight) before beginning another.

4. LEARN AND TEACH SELF-MONITORING. Show your child how to monitor her own attention by becoming more aware of your own limited attentional resources. For instance, say, "I'll have to read this later. I'm so tired right now that I don't know what I'm reading." She'll learn to recognize that it's a good idea to stop when her focus flags. Perhaps all that's needed is a change of pace or a rest break. Or does she need some help to get over a difficult spot in her homework? Suggest that your child note her daily energy levels. Is doing her homework the moment she comes home the best use of her energy? Would a snack first make her more attentive?

5. OFFER CHALLENGING PASTIMES. Encourage hobbies that grow more complex with play. With pre-packaged computer games, for example, the challenge doesn't last long. Instead, encourage drawing, story writing, photography, constructing dioramas, cooking, and kite-making -- all activities with infinite options. (My own earlier book, Playing Smart, contains many more ideas.)

6. EMPHASIZE ACTIVITIES FOR THEIR OWN SAKE. Encourage your child to do things because she enjoys them, rather than focus on how she's doing. Rather than, "You did a good job," say, "You certainly are having a lot of fun learning about dinosaurs, aren't you?" Don't resort to rewards and bribes -- research shows this may reduce the intrinsic motivation to learn. (I highly recommend this great article by Alfie Kohn.)

7. EXPERIMENT AND FIND THE NOVELTY. Teach your child to experiment with tasks in order to add novelty, thus raising his interest level and leading to flow. For instance, ask him to choose the simplest everyday chore, such as straightening his room, and find a way to make it more enjoyable. He could put music on, dance from location to location, try to beat the clock, decorate storage boxes, and so on. When cooking with your child, say, "What do you think would happen if we don't beat the eggs before putting them in?" Or, "It should be fun to try a new recipe. Let's see what happens if we add a little bit of onion." When something new doesn't work as well as you'd both hoped, point out that it's a learning experience anyway.

Creative Kids Learn to Flow (Part 1)

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:36:48 +0000

Watch closely next time your child is deeply involved in play. If she's so focused on what she's doing that she doesn't come when you call her for dinner, she's not ignoring you just to be ornery. There's a good chance she's in a flow state. And that ought to be encouraged! Here's why.

Flow, as you know by now if you've been reading my blog (the first one is here), is a deliciously gratifying state of mind. And that's true for all ages. According to flow research, it happens whenever you're so absorbed in a task that you forget yourself. And that happens most when there's enough challenge to keep you interested but not so much that you get frustrated. In flow, as an adult or a child, time seems to disappear, and you want to keep right on doing whatever you're doing.

You're also more likely to be creative, says Teresa M. Amabile, Ph.D., creativity researcher at the Harvard Business School and author of Growing Up Creative. High achievers in any field experience it regularly. Children who have learned the knack for getting into flow tend to be happier, healthier, more involved in life.

While your child's deep absorption may frustrate you at times, it pays to help her increase the time she spends in flow. Knowing how to find the fun and flow in activities can help your child concentrate better on schoolwork, even when the assignment seems boring at first glance.

WHEN LIFE IS ANTI-FLOW

Unfortunately, a lot about modern life, including a school day with classes broken up into short segments, works against intense concentration. In school, also, so much of what kids do is controlled by grades and adult approval.

"If these rewards become prominent in children's minds, they may overwhelm the intrinsic joy of doing something interesting and personally challenging," says Amabile. Many experiments by Amabile and others found that when kids are not offered rewards, they work longer at tasks and go back again and again to those tasks. Creative results don't often happen the first time you try something -- you've got to keep at it.

Most television programming also encourages short attention spans. It's essentially passive, while flow is active. Even structured after-school activities may take a toll on a child's ability to stay engaged with one thing for as long as it takes to lose herself in it.

Babies get into their own version of flow, such as when they're absorbed by their toes or a streak of sunlight to the exclusion of everything else. According to psychologist Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby, "Successful creative adults seem to combine the wide-ranging exploration and openness we see in children with the focus and discipline we see in adults."

That sort of focus can be encouraged, and your role as a parent is to support self-motivated activities. Don't jump in and take over, but ask questions and give hints if your child is stuck.

Children who have learned to enjoy challenge need never be bored. They can find the fun in anything.

My next post will be a collection of ways to teach flow to youngsters.

The Little Girl Giant Puppet & Other Posts Too Short to Post

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:22:48 +0000

If, in your travels around the Internet, you haven't yet come across the spellbinding video of the little girl giant puppet, be sure to check it out now. Read about this and three more creative tidbits:

1. The little girl giant puppet video showcases an unusual aspect of creativity. I found a nice sharp copy at Electric Pig (under the Photography button). A variety of creativity sites and blogs have linked to it, such as Richard Wiseman's Blog where he refers to the 'giant puppet" rule of creativity. What I got out of the video was to think about how making something ordinary into something huge (and of excellent quality) can have amazingly creative results. It's a great example of creative teamwork too. (The photo is by Matthew Andrews and Sophie Laslett, courtesy of Arts Council London)

2. "Taking the Mystery Out of Writing Mysteries" is an article by author/psychologist Dennis Palumbo. Sample: "We want order restored. But not just social order; the best mysteries, whether on Without A Trace or in Murder On the Orient Express, are also about the exploration and resolution of psychological tension."

3. Here's a video lecture, both stimulating and insightful, by designer Tim Brown about the many connections between creative thinking and play, with audience participation invited (that's you).

4. Jon Stewart talks in an interview about "audience" (and how one gets over caring about it) in his early stand-up days:

There was a club right down the street called the Comedy Cellar. And there was a guy there named Bill Grundfest. He did the best thing for me ever, which was: "I'll tell you what I'll do; I'm not gonna pay you, but I'm gonna let you go on every night as the last guy." And so I went on for two years at the Comedy Cellar at 2:30 or 3 a.m. as the last guy. It was me and the waitstaff and a table of drunken Dutch sailors. And in that place, I learned how to be myself. It was the thing that made me want to be good. You begin to develop an internal barometer that doesn't include the audience. And that was a really big thing to learn: not to fall in love with the audience.

Do You Dare to Be Bad?

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:37:55 +0000

What would you do if you could do anything, and no one would get hurt? For some, such a thought experiment is easy. For others--especially women--it can be incredibly difficult. Getting Unstuck, a guide to unblocking your creativity, says you ought to try talking to your shadow side to learn what's holding you back...

Susan O'Doherty, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist in Brooklyn Heights, NY, and the author of Getting Unstuck without Coming Unglued: A Woman's Guide to Unblocking Creativity. She has also had essays, stories, and poems published, and specializes in helping those--women in particular--who are experiencing creative blocks.

O'Doherty's chapter on acknowledging our shadows made me think. Certainly when my kids were little, I was made to feel I didn't deserve to pursue my artistic goals. Ditched that husband eventually and solved that problem. I do still retain plenty of "shoulds" in my life, but I think I've chosen most of them mindfully. Although I don't have it in me to become either a selfish monster or a totally obsessed novelist, I sort of envy those individuals who can say "no" to distractions again and again and thus say "yes" to what's most important to their essential selves.

TRY THIS

O'Doherty offers an exercise, and though I often skip such things, this one made me think. I'm talking about O'Doherty's suggestion to

imagine a day without consequences. ... No one will remember any of this [what you do or don't do] tomorrow. In fact, it won't have happened. You can eat whatever you want without gaining an ounce, you can conduct an affair free of guilt or complications, you can even commit murder--and your victim will spring back to life tomorrow. What would you choose to do?

She suggests you record your indulgences and then think about how you would characterize such a person, and to begin a dialogue with this person, your shadow.

My mind balked. Perhaps I'd spend all day pigging out on chocolate licorice or M&Ms, but I don't think I really want to hurt anyone, even if it's only imaginary (I can name a few people whom I regularly want to throttle, but maybe I need to learn more serenity in the face of irrationality). As for accessing my shadow, if that's a freeing thing to be able to do, maybe that's where my interest in writing fiction has come from: it's a safe way to explore the darker stuff I can't or don't want to access otherwise.

I asked O'Doherty about that, and she responded, "That exercise, and the book, are intended for those who are unable to produce at either the rate or depth they feel capable of. If you are writing well, and making use of fiction writing to explore issues it would be dangerous to act out in real life, skip the exercise."

TOO NICE?

But then, a couple of my remarks struck her as contradictory: "I don't think I want to hurt anyone, even if it's imaginary," and "I can name a few people whom I regularly want to throttle." If a client made those statements in a session, explained O'Doherty, she would probe for an internal struggle between the desire to be a moral person and some anger that doesn't fit into this positive self-image. "Many of us are raised to discount our anger, because it challenges the image of niceness and kindness that we want to embrace, or are taught that we should embody." She continued

Anger is a signal, like pain. Anger isn't fun or pretty, but it often serves to tell us that we're in an emotionally dangerous or untenable situation. Exploring such feelings can give us insight into the real nature of the problem. For example, the person we feel an impulse to strike out at may not be the one we're really angry at--a coworker may remind us of a sibling or parent about whom we have unresolved feelings; or our resentment of a more successful peer who seems to be showing off may actually spring from anger at ourselves for not taking more risks or pushing ourselves to produce more. And it's hard to find a solution to a problem unless we've identified the real, rather than the surface, cause.

O'Doherty reminded me that in Getting Unstuck another writer balked at this exercise. "Elizabeth" was shocked to uncover a fantasy of stabbing her ex-mother-in-law with a kitchen knife. The writer wasn't a violent person in her life, her writing, or her conscious fantasies. And she didn't really want to hurt her mother-in-law (who was already dead in any case). Both this client and O'Doherty came to believe that

what her shadow wanted to accomplish was to "kill off" the emotional power this woman still had over Elizabeth. Our unconscious minds sometimes make use of violent imagery to make a dramatic point, but as artists, we know that symbols aren't meant to be taken literally. So if you do try the exercise and find yourself throttling someone, this could provide valuable clues to a quality your shadow wants you to confront, rather than an indication of murderous tendencies!

In my own workshops and classes, I've found that being a "bad" person, or fear of being thought one by others, is indeed a major hindrance to many who would like to open their creative selves more fully. O'Doherty's practical advice and strategies get to the heart of what many of us have to struggle against in order to find and be ourselves, and to enter flow.

For more of her advice online:

O'Doherty's advice column for writers, "The Doctor Is In," appears every Friday on MJ Rose's publishing blog, "Buzz, Balls, & Hype."

She writes the weekly Career Coach column for Inside Higher Ed's Mama Ph.D. blog.

She's also a regular monthly panelist on the British literary podcast Litopia After Dark.

Nicholson Baker's Procrastinating Poet

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:01:18 +0000

Is a poet still a poet if he spends most of his time sitting in a white plastic chair in his driveway? If he promises to write an introduction to a poetry anthology but avoids writing and instead riffs on poetry and poems, digressing to the point of absurdity? That's the set-up for Nicholson Baker's latest novel, The Anthologist, and it's not only quite funny, but psychologically true-to-life.

You may not realize that authors are often asked by their publicists to make up a Q&A sheet of their own. In this post, I'd like to share a bit about Baker's writing process that I gleaned from just such a pre-written interview.

First of all, reading The Anthologist, threaded throughout with mini-lectures on poets and poetry, you have to wonder if Baker is a hidden poet himself or whether he researched those parts. He only had one poem published, he admits, in The New Yorker more than a decade ago. He claims that he's gone through several bursts of poetry reading in his life and also long periods where he didn't read any at all. "I always think better when I read poetry," he claims. He used to carry around The New Yorker Book of Poems and read it on his lunch hours. He says he's always been curious about why rhyme largely died out for a while in the 20th century.

IS HE SERIOUS?

When I shared the novel with my husband Stephen (a New Yorker-published poet himself), we discussed how much Baker agrees with his narrator, Paul Chowder. Stephen laughed a lot as he read, less for Chowder's preferring rhyme and more for the crazy scansion. I believed Baker was utterly serious when he wrote about poetry, in spite of the comical and unexpected digressions and details. So how much does Baker agree with his narrator?

Chowder is confused and conflicted about many things, as I am. I've always basically wanted poems to rhyme, and to have a recognizable metrical thump to them. When I look at a poem in a magazine I do a quick check to see whether it's a rhymer or not by skimming down the ragged right edge. I grew up on A.A. Milne, Edward Lear, the Beatles, and Dr. Seuss, and they were all tremendous jinglers, and I was scandalized in fourth grade when our very nice teacher said "It doesn't have to rhyme." Of course it does! And yet there's no question that a lot of the writing that really helps us to see the strange beauties of the world is unrhyming poetry. When it's good, a rhyme is a miracle. When it's bad it's really bad.

In the novel, Paul Chowder also says: "One thing I really like about books of poems is that you can open them anywhere and you're at a beginning.... And that's what poetry gives me. Many many beginnings. That feeling of setting forth." Baker says his narrative style, with its multiple digressions and affection for the minutiae of the world, attempts to achieve this quality in prose form. And he also loves

the "Chapter One" sensation of starting a novel -- the drop capital of the first letter, the non-indented first line, the sensation of late breakfast in a sunny foreign cafe. When I'm fifty pages or eighty pages in I begin to miss the beginningness.

The last book Baker published, Human Smoke, is a nonfiction work about the roots of the Second World War. As to whether he prefers writing fiction to nonfiction, he says, "It's good to go back and forth -- one kind of writing feeds your head and one empties it."

Finally, as to what Baker is really trying to do with all his writing, he has this to say:

I have the basic writerly urge to tell the truth. I want it to be really big truth but I'm a realist. Some of the biggest truths have already been said -- for instance, "Life is short" -- and so you have to take circuitous routes. You have enter the heart via the leg artery, the way surgeons do.

Hear Baker talk about The Anthologist in a 46-minute podcast.

Is Performing Creative?

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:06:24 +0000

Composers create music from their imaginations. And, certainly, we expect jazz performers to improvise. But what about those who perform classical music? When they play their instruments, how creative can they be?

When I first interviewed Eugene Drucker, a violinist who performs with the world-famous Emerson String Quartet, we talked mainly about his novel, The Savior. I became curious about how his creative process plays out (so to speak) when he's performing classical pieces for huge audiences. He graciously consented to be interviewed again, this time about music, collaboration, and creativity.

Q: How much freedom is there for individual expression in performance, aside from what is agreed on in practice? Is there room for improvisation? (A recent
New Yorker article, "Taking Liberties," discussed aspects of this very topic.)

A: The room for improvisation is, of course, much narrower than in jazz. There is a certain amount of rhythmic flexibility possible within the framework of the tempo and the interpretation that we have agreed on in rehearsals. This depends on the historical context, style and individual character of each piece we play. In other words, certain pieces, or more exactly certain parts of pieces, have to be played "straighter" than others.

Q: In jazz, performers inspire one another. Does this happen with your quartet?

A: We have worked together for so many years that it is hard for any of us to play in a way that is completely surprising to the others. However, the intensity of our musical and technical expectations onstage and in the recording studio is like a crucible in which each of us is challenged and, yes, sometimes inspired, to reach beyond his comfort level.

Q: How do you decide on your next project? Majority? Negotiation? Barter?

A: Our major projects have to be approved unanimously.

Q: What if one member has strong feelings about phrasing, etc., the rest don't agree on?

A: We have the luxury of repeated performances of the same piece, so there is room to experiment with different approaches to problematic passages. When recording, we have a more objective arbiter -- the way a phrase or section sounds when we listen to the playback, as well as the input of our producer.

Q: Your performance of The Art of the Fugue [Watch here: Art of the Fugue, Contrapunctus #9 or listen to a longer clip] is particularly fine. How did you achieve the clarity? All voices are distinct. My husband Stephen, who is helping me with this post because he knows far more about music than I do, says it's probably the most "musical" performance he's ever heard? What does that mean?

A: One advantage of playing fugues in a string quartet is that you automatically have more distinctness of voices than on a single keyboard instrument. (A possible downside is that it's harder for four different people to achieve unanimity than for a pianist, harpsichordist or organist.) I appreciate Stephen's description of our interpretation as highly musical. Perhaps he means that within the rigorous rhythmic and intellectual framework of Bach's fugal writing, we aimed to explore the personal and emotional level of Bach's last major work. In the enormous triple fugue that ends this summation of a life's work, when the music breaks off in mid-phrase (probably because Bach was too ill to continue), the effect can be shattering.

Q: How much of your performing is intuitive, how much being aware of the deep structure of the piece itself?

A: I would say that we have an intuitive awareness of the structure of many pieces that we play. We learned how to analyze music harmonically when we went to school, and learned about large-scale structure, but as performers we are mostly concerned with making each section of a work sound as good as possible within a coherent framework. Coherence depends to some extent on consistency of tempo except where the composer indicated otherwise, but also on convincing transitions from one section to another. Sometimes extra time has to be taken between sections in order to articulate the structure.

Q: With something as complex as the Bach, do you consult other sources?

A: When preparing The Art of the Fugue, and more recently all the 4- and 5-voice fugues transcribed from The Well-Tempered Clavier, we listened to various keyboard interpretations. The differences of tempo between three major pianists were striking, sometimes unbelievable. That gave us an idea of the interpretive latitude with which we could approach this great music. We had to decide to what extent we should imitate keyboard articulation and to what extent we should embrace the different possibilities of playing this music on four string instruments.

Q: With contemporary composers, with such freedom and complexity and sometimes chaos, is the work more difficult to get a handle on?

A: When approaching a new piece, we try to come quickly to an understanding of its soundscape and how the narrative arc of the piece should unfold. Some music is so complicated rhythmically that in the first few rehearsals, we can barely make it through a phrase or a section without breaking down. But we find a way to learn it, and to achieve some kind of security by the time we perform it.

Q: Can performers know more than the composer about how a piece should be played?

A: We might know more about the sonic potential of our instruments than some composers, and we might make suggestions about articulation markings (such as slurs) and bow-strokes. Sometimes we request a slightly different tempo than what the composer has indicated, and usually he or she is receptive to our suggestions.

Q: When Stephen listens to some of the Haydn quartets, he laughs in certain places. What's so funny?

A: Haydn was a master of unexpected silences; indeed, the most salient aspect of his wit was his ability to play with the listener's expectations. We should remember that in a larger sense -- i.e., not just in terms of the humorous aspects of his music -- Haydn and the other great classical composers were constantly experimenting with form and sound. The music was modern, not classical, at the time they were writing it.

Q: What's the most difficult program you've performed?

A: We have sometimes played all six Bartok quartets in chronological order in one concert. That's the longest and probably the most physically strenuous program we've ever performed. The three "Razumovsky" quartets of Beethoven's Opus 59 also make for a very challenging program.

Q: Do you get nervous before a performance?

A: Yes, fairly often. It depends to some extent on the challenges of the music itself as well as the venue, and on circumstances leading up to the concert (i.e., how well I've slept, how prepared I feel, etc.).

Q: Do you become so involved you become the music itself? In other words, does time stop and you feel you're in a flow state?

A: Sometimes my eyes have filled with tears when playing music that is extremely sad or intimately tender. This has happened in the slow movements of the following Beethoven quartets: Op. 59#1, Op. 74 and the Cavatina of Op. 130. And in the Grosse Fuge, the titanic, apocalyptic vision that immediately follows the Cavatina, I have felt myself galvanized by the manic energy that Beethoven unleashed.

MORE LINKS

* Drucker plays Hindemith

* Members of the Emerson Quartet discuss Beethoven's Quartets at Carnegie Hall's site

* A clip from the Michael Lawrence Films Bach Project

Trust Craft More Than Inspiration

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:05:09 +0000

Losing track of time is one of the clearest hallmarks of creative flow. But don't let that fool you. Not everything you produce in such a fluid zone will please you once you're thinking "normally" again. So say many successful artists, including seven-time novelist Margot Livesey, whose most recent book, The House on Fortune Street, won the 2009 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award and came out recently in paperback.

Raised in Scotland, educated in England, Livesey lives and writes in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly, and her novels have met with critical success--and are fun to read.

I first interviewed Livesey 11 years ago, and recently she brought her thoughts up to date for this post. The first thing I asked her, in both interviews, was whether she loses track of time and enters flow when she's writing. Her answers:

Then: Sometimes. Sometimes the material makes the difference. Certain scenes, certain moments. Sometimes it's just external circumstances. It's much harder to lose track of time if time isn't going to lose track of you. If I have to be somewhere, it's less likely that I'm going to fall into the work, because I know I have to fall out of it.
Now: When it does happens, it's exhilarating. But I believe even more strongly that feeling good about something I'm writing does not necessarily mean that the reader will feel good about reading it. And as an older writer, I have to work hard not to be lured onto the rocks of repetition.

Over the last decade I've also become increasingly interested in what can be accomplished by craft. I get immense pleasure out of trying to make better sentences. That moment when two words fit together is like seeing a cardinal flashing by in my garden.
THE PROCESS ITSELF
Livesey tries to write daily, preferably in the morning, and if she has her way, she would write six or seven hours. Not all of that time would be productive, she hastened to add. She might pace around, or read the dictionary or stare vacantly. Also, she has to work harder these days to protect her writing time. Sometimes, she says, "this means that I end up writing in a Trollope-like fashion -- doing so many words a day. It doesn't feel romantic but it can be effective, especially on days when I have a long list of tasks."
I wondered how the writing of The House on Fortune Street compared to the writing of her previous novels, and she told me she knew that, this time, she wanted
the experience of reading the novel to mirror the way in which experiences come to us in life -- in fragments, over time, from different sources. I also wanted the novel to mirror the way in which we often change our mind about someone when we get new information, or see some aspect of their life from a different angle. It took a surprising amount of negotiation and revision to make the four sections of the novel fit together in what, I hope, is a felicitous fashion.
One of her characters has feelings "that have no place in the world," as she put it. I told her I thought she handled Cameron's difficult feelings with subtlety, restraint, and believability. She explained:
I wanted the reader to feel that Cameron's situation was a metaphor for a situation, hopefully not so extreme, that many people might experience. I was very concerned that the reader should not simply judge him, so I decided to write his section of the novel as a kind of confession, one in which he judges himself quite harshly. I also wanted to make clear that although he does cross certain lines, he doesn't cross others. I was not trying to rewrite Lolita.
THE FEEDBACK LOOP
We also discussed feedback, both the kind a writer has to provide for herself, and the kind that comes from outside. She said she simply tries to see "what is going on."
If a character is pruning a hedge or fixing a bicycle or sitting on a bus, I try to see that character both internally and externally as clearly as possible. When I write novels, for me everything is in the service of the novel. I might begin writing a scene with three dozen details about the bus journey, then decide that only two of them really further the novel, and furthering the novel is the crucial thing.
Another way Livesey provides feedback for herself these days, she added, is by reading other novels. As for feedback from others, she regularly exchanges work with her friend, award-winning novelist Andrea Barrett. Barrett, she said, is brilliant at helping her understand more fully what she's trying to get on the page.
It's not that she doesn't love to be praised, Livesey insisted, but saying something is wonderful is sometimes easier than offering constructive criticism.
Several years ago a couple of friends kindly read a novel I was working on and said it was great. But when I tried to get it published, I simply couldn't. I think there were bad reasons for this -- the state of the publishing industry in America -- but there were also good reasons; the novel was flawed. If people hadn't praised me, I would have realized this sooner and buckled down to fixing the problems. Now when I give people work I'm very clear about what I want. I'm not looking for them to say this is great. I'm asking how can this be better? Though of course in the long journey of a novel I do appreciate encouragement.
Talk of feedback led us into a discussion of her revision process. Livesey admitted that she "revises a ton of times." But she tries not to revise too early, something computers tend to encourage. While composing her first drafts she now works hard "not to keep tinkering with the beginning of a chapter -- where the computer always opens the file -- but to go immediately to where I left off writing."
The other critical step in revising, noted Livesey, is to read every sentence aloud. If she finds the sentence boring, or can't stand to read it, she changes it or cuts it. She doesn't allow herself to think that it's just because she wrote it or has read it before. "Because there are some passages I'm very happy to read again," she said. By the time something's published, it will have been read by her agent, her editor, half a dozen carefully selected friends, and by herself about 20 times.
And that helps explain why the finished books are so smooth and pleasurable to read.
Visit Livesey's site here for links to interviews and to hear her talking about and reading her work.

3 New Facts About Creativity

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:56:40 +0000

You can never know everything there is to know about creativity, but if you're open to learning a few new facets about this misunderstood topic, read Creativity 101. It's by James C. Kaufman, who studied at Yale, teaches at California State University, and has written or edited numerous books, including The Psychology of Creative Writing (containing a chapter about flow by this very blogger). Herewith, three items to consider:

Creativity can be malevolent. A purposeful act that is planned to hurt other people may be creative. Kaufman calls it "malevolent creativity," which has a pleasing ring, evocative of the robber baron tying the pretty innocent to the railroad tracks. Only, if the bad guy was actually creative, his dirty deed would have looked more like something you'd see on Itchy and Scratchy. Kaufman jokes (?) that if you find yourself among a group of friends who sit around planning the perfect murder, you need new friends. (I often meet with a group who talk about things like new ways to discombobulate the cat that belongs to the wife of one group member. They're only being playfully malevolent. Which is good.

Creative artists may be less conscientious. Maybe that's not news to those of us who are familiar with at least one careless artist and at least one conscientious but mentally rigid non-artist. But it disconcerted me to learn that the psychological findings are pretty consistent about this one: that those who are high in openness to experience (great for being creative) tend to be lower in conscientiousness. Kaufman's analysis is more nuanced than that, of course, and no one's saying you can't learn to be more open (and creative) without necessarily giving up all semblance of order in your life (uh-oh, did I just give myself away?

Creativity may have a dark side. When Kaufman studied writers, he found that "poets, especially female poets, were more likely to be mentally ill than other types of writers." The italics are Kaufman's. When the media noticed his finding, it got twisted into something about poetry being hazardous to your health. He goes over the whole episode in Creativity 101, explaining that "The Cost of the Muse," the title of his original article, was perhaps too salacious not to be misconstrued.

In this brief trade paper book (174 pages without the References), Kaufman includes a plethora of humanizing examples, some from his own life.

As an aside, in Kaufman's discussion of my book Writing in Flow, he mentions some of the potential flaws of a research method in which creators are interviewed about their own process. He adds that speaking with writers avoids some of those flaws because wordsmiths are quite able to articulate their thoughts. His points are well taken and are discussed in Writing in Flow's appendix. That's a truth about science: it's not easy to study consciousness.

5 Writing Tips from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:34:58 +0000

Don't say too much; don't say too little. That's what it takes to be a very good writer (That's #1). A hundred or so years ago, Emerson figured that out. Though he didn't publish an advice book for writers, if he had it would probably have contained a lot of what award-winning author Robert D. Richardson put into First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. But why would you care what Emerson thought about reading and writing?

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) [was] the preeminent lecturer, essayist and philosopher of 19th century America. Emerson was a key figure in the "New England Renaissance," as an author and also through association with the Transcendental Club, the Dial and the many writers--notably Thoreau...--who gathered around him. [This bio tidbit is from this site.]

Emerson depended on keeping what were then called commonplace books in which he recorded vivid images and phrases, as well as high points from his life and his reading (That's #2). His daily reading, in fact, was critical to his creativity and productivity. (He once recommended a person read for five hours a day - That's #3).

"THROW YOUR BODY AT THE MARK"

In only about 85 pages, author Richardson captures Emerson's thoughts and writings on this single (but not simple) topic. He singles out what you can assume are the best examples of the Concord Sage's idiosyncratic written expression about creativity, such as this gem (#4):

The best single bit of practical advice about writing that Emerson ever gave --the best because it is a cry from the heart, because it focuses on attitude, not aptitude, and because it is as stirring as a rebel yell--is this: "The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent."

Emerson was a poet, too, and although he wasn't a novelist, he understood one of the keys to success in any kind of writing (#5):

If you desire to arrest attention, to surprise, do not give me the facts in the order of cause and effect, but drop one or two links in the chain, and give me a cause and an effect two or three times removed.

In its brevity, Richardson's book contains much wit. You can also read about Emerson in Richardson's acclaimed biography, Emerson: The Mind on Fire.

[The photo at the top of this post shows Emerson, circa 1848, with the manuscript of his poem "Monadnoc," circa 1845, from the Houghton Library's collection at Harvard (staff photo by Rose Lincoln)].