Book Review

Writing In Flow

by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.
F&W Publications Inc.
Cincinnati OH
CAN $29.99

Reviewed by Jeff Leiper

It’s a truism that writers enjoy using the tools of their trade to gaze inward, to analyze in words the process of creating. At times, this seems a narcissistic pursuit. We author books and novels and poems and essays that have, subtly or explicitly, writing as their central focus. We authors are a navel-gazing lot. Especially when we turn our attentions to the self-help industry.

If there is a universal difficulty all writers have, it is writer’s block: that maddening sense that one can’t get the words out — or even that the words aren’t there to begin with. We recognize that we’re fidgeting at the computer, checking our e-mail twice every five minutes, or avoiding our writing space altogether.

In difficult times, it can be gratifying to pick up a text that suggests in black-and-white terms practical measures for overcoming mental hurdles to writing. Susan K. Perry is the latest of a string of authors who have grabbed on to a new theory of writing called "flow" as a solution to this commonly-experienced problem. The theory is that we write best when we are in a state called "flow," in which we lose awareness of ourselves and of the process, obviating the ego and letting creativity supercede self-doubt and more practical considerations such as where the next cheque is coming from.

Perry’s text, Writing In Flow: keys to enhanced creativity, is a genuinely informative book that both describes the state of flow and provides a concrete road map for achieving it. Perry chronicles real-world examples of flow from well-known authors and the precursors for entering it. The descriptions of flow and prescriptions for achieving it are as individual as the dozens of writers and poets she surveyed and interviewed at length.

The idea of flow is not unique to writing. In the midst of reading Writing In Flow, a passage from another work caught my attention, and is as excellent an example of flow as any contained in Perry’s work:

When a game gets close to me, or threatens to get close, my conscious mind goes blank. I feel nothing, I hear nothing, my eyes watch the puck, my body moves — like a goalie moves, like I move; I don’t tell it to move or how to move or where, I don’t know it’s moving, I don’t feel it move — yet it moves. And when my eyes watch the puck, I see things I don’t know I’m seeing. I see Larson and Nedomansky as they come on the ice, I see them away from the puck unthreatening and uninvolved. I see something in the way a shooter holds his stick, in the way his body angles and turns, in the way he’s being checked, in what he’s done before that tells me what he’ll do — and my body moves. I let it move. I trust it and the unconscious mind that moves it.

Ken Dryden, The Game, 1983

Hockey-great Ken Dryden was known as the "Thinker" for his cerebral stance in the net. His ability to enter a state of flow was undoubtedly an important contributing factor to his success.

Perry’s text works from the presumption that flow is an essential ingredient to creating good work. She uses dozens of first-person accounts to convince the reader that flow is real, and that its presence improves writing. Understanding flow and the role it plays in our work, however, is only half of the equation if the theory is to make us better writers. Not satisfied to prove the existence of flow, Perry attempts to map the route to attaining it.

It’s tempting, however, to dismiss the final result of her effort as a recycling of common-sense ideas wrapped in a neo-scientific package. Writing In Flow is the result of Perry’s work on her doctoral thesis, plus additional research. It has an empirical feel, yet the results are occasionally disjointed. She is unafraid to quote writers who don’t believe in the existence of flow, or who have differing opinions on how to achieve it. Perry recognizes that different writers have different ways to produce great results. In the end, she is able, based on hundreds of interviews and questionnaires, to formulate five "keys" to achieving flow:

1. Have a reason to write
2. Think like a writer
3. Loosen up
4. Focus in
5. Balance among opposites

For each of these keys, she provides concrete ways to avoid problems such as boredom, fear, distraction, self-incrimination, and uncertainty. Some of the advice is mundane and question-begging. For example, the hours one should work, the desirability of an uncluttered workspace versus a decidedly disorderly desktop, or the suitability of traditional paper and pen versus a computer, are left for the individual to decide — as are the answers to many of the questions arising from the text.

The value of Writing In Flow, however, becomes clear in the closing chapters. If the majority of keys are wishy-washy and depend on trial-and-error, the overarching theme of the work is habit. Ritual and habit occupy an important place in Perry’s work, and are the main ingredients for successfully and repeatedly entering into the state of flow.

It is not a coincidence that this review uses Ken Dryden as an example of flow in the non-writing world. Perry draws a strong parallel between the training an athlete undergoes to build "muscle memory" and the training a writer undertakes to effortlessly reach a state of flow:

Still, it became clear to me that your own familiar procedures — in particular, their habitual nature rather than any particular order or kind of activities — serve the specific purposes of helping you shrug off mundane reality, move into another mental place, train your subconscious to do the desired work, and even help remove ambivalence from the writing project. Prewriting rituals also relieve anxiety by enveloping you in a familiar routing, helping you take for granted a familiar, i.e., productive, outcome to the day’s writing. (p. 164)

As a prescription, one may wonder how insightful "habit" is. Certainly, most of us instinctively recognize the need to find rituals that help us write, that clue our brains in that it’s time to hunker down to work. What makes Perry’s text a fascinating read, however, is the glimpse it gives us into the habits of authors such as Johnathan Kellerman, Sue Grafton, and dozens of others. Their experiences are diverse, but the voyeuristic pleasure we get is exceptional. In all, Susan Perry presents us with an exhaustively researched and valuable book.

Jeff Leiper is an Ottawa-based technology writer and former journalist.