The Recovering Creative: Flowingness

Natalie Goldberg teaches that, when in writing practice, the predominant goal is to keep the pen in your hand moving. This allows the words, images, fragments and impulses to pour from the unconscious onto the page. In a way, this pen movement is flow. It’s like taking water and pouring it into a glass only it looks like ink pouring into words on the page.

Like the unconscious (or an underground stream, to keep the water analogy going), flow is –thankfully, gratefully–a constant. It’s my calling, my work, my joy as a writer to harvest those unconscious gems from the never-ending rush of energy (flow) that stirs within me–within all of us. When I open myself up to flow, I’m less self-conscious and more creative-conscious–and confident.

A not-so-good habit of mine is to step out of flow and try to take charge–aka: write a certain way. When that doesn’t work I have been known (hate to admit this) to pout, cry, and–the biggest bummer–avoid my creation for days. This avoidance is not the same as letting the creation “breathe.” Nope.  It’s more like I’m mad at it for not turning out the way I wanted it to turn out. Of course I was unwilling to be myself in the process so how could my work be authentic? From there I berate myself for being talentless; for not having luck or thinking positive enough. Does this sound bizarre or do you relate? Even a little?

My answer is to surrender to flow–which I sometimes call Flo, as in a person I trust (or cling to) who’ll show me the way. The way, of course, leads back to myself, to the deepness in me, to the well of energy that is waiting to catch and cradle me–that’s longing for me to once again be a part of it as much as I’m craving to have it in my work.

Flow.

You?

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