Creative Writing Workshop

Lesson 4: How to Think Like a Writer.

Experienced writers talk about a mental process they call flow. You are writing in flow when you have a sense of being plugged in and alive. It’s like your brain has shifted into overdrive and you’re skimming along. You lose track of time as the words flow onto the computer screen or paper.

Creative Ideas & Flow

Flow comes as you learn to translate your ideas into a written draft without struggling over each sentence. It’s a learned skill, experts say, and to get into flow depends on how you prepare for writing.

The groundwork you lay is part of the creative process, it directly relates to the information-gathering step, where you plan, take notes, organize your material and research your story or article. During this time you are building up pressure to start writing. Eventually it’s write or explode.

“The worst thing about trying to write without building up creative pressure is that when you fail—-and you will fail---you will be teaching yourself an unfortunate and inaccurate lesson: You can’t write. Writing is painful and frustrating and slow,” said David Fryxell, author of How to Write Fast.

If you start a first draft before you have completed the groundwork stage, you short circuit the process. “Every time you begin to build up a head of creativity, you unleash it by blowing off partial drafts, pieces of leads, fragments of dialogue,” says Fryxell. Instead, frustration builds up and you quit after a couple of pages.

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