Last week I was singing the praises of my writing group ‘Write on’. We met at an online writing course in April 2021 called ‘Finding your flow’ – based on an idea by the Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’ who wrote in his book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” that during flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. 

I’ve been thinking about flow lately and how it works for me. The weekly posts for my 90 day memoir challenge have been a fantastic way to help me have accountability for my writing goals, but they have also allowed me to watch and record my creative process, tracking patterns over the weeks, and as a scientist, this type of research has been intriguing for me. The results have been surprising, and I discovered something new about myself and my creativity.

When I went to New York, I took a break from writing, and when I came back, I found it nearly impossible to get started again. Despite hitting a wall, I stayed committed to the idea of writing 90,000 words in 90 days, and because I stayed committed, I had to stay in the uncomfortableness, which I’d never done before. I tried a few things to help me get unstuck, but my golden ticket out, was to step outside my comfort zone. When I did that, it gave me a rush of creativity in an unexpected and dramatic way.

Although my attention over the last number of weeks has been on writing my memoir, I’ve had three other book ideas floating around my head. This weekend one of them came rushing at me which reminded me of a story Elizabeth Gilbert told about the creative process and a woman called Ruth Stone – an American poet, now in her 90’s who grew up in rural Virginia.

‘Ruth would be out working in the fields, and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her barreling down at her from over the landscape, like a thunderous train of air and she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew she had only one thing to do at that point, and she would run like hell to the house being chased by the poem, to get  a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it onto the page. At other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, she’d be running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she would watch it continue across the landscape, looking, as she put it “for another poet.” Ruth said that there were moments where she would almost miss it – running to the house and looking for the paper, and she grabs a pencil just as the poem is going through her, and she would reach out with her other hand and catch the poem by its tail, pulling it backwards into her body and transcribing it onto the page. In these instances, the poem would come up on the page perfect and intact, but backwards, from the last word to the first.’

When I heard that story, something about it struck a cord with me, and it remained in my unconscious until this weekend when the idea for my other book came ‘barreling’ at me. We were out for a family walk on the cliffs of Howth, and the idea swirled and swooped about my head like the seagulls flying in the sky. I had no pen or paper with me, but thankfully, I was able to tell Eddie my idea. It was late when we got home, so I jotted down a few notes in my journal before going to bed. But I was woken on Sunday morning at 7am by the book idea demanding to be born, so I got up, typed the introduction and the book outline, and once I did that, I felt a sense of peace as the book had finally taken flight out of my body finding home on the page.

This is not the first time this rush of creativity has happened to me, and I won’t lie it’s a strange, unnerving sensation when the creative spirit stirs inside me, bringing ideas to fruition. But this time, because I have been watching my creative process, I’ve noticed the pattern, and despite it still feeling very strange, I’m excited because now I have more information and insight which makes it less overwhelming. I still haven’t yet managed to control the speed at which it comes, and it impacts my sleep, but perhaps I’m not meant to control it – maybe when the creativity strikes, my job is to take extra care of myself, get out of the way, and allow the ideas to flow through me and onto the page.

As a result of this experience, my 90-day writing challenge has now changed (I’ll post my final update tomorrow). As my attention has been drawn to another writing project, I am going to go in that direction, setting a new book goal of 50,000 words in 50 days.

I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but I’m going to believe in the process, enjoy the journey, and go with the flow.

Christine Poole 14.05.24