100 Day Creative Challenge Day 56: Go With The Flow
A theme has emerged in my last few posts about first drafts, about not getting bogged down by perfectionism, about not being precious about our creative work and today I’m being encouraged not to over-analyse.
I once studied counselling and found the approach very refreshing. The focus was to understand your past so you can move on. The understanding your past part was very practical, it didn’t wallow or drag you back into the pit so much as recognise what was so that you could see what could be.
The same goes for writing or other creative pursuits. We need to understand the rules, the foundational principles, study the masters, understand why our previous work perhaps didn’t work and learn from our mistakes. However, a big part of my learning the last few years is that I can spend a LOT of time learning and analysing without actually achieving anything.
In my literature study classes in high school and university we always had to discern the writer’s intentions and analyse them. I loved it in a way, but if my interpretation wasn’t the accepted one, my teachers would often mark me down — even if I had substantiated my claims with research. Who really knows what goes in a writer’s mind when she writes?
I was asked just last week, ‘Where do you ideas come from?’
I replied, ‘I don’t know.’
Ideas do stem from life, people I meet, my experiences, my reading, my study and so on, however, when I’m in the flow, ideas come as if by magic. Or spirit. It’s hard to explain how it happens, so how can a student know for sure that the book they’re analysing and commenting on was written with certain motivations by the writer? Sure the clues are there, but that writer had magic too that even they may not understand fully.
So, bottom line what does that mean for us as we create? Create!! Avoid over-analysing as you begin. Save it for the editing stage. Get critical feedback and accept it as part of the process, but when you are in the flow, just flow.
In the final exam in the Chaucer course we were asked why he used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote, ‘I don’t think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these things. That isn’t the way people write.’
I believe this as strongly now as I did then. Most of what is best in writing isn’t done deliberately.
Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet
