Flow

[La Volpe]

So I've been thinking about flow recently. For clarity:

In positive psychology, flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. (From Wikipedia)​

I've often heard about flow, and often in reference to art and writing in particular. But as far as I can tell, I've never experienced this in writing, or pretty much anywhere else. They talk about a "runner's high" that comes after running until exhaustion or something, but I've never had that either.

The only time I experience something that could perhaps be this flow they're talking about, is when I'm coding. I lose track of time. But, I generally get really frustrated and/or angry when coding ("Damn you! Why won't you compile?"), so I'm not sure it counts.

So, have you guys ever experienced flow, particularly while writing? If so, did it just happen naturally, or did it start happening after you started doing something in particular?

 

[CupofJoe]

Flow or The Flow, is going to be unique to each person. The Wiki entry is all about positivity... I don't see "flow" as having to be so positive.
Trim 5 words to get rid of the positiveness and your left with...

Flow, also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement in the process of the activity.

Which is pretty much what you describe when you code.

For me there is an engagement in the process or you'd give up and walk away, but maybe there also has to be a goal achieved or achievable, that keeps you going.

I've had runner's highs before, not often and I don't seem then as "flow" at all. They are more to do with the body's recovery systems kicking in.
The feeling of when I write a scene and it just pours on to the page... Oh Wow!

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I never met a run I liked, heh heh. For me, the flow in writing is a moment of clarity, usually heading into a major plot point.

Flow does not guarantee good writing, so I don't worry about it. I've struggled with every word and sentence and thought I was spewing crap and been in flow thinking I was Twain, Faulkner, and Tolkien reincarnated into one man! Only to find I was entirely wrong on both counts, heh heh. The struggle needed almost no revision, and while good, my inspired flow writing required many more edits.

Life is a higgly piggly.

 

[FifthView]

I've always liked the definition of "flow" given by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi.

To summarize–and I'm almost certainly getting the exact terminology wrong, it's been so long–activities and events in our lives involve a combination of challenge and talents/abilities for meeting those challenges. Think of slider bars:

• When ability is high but the challenge is low, this results in . . . being bored.
  
  
• When challenge is high but ability to meet it is low, this results in .... frustration. (And related things, like panic, irritation, etc.)
  
  
• When challenge is just high enough to match ability, this results in ....flow.

I suppose these considerations can apply to writing, as well. If we think of them as slider bars, we can also consider ways to slide up or down either bar. For myself–well, I most often flit between boredom and frustration! Flow is great when it happens, although it happens in short bursts or sections amid all the other boredom and frustration.

 

[evolution_rex]

To me, flow is like driving on a nice smooth road. When something disrupts the flow like running into a glaring flaw in the writing of any form, it's like running into a pot hole. It surprises you and then it takes a little bit for you to get back into the rhythm.

But I also think it's a little bit deeper than just a flaw in the writing, because it may not exactly be a flaw, but just something that doesn't fit well with the rest of the story. If something feels weird about what you read, or maybe feels to uninteresting, then it's the same thing. It may not be a flaw that you can grasp and explain, but it's something that just messes with your feng shui. And it's something that's highly opinionated to the individual.

 

[Penpilot]

Coding would be a good example of flow at least for me. To bounce off what Fifthview said, for me, it's when I have a goal and in my head I have a clear path to that goal. Now not every detail of that path is visible to me, but I know the general route I'm going to take and it's just a matter of one line of code at a time, one class/module at a time until it's done.

With writing, it's knowing what plot threads I want to advance in the scene, having a general plan/design on how I want to go about doing this within that scene, and writing, with each line contributing to advancing me towards my goal of moving my plots along.

 

[Heliotrope]

For me flow comes after about twenty minutes of pure torture. I have to work out all the *stuff* in my brain first, get through the garbage and the day and the blocks. After those first 20min I can usually work pretty steady, but like Dem said, it does NOT mean it will be any good. lol.

 

[DMThaane]

I've experienced 'flow' while writing but it tends to pretty rare and I need to really know the characters I'm writing, the direction of the scene, and be playing the right music in the background (though once I enter a state of 'flow' I usually just play the one track on repeat). Usually it lasts for just part of a scene before I hit a snag and fall out of it but I've had it last almost an entire chapter on several occasions, and over multiple writing sessions.

For me, 'flow' more usually occurs in the form of being 'in the zone' and most often with computer games, usually a first person shooter but occasionally a real time strategy like a Total War battle or an RPG like the Witcher. I'd actually disagree about it being ability harmonizing with challenge, at least for me, because I've been in situations where I'm barely on top of it and just found it frustrating. For me falling into the zone requires a tense, rapidly shifting environment where snap decisions must be made with insufficient information and overstretched resources and where the line between dominance and failure is incredibly thin. Since I've never really seen this in writing I consider them two slightly different things.

Of course, both of these share a harmonising of elements meeting expectation and falling into place according to a rapidly shifting plan so I suspect the main difference between the two is the pure adrenaline of the latter compared to the simple fulfilling productivity of the former.

 

[skip.knox]

I love psychology, the science of discovering things other folks have long known. It is sister to sociology, the science of confirming the obvious.

Flow? We call it the Muse.