How Learning About the Flow State Can Help You Write a Book

One key tool for writers that is often overlooked is the ability to access a psychological state called flow. It’s a vital part of every creative process, but on our busy days, it can be hard to achieve flow, which makes it harder for you to write a book.

With a few simple techniques, you can increase your ability to access flow, which will help you finish writing a novel or memoir and have a lot more fun with your writing, too.

In this article, author and writing coach Alice Kuipers explains what a flow state is, how to achieve flow, and how you can incorporate flow techniques into your writing practice. Alice Kuipers is the bestselling and award-winning author of five novels and six books for younger readers, including Life on the Refrigerator Door, which was nominated for the Carnegie Medal. At The Novelry, Alice coaches YA, memoir, and children’s fiction and hosts monthly workshops on incorporating flow strategies into daily life. She shares these strategies in this article for writers everywhere.

Flow is a key tool for writers

When we’re in flow, we’re able to focus deeply, write more quickly, see connections in our story more easily, and perform at our best capacity. Learning about flow helped me navigate a busy household, where my four kids provide endless interruptions and chaos, so I could publish several books and build my writing life the way I dreamed.

The brain’s dopaminergic reward system is activated during flow states, enhancing motivation and enjoyment in writing.

When you have a good understanding of what flow is and how to use it by trying these techniques to access flow, you’ll find yourself creating your own writing life, finding time to get to the page and write your book.

The definition of flow: being in the zone

As defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who is often referred to as the godfather of flow, flow is:

A state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990)

For writers, we’re in the psychological state of flow when we’re so involved in the writing of our book that we have no sense of time—or even, really, of our physical selves. The world falls away and there is only the moment. We’re completely immersed in the task of writing—say, creating a character or crafting dialogue.

These flow states are perhaps when we’re at our happiest, which, at The Novelry, is a priority in our writing lives.

As writing coach Emylia Hall says in her blog on having a happy writing journey:

Our mantra at The Novelry is Happy Writing. It goes right to the heart of what we believe is an essential mindset for getting the best from our writing. Whether we’re working on the most twisted psychological thriller, a searingly honest memoir, or a delightfully fun-filled romcom, Happy Writing means drawing personal enrichment from the process. It means sitting down to write feeling empowered.
—Emylia Hall

Athletes describe flow as feeling like being in the zone. Writers sometimes use the same wording because writing is often our primary flow activity, although we get into flow in other ways, too: maybe going for a run, playing sports, doing a hobby, or reading.

Our primary flow activity refers to the one that is the optimal place for us to get into flow and experience its benefits.

For us, writing is a place we can escape to, fueling our creativity and joy and leading to successful stories out in the world.

The neurochemistry of flow

In the state of flow, your brain experiences a surge of the neurochemicals dopamine and norepinephrine. These help us enter deep focus, discovering new connections and ideas, and experiencing more powerful cognitive processing, attention, and enjoyment.

When we learn how to build writing time into our lives regularly, using a technique called time blocking—which we’ll look at shortly—we teach our brains to return to the page with the reward and fuel that flow offers.

As writers, we need to access this flow state over and over again to write an entire manuscript. Coming to the page consistently helps our brains recognize and seek the neurochemicals that flow releases.

This makes us want to write more because we seek the dopamine and norepinephrine produced in the flow state.

The eight characteristics of flow and how they apply to writing

Csikszentmihalyi listed eight characteristics of flow, and although other flow researchers have added a few more as they’ve researched the science of this neurological state, these original eight are helpful for us in our writing lives.

Each characteristic is important to the writing process, and when we know what they are, we learn ways to access flow more easily.

This is because we can use techniques to help us discover and hone each characteristic, which, in turn, helps us find flow.

1. Complete concentration on the task

When we experience the flow state, immersed in our writing, we’re able to concentrate deeply. This increases our productivity and creativity—but in a busy world, it’s hard not to be distracted by our devices or responsibilities, pulling us out of flow.

At The Novelry, our one-hour-a-day writing method is a simple, helpful way to disrupt distractions, achieve flow, and prioritize our writing lives. This daily check-in with our novel gives us consistency and helps us find a eureka moment in the 23 hours when we’re going about our life because we’re in a flow state.

As we say in our blog post about the method:

You’ll bring 23 hours of thinking to every golden hour you write. That hour is 24-carat gold.

2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind, and immediate feedback

The flow state is enhanced when we have clarity regarding our goals. Coming to the page unsure of what to write makes that precious writing time slip away, so having clarity makes all the difference to your writing ambition.

Writing coach Amanda Reynolds leaves a sentence half-written when she finishes a session on her laptop. This half-sentence trick, one that Hemingway used too, reminds her what she’s working on when she comes back to the page the next day. This is known as a flow trigger.

Defeating flow blockers

A lack of clarity is known as a flow blocker.

When I’m working on a book, I find myself struggling when I don’t know what the book is really about. For me, discovering the hook of my story gives pristine clarity.

One way to do this is to ask yourself what your reader is reading to find out.

Talking this through with someone who understands writing is helpful, too. Talking with a writer friend or someone who loves to read, or with one of our writing coaches, is a good opportunity to hone your hook and put your story first.

As you review what your novel or memoir is about, you start to see what steps you need to take, helping you find clarity and get back into a flow state.

Aligning your story with your hook gives you vital, immediate feedback on your story while also pointing you in the right direction and showing you how to improve it when you veer too far from the storyline.

This helps you see your way to the end, giving you clarity and enhancing your flow state.

3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down)

Sometimes, when one of my kids runs into my office, I’m startled that time has sped by. I know then that I’ve been in a flow state, immersed in my characters and story.

This characteristic of flow is one that I most enjoy, turning time into something magical and enjoyable. My writing becomes a place where I want to be, and the hustle of daily life calms. When you find that timelessness when you’re writing, you know you’ve successfully accessed flow.

Handling distractions

It’s vital to put away distractions so you don’t lose this timelessness. The easiest way for me to be tugged out of a flow state is to answer the ping of an email or notification.

Some tips I’ve found helpful to reduce distractions are to darken my phone, to use Focus mode on it, and only allow certain people (like my kids’ schools) to be able to call during those times, to turn off apps, to take social media breaks, and to physically put the phone in a different room. Writing coach Andrea Stewart recommends an app called Freedom, too.

4. Effortlessness and ease

Writing a book is hard. When we enter a flow state, we suddenly find the writing becomes effortless and easy—leading to optimal performance. But on some days, finding that ease seems impossible.

I remind myself that ‘I earn the good days’ by writing regularly and by touching base with my writing community when I find that I’m floundering. Surrounding myself with other writing coaches and writers on the journey helps me get to the page and find flow, so writing becomes more joyful.

Connect with other writers and ask them to encourage you on the harder days so you can achieve flow: tell them that you’ll cheer them on during their own harder days.

5. There is a balance between challenge and skills

To access psychological flow, we need to find our skills/challenge balance.

If the book we’re working on feels too simple or boring, we lose focus and stop writing. If the book feels too hard, we lose confidence, and our ideas go. Remembering this is a helpful strategy if we fall out of our writing routine.

If you’re feeling bored by the idea of writing, it means you need to up the stakes: make the story more exciting for you and for your characters.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, then you might need to work on one of your technical skills. Hone your dialogue, learn how to edit, or deepen your draft to reduce overwhelm and rebalance your skills so the challenge of writing a book becomes manageable.

6. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination

Negative self-talk is a huge flow disruptor. For writers, that can sound like: I can’t be a writer, my book is no good.

I call this negative voice Mean-Girl-on-My-Shoulder, and I’ve learned over many years to turn the volume down on her negative thinking. As we say in our blog post on feeling nervous:

First, you’re not alone. Confidence is quite properly an elusive quality for this craft. You’d be useless with too much of it. Confidence and doubt keep the work human and humane and, above all else, tender.

In that blog post, we share a way to merge action and awareness as you struggle with self-doubt:

You can admit your doubts and uncertainties as to how to tell the story and create an immersive mutual enterprise between you and the reader. This works particularly well if you’re using an authorial voice either in first person or third and creates complicity.

Interestingly, this characteristic of flow—where flow helps you lose self-conscious rumination—is self-reinforcing. As you write more, it’s easier to turn down the negative self-talk because of this characteristic of flow.

7. There is a feeling of control over the task

As writers, a flow state helps us feel in control during the huge task of writing a book. As we experience flow, the handling of lots of chapters, the complexity of character motivation, and layering in subplots all start to feel possible as we write.

But if you’re finding that your book is becoming unruly, a lack of control can block access to a flow state. Sometimes we need to implement visual organization to help us get that feeling of control back and move forward with the book.

Sunday Times bestselling author L.R. Lam says:

I keep a list of my subplots and I assign them a color. When I’m editing, I’ll check which scenes are touching on which subplots and make sure they’re appearing as often as I need them to (often, your scenes will be progressing several at once).

If one disappears for most of the book, I sometimes make sure to weave it into those missing areas, if required, or I recognize it’s a subplot that wraps up at, say, the midway point instead of the end.
—L.R. Lam

8. The experience is intrinsically rewarding

Flow is an autotelic experience, which means that it is fulfilling in and of itself; it’s enjoyable for its own sake.

This final characteristic of flow is so important to us as writers because it’s both the easiest one to lose and the easiest one to build back into our lives. The autotelic experience of a flow state—loving writing because we love it—becomes a motivator to help you get to the page so that you can access more flow.

An essential characteristic of flow for writers: the autotelic experience

Many of us yearn to write, turning the spark of an idea into a novel or memoir by regularly coming to the page. All too often, though, life gets in the way and our books stop being a priority.

The solution to this is experiencing flow. Flow begets flow, so when we create flow in our lives, it makes us want to get to the page and discover the next scene.

We enjoy our writing more when life gets busy, and so we come to the page because we enjoy it. When you access flow, you’re able to make new mental connections, discovering new things deep inside of you that were already there but that you needed to find to make your story the best it can be.

Flow, as this autotelic experience, begins to open up the infinite possibilities of our novel or memoir.

{{blog-banner-9="/blog-banners"}}

In a live writing class with Katherine May at The Novelry, we talked about deep play. This is how I always come back to flow as an autotelic experience: by becoming playful.

My tip for you is to take a notebook and curl up in the early morning light. Use a writing prompt and have fun.

We love writing, and when we remember that, we want to come back to the page over and over because what we’re doing on the page becomes rewarding in and of itself.

In modern life, it’s difficult to remember that sense of wonder and play when we’re distracted by the pull of smartphones, the responsibilities of everyday life and work, and the to-do lists of the day-to-day.

A key way to remember how much we love writing and rebuild it into our lives is to use flow triggers to get to the page.

Flow triggers to achieve flow

Flow triggers do two things. They reduce cognitive load, and they open pathways for those neurochemicals, dopamine and norepinephrine: flow.

When we’re missing flow in our lives, using flow triggers is a really helpful technique to get us into our writing.

Triggers I use on a daily basis are of two main types. Firstly, I use small rituals. I tiptoe downstairs when my kids are sleeping and flip on the kettle. I make a quiet cup of coffee and turn on the same playlist on repeat as I settle at my desk, earbuds in.

Some writers like to use a candle or a short meditation; these writing rituals can be very helpful. Writing coach Gina Sorell says:

I love a ‘writing playlist’ that announces to my brain: ‘It’s time to write!’ I refer to this as an access point, and also a point of entry. Music, flowers, ritualizing, all of these can allow the writer to access the work. It’s the same way that an actor can access their state of being when needed.
—Gina Sorell

Here are some more tips to reduce distractions and motivate yourself to come to the page from our writing class, The Ninety Day Novel:

1. Change the password you use most on your devices 

Mine is something as laughable as ILOVELIFE. Silly, I know, but either you believe words have power or you don’t, right? Create your own spells. Bring magic willfully to your life.

2. Add fresh flowers to the house 

It just works. Life, I guess. Beauty. The old saying—God laughs in flowers.

3. Morning! Start getting up with the birds 

Get up when you hear their song. Start waking earlier and earlier—a half-hour earlier every day—aiming eventually for a five o’clock rise, maybe...

And to get used to this, bribe yourself. Buy an almond croissant or something you like, and when you wake up grumpy, turn your mind to your little treat and the lure of good coffee downstairs and don’t think any more about it—just trip down those stairs like Goldilocks. 

Another key flow trigger for my writing life is writing at the same time and in the same place daily. Finding a regular time for this is a helpful way to get into flow and a great flow trigger. I do this by calendaring in time blocks specifically for flow.

How to calendar time blocks

Looking to the week ahead, you likely have all sorts of appointments scheduled. Perhaps the doctor or hairdresser, a meeting or ten, a family meal, a trip, an outing, an errand. All of these get popped into your calendar because they have to be done.

I calendar in a daily writing time and commit to it because I’ve blocked out that window in my schedule.

It’s a simple technique, but I find it effective in getting myself to the page. When you intentionally place a writing time into your day—remember, just an hour a day—you tell yourself that your writing is important and you start to create optimal conditions for flow.

When you’re in the heat of writing a first draft, this consistency—and the weight that you give to your own writing by placing it in your daily life—helps you create flow.

Consistency enhances flow

This, in turn—because flow is an autotelic experience—helps you want to come back to your writing again and again.

And this, in turn again, is what you need to write a book.

Flow doesn’t happen every day without some work, but it is possible. This is why we teach tools in our monthly flow workshops to help you find your way into a flow state.

At The Novelry, we want you to be able to get into flow easily and often, enhancing your creativity to help you write your novel or memoir. We foster a writing community, supporting writers with our creative writing classes, helping them achieve personal goals or ambitions.

We grow writers, meaning that we help writers with all the technical aspects of writing a novel with a team of writing coaches and invited guests who share their writing expertise to help you through the challenge and adventure of writing a book.

As we learn to access flow in our lives, we transition into being the writer we’ve always dreamed of being, getting a book ready for submission to agents and editors and having energy to start writing the next one.

‍

Welcome home, writers. Join us on the world’s best creative writing courses to create, write, and complete your book. Sign up and start today.