from CHAPTER 9: SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES FOR LURING FLOW

GOING BACK TO GO FORWARD

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's all right to fool yourself into getting down to work. I recommend saying to yourself, in effect, "Oh, I'm just going to noodle around for a few minutes with this bit I wrote yesterday. That's all - no pressure at all to branch out from there." This way your subconscious - or however you think of the creative activity of your mind - is gently returned to the same state in which you wrote the previous day's work. From there, it's an easy glide into new writing.

At the start of a writing interlude, Marnell Jameson rereads what she's written up to that point, "and any related fragments to see if that sets me rolling again." You may stop at re-reading, or you might be more inclined to do some revising as well. Mystery writer Jonathan Kellerman likes to begin the day by rewriting and revising the previous day's work, and, as he is doing that, he segues into new material. "It doesn't take a lot of time," he explains, "and there's a real magical feeling to it." Madison Smartt Bell typically prints out whatever he wrote last and begins the next session by going over the typescript with a pencil: "From there it's usually an easy, imperceptible shift back to the notebook and continuation."

Novelists use the technique more often, but poets use it too. The "going backward to go forward" habit is so natural and organic a way to get into the "feel" of the writing that you may be doing it without realizing it. Some writers rewrite the last page, such as Octavia E. Butler, who insists that "this is not just a matter of mechanically doing it over. It's the lead-in."

Be prepared for doubts to creep in when you re-read your own work, especially if you're prey to bouts of low self-confidence. Nevertheless, the technique can get you past the initial resistence to starting, as it does Mark Salzman: "With me, 99 per cent of what I write is crap. I have to rewrite it so many times, so when I re-read it, it looks so awful, sometimes that's discouraging. But it's usually what I've got to do. I've got to read at least the last couple of pages to remember what it is I intend to do next."

Going over previous work helps you get back into the same mental state you were in the last time you were in flow. The characters start moving again, you regain a sense of the rhythms of their speech, and environmental and internal distractions begin to fade.

Experiment with ways of going back to go forward, such as rereading a single paragraph, one page, one section, or one chapter. See how far back you need to go before you're drawn fully into the story. Depending on where you are in a project - just getting off the ground or closer to ending - you may only need to re-read a few lines of what you've written. Almost immediately the ideas will begin to jell and, before long, you'll be lost in flow. 

Six Exercises Suggested by Expert Authors

(adapted from Writing in Flow by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.)

1. Write something almost diametrically opposed to what you've been comfortable writing up to now. "The idea," says Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Sister of My Heart and Mistress of Spices, "is not necessarily, don't write what you know, but try to look at it from a whole other angle. Write about someone who is absolutely not yourself."

2. Pulitzer prize winning poet Henry Taylor suggests this exercise for loosening yourself: "Remember how it feels to suddenly think of one of the most embarrassing moments in your life: how it surfaces without being invited and makes your skin crawl, and you may have to pull over on the shoulder for a second and compose yourself, but you mash the thing back down into the subconscious where it damn well belongs, and get on with the day. Okay. This time, write it down. Make sure you linger lovingly over the painful details."

3. Novelist and short story writer Merrill Joan Gerber suggests inspiring your story by thinking of a "hot spot," something that happened in the past that still compels your attention, something that attracts your thoughts over and over, an incident, a fright, an argument, an insult, some mystery in a relationship that hasn't been solved or is still exciting over time.

4. A loosening exercise used by novelist Nora Okja Keller (Comfort Woman) with her students is to begin with a family story, or some gossip you have heard. Write another version of it, from behind the scenes. Or write out a dream you had, then pare it down and shape it.

5. Memoirist and fiction writer Bernard Cooper finds this one useful: Write down the story you've been telling people over and over, a story that irritates or amuses or has gotten into your craw in some way, a story that is so strange or so outrageous that you have to keep telling it to kind of corroborate what's happening with yourself. Such an exercise tends to get you writing very loosely and quickly.

6. Rage, fury, and revenge are huge emotions you can use to loosen up your writing, according to novelist Margot Livesey (Criminals). Write a character description (or a poem) from the point of view of one character detesting another.
End Excerpt