Finding Your Flow

Hello and Welcome to Sitting in Silence, the newsletter about writing, craft, worry, and joy.

Also, welcome to all the new subscribers and to the premium subscribers who support this newsletter. You’re all appreciated dearly. It’s a joy to write these words.

Which is the constant lesson of this newsletter for writers: Always lean into the joy of what you’re creating. Best wishes to everyone in the middle of NaNoWriMo. I’ve done it, and I think it pays off quite well.

I’m especially excited by this glowing (starred) review for my new book in legendary industry magazine Publishers Weekly. My books tend to review well, but this one is especially sweet to me. They really got The American Daughters!

Today, let’s talk about Finding Your Flow

Ever heard of the idea of a flow state? Me either. But I think I know what it is. It’s something like the idea of starting a task. At first it may seem difficult, but eventually your mind takes a turn into a new space where the trees bear (bear or bare?) candy, the river is full of chocolate milk, and your writing efforts are effortless. This is also known as being “on fire,” “in the zone,” or finding your voice.

Writing is rarely easy, but I think for many people just starting out it may seem impossible. Like trying to fly. Like when you were 10 and climbed onto the roof of your house with a bath towel around your neck. You see the birds fluttering all around you. High above, a passenger plane streaks past at a million miles an hour. Higher still, a satellite twinkles past in the velvet of night. And even further out, the ocean of stars wheel about at such speeds that they seem motionless. It is then that you accept that you can’t actually fly.

But, dear reader, as a writer you can fly. You can enter that flow state, that state which leads to the embodiment of your dreams here on Earth.

You want to write you Great American Novel? It can be done.

You want to write a bracing memoir about your life? It can be done.

You want to write a nonfiction book about writing? This may be me.

The word I’ve been avoiding saying so far is persistence. Because when I say it, writers often have misconceptions about what persistence requires. They may think, “persistence requires that I write every day for hours.” Or that one must ignore their loved ones. Or that they should make sacrifices to Gozer. Hey, I’m not here to religion shame. You do you. Everyone has a process.

But the most important thing to remember is this: I’ve seen a ton of talented writers give up writing. 100% of the time, that’s the end of their writing story. One the other time, I’ve seen a boatful of writers who didn’t strike me as overwhelmingly talented (myself included) accomplish incredible things. I read someone’s work or met them at a conference. I think, they’re ok. Then a year later or five years later or ten years, they win a major prize or get a seven-figure film deal or sell two million copies of their book. I read their work and I cry not only because the work is good, but because I recognize how much persistence it took for them to evolve. Success usually means suffering before perseverance. Pain before transcendence. Persistence is about sticking with it whether or not you write every day and consistently meet all your goals.

About 20 years ago when I understood nothing, I spent a lot of time reading books about writing. I read craft books on things like plot and industry guides for “20 ways to find the perfect agent” and commercial magazines with covers that featured authors looking like the very apotheosis of success.

But, again, I know those authors probably went through some lean times. Around 2010, inspired by the Biography channel series that explained how some of our favorite celebrities made it, I took one of the techniques I heard mentioned repeatedly. Will Ferrell, for example, was one of the ones who said it. He said, and I’ll paraphrase, “I moved to L.A. and told my dad that if I didn’t succeed in five years, I’d move back to Ontario and live with him.” Or maybe this was Jim Carey? Or Tilda Swinton?

Anyway, I told myself that I would have five years to “make it” as a writer. What did “make it” look like? Well, I’d be a success. But what did success look like? I really didn’t know. But by 2015, I had only published like three short stories for just enough money to catch a bus to Palookaville. I hadn’t succeeded. Not by a long shot. Yet.

But I had made progress. My sentences were better. My characters had life. My friends tended to like what I wrote. Life was getting better.

Yesterday, a good friend of mine, the brilliant writer Dante Stewart, shared a screenshot of the latest issue of Publishers Weekly with me. No, it’s really with me. My face is on the cover. I knew it was coming, but not when.

And I thought back to all those covers of Writer’s Digest and Publishers Weekly I read two decades ago.

“Is this what success looks like?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it beats where I am,” the 2015 version of me said.

They say that in life you’re never competing with others. You’re only competing with yourself. I don’t quite buy that. In my view, I’m always collaborating with different eras of myself. It’s always the job of my present self to give my future self a leg up. I’m so thankful that my earlier selves decided to persist.

As for me sitting here writing this right now [at 7:15 am on November 14, 2023]? Well, there are quite a few gifts I want to give my future self. I know that anything is possible as long as I persist.

My new book, The American Daughters, is available for pre-order now. It the book comes out February 27, 2024.

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