Now That Was Writing In Flow

Years back, I read a book called Writing in Flow by Susan K. Perry. It made me a believer in writing in flow states, probably because I'd done it a few times, but I can't say I did a good job of learning how to do it whenever I wanted. However, writing in flow is something I aspire to.

Well, yesterday it happened.

I had received an essay back from an editor last Wednesday with his suggestions for changes, and I'd been working on it ever since. Yesterday morning I got up and went to the computer in my nightclothes. I changed into workout clothes, as I do every morning that I'm not training in the dojang, but I got distracted...by work...and went back to the computer. Around mid-day I considered cleaning up and getting dressed, but I remembered that I hadn't worked out yet. So I put in a load of wash, fixed something to eat, and took it back to the computer. The essay was in good shape around 2:30, so I got on the treadmill for a while. Then I got off and went back to the computer. Around 4 o'clock, I finished working out, finally took a bath, and got dressed. After dinner I went back to the computer for an hour and a half or so, just to tweek the essay and do things like spellcheck, then I submitted it. I never combed my hair, though I did brush my teeth. I think.

The day of work felt great. If the editor is no longer interested in the essay, it doesn't matter because the writing experience was so terrific, and I learned so much about writing memoir while working on this piece.

How did this flow state come about when it so rarely happens for me?

I think it was the amount of time I put into the essay before Monday, the flow state day. I worked on this thing for a couple of hours Thursday morning and all day Friday. It was not going well. I tried this and I tried that, I moved things here and there. Saturday morning I woke up around 3:30 and was still up at 4:30. So I got up and worked on the essay for 2 hours until going back to bed for a few hours. I think I worked on it some more Saturday afternoon or evening. I definitely worked on it off and on Sunday. I felt I was making progress, and Sunday night just before I went to bed I made a page and a half of freewriting notes in my hardcopy journal for use the next day.

Then I had my flow experience on Monday.

I think to finally get into a flow state you have to achieve a certain level of concentration before getting into the flow. (It's the same thing you need to do to trigger a breakout experience, though in that case you back off for a while after you've been working.) My present schedule of working only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday means that I'm not staying at work long enough to get to that level of concentration and stay there. I remember talking to Computer Guy about the whole flow thing years ago when he was writing code for games he was creating. He said he'd read that the reason you used to hear these stories of people who write code regularly living on caffeine and staying up all night was that they wanted to stay in some kind of work groove once they'd achieved it. That sounds like flow.

A few months ago I started trying to work for a half hour or so every weekday morning, even on the elder care days. It didn't lead to anything like the flow state I experienced yesterday, but it helped. Yesterday's experience confirms my impression that I need to find a way to work more.

You Need Adult Readers To Bring In The Big Sales

This Slate article about Suzanne Collins is so short that I kept looking for the "read on" link. It seems like an introduction.

The author argues that The Hunger Games made adults stop worrying about being seen reading YA. "It wasn't until Suzanne Collins published her bleak, seductively sadistic Hunger Games trilogy that grown-ups stopped worrying and learned to love the teen novel—to the tune of some 4 million copies sold in 2010 alone."

Aren't the giant sellers in children's/YA Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games? Didn't all three of these series attract legions of adult readers? Does a children's/YA book need adult readers to become wildly successful?

And if it does, won't that have some kind of impact on children's publishing as publishers try to identify the factors in books that will attract the adult readers and their money?

I always have questions, rarely answers.

Yeah, I Was Inspired

We went to the New Britain Museum of Modern Art today. I love the illustration collection, which had changed since we were there last time. (Maybe last year?) We went to see the exhibit on the artist colony at Provincetown, Massachusetts. I left feeling that I want to work en plein air. So I think I'll take The Fletcher Farm Body outside when I do the revision.

Also, the Provincetown art colony seemed to be strong on representational and, later, abstract art. The Lyme Colony was about American Impressionism. I wonder now if writers' colonies/conferences concentrate on some kind of specific "schools" of writing. Yaddo? The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference? The MacDowell Colony?

Looks As If I'll Be Trying To Go To The Connecticut Children's Book Fair This Fall

I just heard on Facebook that Jack D. Ferraiolo, author of The Big Splash, will be at this year's Connecticut Children's Book Fair in November.

By the way, while I'm a noir fan and was very fond of The Big Splash, I've wondered if kids would get it and noir in general. Did you have to be aware of the genre to get children's noir? Well, my twelve-year-old niece didn't. I got her a copy of The Big Splash a couple of months ago, and she did like it.

When I told her I'd been concerned that you had to be familiar with Raymond Chandler's work to like Splash, she said, "Raymond Who?"

Another Month, Another Carnival Of Children's Literature

This month's Carnival of Children's Literature can be found at Emmy's Book of the Day. And guess what? I pulled myself together and got a submission in on time.

An Idea For Another Children's Book?

We hear a lot of talk about the importance of teachers reading to their students, but quite honestly I can only recall two books that were read by a teacher in class when I was a child. One was The Incredible Journey by Sheila Burnford. I thought of that book last night and again this morning when hearing and reading that the imaginary mountain lion killed by a car here in Connecticut had migrated from South Dakota. I say imaginary because there had been mountain lion sightings here for a while, but state officials insisted they were mistakes because mountain lions don't live here anymore. I think they must have left because of the poor business climate.

Then someone hit one with a car and, wow, someone else thought to check the cat's DNA and found it, indeed, wasn't a preppy but a western creature. The mountain lion is believed to have hoofed it here all the way from the Black Hills of South Dakota, just like the animals in The Incredible Journey hoofed it wherever they hoofed it.

So now I'm thinking that there might be a children's book idea in the mountain lion's story. Because, you know, the irony of it coming all this way only to be killed in a random accident is huge and has all kinds of narrative possibilities.

The other book I remember a teacher reading in class is Justin Morgan Had A Horse by the queen of horse books, Marguerite Henry. (She was the queen of horse books and a two-time Newbery honor winner.) Now I'm waiting for stray horse sightings here in the land of steady habits.

One Hundred Crazy Days

Author Laurel Snyder is planning to do 100 Skype Visits in 100 Days. That doesn't sound like a big deal because she won't have to leave her home to do it. However, that's a lot of human contact. One hundred human contacts, in fact. I can feel myself getting a little trembly just thinking about someone else doing it.

Teachers and media specialists should check out her post on the subject because she's planning to do this for...free. Yes, all that anxiety-inducing human contact for free.

Meriden Children's Library Renamed For Tomie dePaola

Meriden, Connecticut has renamed its children's library The Tomie dePaola Children's Library. dePaola grew up in Meriden and has maintained a connection with his home city.

The most recent issue of The Horn Book includes dePaola's acceptance speech for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. In it he talks about his youth in Meriden where he was interested in tap dancing and acting as well as art, and he describes the encouragement he received from adults.

dePaola is also a supporter of the Northeast Children's Literature Collection.

An Interesting Take On "Show Don't Tell"

While "show, don't tell" is probably a cliche of writing, it is a true one. Tell, tell, tell, blah, blah, blah puts most readers to sleep. It has something to do with statics vs. dynamics, something I've been thinking about regarding writing. Showing is much more dynamic, while telling is more static.

Geoff Herbach did a guest post at Fiction Notes called Replace Abstractions with Concrete Detail in which he talks about how abstractions often lead to "telling" in writing, which concrete details "show."

It sounds pretty simple, and simple is a good thing.

Some Thoughts On Book Reviews

Here at Original Content I do what I call reader reponses to books I've read. I don't do book reviews for two reasons.

In the first place, I want to stay away from the whole "negative" and "positive" review turmoil that erupts on the Internet every now and then, especially within the kidlitosphere. Focusing only on positive reviews is bad for literary discourse and bad for writers whose books are somewhere between a glowing reviewing and a warning. On the other hand, when everything is wonderful, does wonderful mean anything?

In the second place, I don't actually know how to write a book review or what should be included. So I merely respond to what I read so I don't have to worry about meeting some kind of definition of what a review should be because I'm not reviewing.

If I were reviewing, How Not To Write a Book Review by Robert Pinsky would definitely be of assistance. If you don't want to read about snarky, nineteenth century reviewers, skip to the end where you'll see the three rules Pinsky says every review should follow.

I could have sworn that sometime this past week I also saw something children's literature related regarding reviewing, but there's no finding it now.