Flow

Flow

I was talking to a friend about my writing which he has looked at over the years. We discussed how the best writing comes when we are in a state of flow.

I

The Writing Process

I started profession writing for the GTA Geography Bulletin and a chapter in a book Living in Cities. To a certain extent it came easy as well because it was a summary of my Honours thesis which I knew front and back. I progressed to over sixty articles in almost 40 years on geography and learning, my best writing happened when I wrote on the lessons I used in class, or I had spent some time reading and researching.?

My personal writing did not start until I started writing in what I called Pub Books starting in February 1984, after the first week on my teaching career in Bowral. These were exercise books I wrote in at the end of the week while having a beer after school. These earlier writings were less formal, fragmented, included sketches and maps and bullet points of maps and training logs with comments. I have continued with them in a variety of formats to this day.?

In 1993 and 1996 I wrote two letters to Nick and Ali each month on their first year. Each end up being about 40-50 000 words each. This writing came easily because it was descriptive outline what we did in the first year of their lives. This was the first time I systematically wrote. I went through a process, shared the writing with friends and family. I did not know how to take the silence of their responses, but I guess they did not know how to take what I wrote about as well because they thought I was sharing too much. I gave a printed version to NP and AP on their 21st.?

Then the writing process changed, and I got in a pickle, became more disorganised in my writings. I ended up with writing in several places once I upgraded from my Apple 3C to the Mac Classic. This device was so much more user friendly for writing and printing. I now had handwritten and desktop writing to manage and organised It truly got messy, and I am still dealing with the consequences to this day.

?In the 1990s instead of writing letters I now emailed letters to people or typed them up and printed them off. If I hand wrote letters, I took a photocopy of them but did not have the technology or thought about scanning them. This meant I kept digital and photocopies and given my letters reflected on life at the time I did not have to keep the exercise book Pub Book.?

Anyway, I muddled my way through a hybrid approach to my writing and research, living in a disorganised world of writing limbo.?

I had a paradigm shift in my approach to writing and improving my writing when I came across blogging platforms in 2004. I started with IncSub which was on a Word Press platform and when it folded, I got my own WordPress account for my personal writing and Edublogs for my professional writing, while still publishing a professional article at least once a year. At the same time I also kept a Cool Running blog.??

After my IncSub experience where I lost two years of writing, I adopted the approach of either writing directly to the multiple blogs and transferred the posts to a monthly word document. I kept this up between 2004 and 2012 and this became the source of truth for my writing and my Pub Book. Those Word documents are now in my Kindle as are the letters to Nick and Ali. The handwritten Pub Books are still in exercise books, but I have scanned most of them as backups.?

My adoption of Facebook and Twitter changed and elevated my writing to another level because in theory I had an audience, but I never really knew if people read what I write. In some circles this short form writing on ‘socials’ is not viewed positively but, in my case, it helped me because I wrote more. I major factor in my improved writing was?having an audience that made me think about what I said, how I said it, who I might mention and if it was engaging enough to be read.?

I tried to adopt the approach TL: DR which was often successful. I tend to write more than is required in early drafts, so the editing process also assisted my writing.

My writing was still muddled because I would have to reshape what I wrote for the different mediums (Blogs Facebook, emails, Instagram) and word limits. Facebook was ok but I soon learnt to get to the point before the read more button clicked appeared I am sure most people never read past the opening few lines. I had to get engagement from the start and make the words count and have the desired effect. I was becoming quite good at getting my thoughts across in 140 characters with Twitter then they doubled the word limit.?

Early in the piece I made a decision to have photos with all my Facebook posts which made it easier when I started to use my Instagram account.? I was in these early days compartmentalising my accounts. LinkedIn was my first account but did not use it for years because teachers were not on it but slowly over the years, I have built up almost five thousand followers. Facebook was set up as an alternative to Cool Running and the friends are mostly runners from all over the world. In more recent years there have been some posts about geography and some family pieces to read. Instagram is an extension of Facebook and tends to have a younger generation of my ruing and professional friends.?

Through the 2010s I got into the routine of collating information and ideas and writing it up in Edublogs and longer form running posts in my Word Press account. Around this time, I purchased domain names for all the members in the family and I started to put some of my older publications on my Google Site (and Wikispaces) more so I could have all my work in one place and not be reliant on back hard drives and laptops.

Towards the end of the decade, I decided to consolidate my writing and share across all my social much of the same material. I? did start to write more professional articles on Linked in but I? did re-share them across Twitter, sometimes Facebook a. not on Instagram because I don’t have an account which enables links and the character length is too short.? I also started to make greater use of Stories to share images of stories on my socials.?

To be fair my writing process is still muddled but it is improving. Currently, all my writing starts in a Google Document and then I transfer it to where I want it. I have a formula for book reflections where I write six things, I have learnt in my Word Press blog. I have one word as a theme for each of the six reflections. These become the key words in the introductory posts on Twitter and LinkedIn with a link to the full piece in the blog post.?

Now all this writing I have been doing for almost four decades is becoming primary sources for the running and life writings I have been doing. The working title is Life on the Run. I like it because it gives me scope to write more than just running. This may not be a good thing as it might become confusing for readers if I jump around between lids work and running too much.?

Currently, I have been writing this chronologically and geographical (where we lived) starting in 1984 in Bowral and I am up to 2004 in Pennant Hills, focusing on running and life. The next stage aligns with the running and life of the 2004-2012 blogging and then I have the last leg to 2022. Currently for Life on the Run I am thinking about using the Scrivener writing platform.?

II

The Flow Process

In what you have read so far, I started out writing about flow and have ended up writing about my writing because that is what flowed through me. That is a good example of just being in the flow.?

I can recollect a few times where I could just write, and it flowed with effort. Usually this writing ends up pretty good.? Here are a few examples.

In late winter or early spring 1983 I jumped on a train to Katoomba to meet some friends to stay in a bank apartment. As was often the case in those days, I just turned up in Katoomba not knowing the address and, with no phones to call them, I visited the various pubs until I found them.?

The next day after a night on the beers I sat in a semi circled shaped sunroom looking down the hill of a suburban street in Katoomba and started writing Chapter 4 of my Honours Thesis. The writing flowed and before I knew it, I had the chapter done before we went out on Saturday night. I wrote dozens of essays at university, and they did not come easily, apart from writing up field reports.?

The next piece was in the early 1990s I was dabbling in understanding the web and came across an article on the Super Information Highway. I was looking after Nick in the kitchen at St Ives and grabbed the paper we used to make grocery lists and I churned out a letter to the Editor and sent it off by snail mail. I forget about it for a while and I called into the library at Northholm, where I was teaching at the time, and looked at the Letters to the Editor in The Australian and did not see it anywhere. I looked on the bigger section on the left under the Editor’s comments and there was my letter as an editorial piece.?

A third piece of flow writing happened as I wrote up my experiences of training for and racing the Port Macquarie Ironman in 2014. It ended up being ten thousand words. It truly just flowed out of me; writing about swimming, cycling, and running training, costs, gear food and people who helped me. Moreover, it started me thinking about the next stage of my writing and how Life on the Run might transform into a thematic approach to writing.?

The fourth example is a series of writing with an approach I borrowed from Mark Pesce he writes his lectures in three sections using Roman numerals. I decided to write six hundred word pieces in three sections on themes or short nonfiction stories and reflections. This style of writing also enables the flow process and lasted in earnest for a few years. The biggest lesson was that it helped me write with smaller paragraphs much the same as newspaper articles.?

III

What are the common themes of these examples of flow in my writing??

One theme is having in-depth knowledge. A depth knowledge of what I am writing about gives me the detail to just write. With geography it is knowing my content through the research I have been doing or my field observations. My writing on ICT was a mixture of experiences in using technology in the classroom and some research. When I write and about running and life, I just see the event in my mind’s eye as I write. Each depends on an in-depth knowledge base whether it comes from experience or research. The flow comes with descriptive writing about running and life and sometimes with descriptive writing and narratives about geography and the use of technology.?

The second themes have been the improved writing due to socials and having an audience for my writing on blogs, Facebook etal. My writing has improved since I started wring in blogs and then social media. It taught me an economy of words by establishing a six hundred word limit. The organisation of sub themes with the use of three Roman numerals enabled a clarity concept. The use of shorter sentences and smaller paragraphs gleaned from my socials, reading articles and the press.?

There are circumstances where flow in writing just does not come, which is often the case for long form professional writing. Except for my Honour's thesis article, I can only think of a couple of articles that really flowed. Some include practical narratives about using technology. In geography I liked the content of an article I wrote on reflection in the social in human geography. It is the one theory based article I liked and seemed to flow well. Flow just does not happen unless I have the knowledge and experience.?

Flow does not happen when I have to think more. However, flow can drop off?after the narrative or description and I am required to analyse and evaluate. Though this is less in the case of explanation.?

Thinking and writing is hard for me to manage. Flow is also interrupted when I need to organise the structure, size and sequences of paragraphs, the nature of the sentences in the paragraphs and fix spelling. This is because I cannot type.?

I have nothing else to write. The flow process has stopped for the time being.?