Follow the Energy
Why going with the flow works in writing....and in life.
Recently one of my writing mentees showed me a picture of a gorge, where she had walked the trails overlooking a river.
“The picture doesn’t do it justice,” she said as I held her phone in my hand and peered into the crevasse in the photo. It was so deep that the water flowing at the bottom was overshadowed by the massive walls of rock.
Sometimes this is how writing feels, as though the flow of it is a trickle, a whisper, barely a promise of a voice longing to be heard. And yet it is enough. It gets us out of our bed, aims us toward the computer and fixes us in our seat for hours, undisturbed, following that mere hint of an idea until it becomes a stream, then a river with momentum all its own.
Life is this way, too, carrying us on journeys and around corners where we might never have gone if we hadn’t followed the energy, that small, almost imperceptible flow.
I’ve learned to trust that flow over the many decades of my work as a writer. For years, I wrote for hire, making enough money to buy a house after my early divorce, to feed my large dogs, and to travel to see friends in Mexico or climb pyramids in Guatemala.
My writing was fueled by a desire for travel, stability, a savings account and a future. So I wrote endless articles for lifestyle magazines, pounded out copy for corporate newsletters and spent years in a fascinating and unexpected niche, writing admissions materials for colleges and universities.
I reveled in the flow—the creative challenge of condensing all the notes I took on my campus visits into something unique and meaningful for each school. But eventually, that flow ran dry. I remember it well—the day I faced a deadline writing about a graduate school program, and nothing came to mind. Nothing.
The flow wasn’t blocked, not really. It was just gone. I’d found every possible way I could to talk about the same thing in different words, and the flow wasn’t within me anymore. I sat down to write, got up, fixed a cup of tea, sat back down, threw in some laundry, checked my email, did everything short of ironing (which would be the ultimate desperate distraction) to delay the discomfort of a well gone dry. Ultimately, after a lot of stops and starts, I did my best, delivered some uninspired prose, revised it to make the client happy, and never wrote another college brochure again.
No flow, no energy, no writing. The payment didn’t matter anymore. If I was sacrificing my satisfaction as a writer, no amount of money would make up for it.
That’s when my mantra became, “Follow the energy.”
In other words, don’t force yourself to write something that holds no vitality for you. As I heard someone say years ago, “If the horse is dead, get off.”
This may seem obvious, but as usual, writing imitates life, and vice versa. How many times have you stayed too long in a relationship, thinking you could breathe life into it once more? Or put off resigning from a job that made your stomach churn every weekday morning when you got out of bed? Or found reasons not to donate your old stirrup pants to Goodwill because eventually they’d be in fashion again? (Wow…that was a LONG time ago!)
A lot of us ride that dead horse for days or months or years, thinking it will magically shake its head, let out a long “neigh” and spring to its feet again.
But if we’re brave enough to be honest with ourselves, we know it’s time to dig a big hole, give that horse a proper burial—and move on to something better.
Something that makes us feel alive, that restores the flow within us.
This translates into your writing in all sorts of ways.
If you’re writing a novel and you think you’re “supposed” to write the chapters in order, reconsider. As you sit down to write, ask yourself what chapter you want to work on. What feels juicy and interesting to you? Whatever it is, write that.
If you’re writing several projects at a time, select the one that leaps off the pile and says, “Choose me.”
If you’re writing a blog and you feel drawn to do research rather than write, start googling. It’s all part of the writing process.
In other words, say yes to the joy of writing so it doesn’t feel like a daily grind. There’s nothing worse than facing a blank page and feeling nothing but resistance. Because the resistance is you saying, “This isn’t what I want right now.”
Making yourself slog through writing you don’t want to do is punitive, the equivalent of forcing a child to stay at the dinner table until she cleans her plate. And turning a creative act into punishment undercuts who you are as a writer, and as a human being.
So show up at the computer. Write daily. Be disciplined. But within that discipline, give yourself space for choosing joy.
Follow the energy. In writing, and life.
Your readers will feel it, and so will you.
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A NOTE TO MY READERS: I write “A Whole New World” as a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, which is led by Julie Gammack, of Des Moines. I’m honored to be part of this group, featuring the diverse voices of more than 50 professional writers and journalists across the state of Iowa. I encourage you to check out their columns.
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So important. This is how I learned to write joyfully, and work on what I want to, sometimes moving on and abandoning a topic that I once thought had potential. That's why I might have 47 tabs open on my computer. Things I'm writing about, things I might write about, and things that I thought once had potential that wasn't realized. It's all good. Keep moving as the muse tells you to.
Your essay resonated (thanks Amy for use of that term). I don't have 47 tabs--Leonard stands alone on that; but I have about 30 drafts of possible substack articles. You just gave permission to not feel guilty about not completing many. And to be joyful (thanks Bob for using 'joy') as I try to find my muse.