Fear versus Flow

Writing in a Time of Crisis

Being stuck at home might seem like a golden opportunity to do more writing. But quarantine isn’t turning out to be a great writing retreat for most people.

How can you write when you’re focused on the news and consumed with anxiety?

Fear can be paralyzing. The thing that we fear occupies all of our attention, displacing creative mind-wandering and open attention. Going online doesn’t help, as nearly every headline and social media post reminds us of the pandemic.

Fear keeps us from writing. Or, so it seems.

Maybe we should flip our thinking.

Instead of I’m too anxious to write, consider this: I’m too busy writing to be anxious.

I challenge you to do the seemingly impossible: find a state of flow in your writing, if only for a few minutes. Yes, even now. Especially now.

Finding flow

Sometimes you get lost in the work of writing, losing track of time altogether. When that happens, you’ve been enjoying what psychologists call flow. It’s an ideal writing state, and we only tend to realize we’ve been in it when it’s over.