Purpose and Passion in Your Words

Since I was a very little girl, I’ve been telling and writing stories, but it was when I was about eleven that I wrote something that really mattered to me. I was sitting in class, my teacher at the front. He shook his long hair, turned to us, and said, “You’re all going to write a novel.” I dived so deeply into the telling of that story that nothing else existed. There I was, embedded in words and language, moving around characters, shaping their destinies, and falling in love with that feeling. My novel was thirty full pages, and I was so thrilled with it and the feelings the book had created in me, that I knew I wanted to write again.

I didn’t know then that what I was experiencing was called Flow. Years later, when I was studying Psychology at University, I heard of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He’s known as the father of Flow theory, but at the time I didn’t care about that. I just cared about going out, and having fun, reading books, writing my never-to-be-published first novel, and going to every play, art gallery, and club that Manchester had.

Flash forward twenty years, and I’m living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, reading a lot about Flow all over again. I’m discovering that what I love about writing is the fact that I’m utterly and completely in Flow when I’m doing it. All of us have something that makes us feel like that–maybe it’s writing for you, maybe it’s hockey, or coding, or cooking, or painting, or something else entirely.

The piece I missed when I was (barely showing up) in my classes during my degree, was that there are ways to get into a Flow state that you can create in your own life. I’ll be writing more about this in the next few weeks, but the first way to get more Flow happening in your life (I’m learning, now, finally), is to make sure you have a purpose.

It sounds like a grand word, but I think as writers we often forget this part. We forget that we need to have something to say. We’re not writing simply because we love that feeling of words appearing on the page, or because we love moving them around and creating, we’re also writing because we’re exploring the world and deepening the conversation and the connection we have with other people. We write to feel Flow, yes, but in order to keep feeling Flow, we need to be saying something that matters.

So, the questions I’m asking myself are big ones. What am I trying to say in everything I write? What am I saying in the books I’m working on? Why am I saying it? What conversations do I want to open up in my future and in the futures of those who read what I write?

If you’re a writer, too, I encourage you to ask yourself the same questions. As you ask, think about where your passion ignites. There will be a light inside you, a flickering spark that brightens when you’re being true to what most excites you in your work. Steven Kotler, who has some terrific books about Flow, suggests that you start to create more flow in your life by creating a recipe for yourself of all the things you’re passionate about. What interests you and why? And then, as I’ve been doing, think about how you’re exploring these passions in your writing. (Or whatever work you’re doing). That’s where you find your purpose, in the intersection of your passions and the impact you want to have on the world.

I’ve been looking at my list of interests and then looking at the things I’m doing in my life, the stories I’m telling, the books I’m working on, the work I’m being offered, the work I want to pursue. It’s helping me as I figure out what doesn’t belong, much as I loved writing that page, say.

Overall, what I’m learning is that Flow is essential to my writing process. I’m finding out, twenty years after I first heard of Flow, thirty-two years after I first experienced it, how Flow helps me write better, and how important it is to maintain that state by knowing what I’m saying and why.

I welcome you on the journey to help you figure out your stories and passions, as I figure out mine. Ask me questions, tell me what you’re working on, or what you’re reading… let’s start the conversation together.

xoxox

Alice

@alicekuipersbookclub