The Flow of Creativity: Hypothetically Awesome

The Flow of Creativity: Hypothetically Awesome

In response to the content of The Flow of Creativity, I feel very split. On one hand, the description of “flow” and the idea that creative individuals endeavor to change the world through their pursuance of truth is a hypothetically awesome set of ideas. On the other, Csikszentmihalyi fails to be consistent in his argument or provide realistic solutions to any of the theoretical conditions he sets forth as evidence and necessary elements of “creative flow.”

Let’s start with what I loved. I loved Mark Strand’s definition of Flow as a time when one is “completely enraptured…sort of swayed by the possibilities you see in this work…The idea is to be so…so saturated with it that there’s no future or past, it’s just an extended present…It’s meaning carried to a higher order…it’s a total communication… there’s no other way of saying what you’re saying.” This description of flow made me excited because I could relate to it. I have sat down to write before and felt completely immersed in the importance of what I was doing, without even knowing what that importance actually was. It was an undefined importance that wasn’t directed at a self or an entity or even an idea of thought. It was just important in that moment to write what I was writing and to not stop.

The description of a block by Csikszentmihalyi rang true to me as well. He described it as a distraction, a “drought” brought on by a preoccupation with “health, family and financial problems.” Often when I cannot write it is because I am worried about a family member, some news I heard about my siblings going through something hard or painful or because I get stuck in a cycle of thought that reminds me of the lack of money to be made in writing. The guilt and self-bashing associated with not having money and not making money is a hard obstacle to overcome. It is also linked to the idea of family, of being able to contribute or help or give to those you care about. For me, being the oldest of six children, I constantly reassess my own choice to be a writer and to be in an MFA program. I have to fight the voices that tell me it is totally self-indulgent and selfish. I too wish I had a wife to take the burden off of me.

Dyson describes writing as having stages, the first of which is the horrendous push through to the “flow.” After this initial period, he describes the process as being “very largely a matter of putting pieces together.” This makes me feel hopeful because I have many fragments in my writing. I have parts of things that aren’t whole. I have vignettes. There are subtle or vague bylines and character ties, but I feel that there will have to be a lot of piecing together at some point. The notion that this is part of the process is comforting to me. I am at the stage where I have to just get the ideas out. Then I can sort through the rubble and make some sense of it.

On the critical side, I found the opening line of Csikszentmihalyi’s The Flow of Creativity: “Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, but in one respect they are unanimous: They all love what they do,” to be a bit problematic. There are three main reasons that I felt uneasy about this assertion. The first is that I know creative people who are not happy, even in their “flow” state. The second is the amount of variables Csikznenmihalyi lists as part and parcel to achieving a “flow” and therefore the resulting happiness. There are nine elements of enjoyment and seven conditions for flow, which are altogether sixteen variables that without the existence of all leave much room for unhappiness. The third reason is the existence of seemingly disparate definitions. The definition of creativity as “the production of novelty” or “recognized importance of novelty” suggests a certain frivolity and indulgence in an activity that is by definition of the word novelty a valuing of something transitory and decorative. This condescending word choice does not agree with the idea at the end of the chapter that “creative individuals live exemplary lives.”

People whom I have met that participate in “creative” endeavors are not always happy. In fact, I have heard of writers saying that they write in order to be done with writing. It is a sort of cleansing that must happen, or a burden they were given to bear the brunt of until it has passed through them into a tangible form. These descriptions, even of creative flow, are painful and not at all happy. Even if Csikszentmihalyi’s argument stands that the happiness comes after the “flow” practice and that happiness is an “indulgence” left for after the hump is gotten over, it is not a guarantee that happiness will result. Even if an individual is completely engaged or “saturated” by their endeavor to create, when the state is broken and reality sets back in, the overall achievement of the artist or creative mind may not be enough to create a feeling of happiness. Elizabeth Gilbert argues that “self-forgiveness” is important, a part of the process that Csikszentmihalyi doesn’t even engage with. Gilbert claims self-forgiveness is essential “because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you.”

Although many factors are listed as conditions for “flow” and elements of enjoyment, it seems that Csikszentmihalyi has left out an explanation of how one might optimize or create them or in the case of negative interferences avoid or diminish them. For instance, enjoyment is dependent on nine elements, according to Csikszentmihalyi. One of these is “there is a balance between challenges and skills.” How is one to create this balance? Or does it just exist on its own? Is enjoyment only possible when all nine elements of it are spontaneously and simultaneously occurring? It doesn’t seem that it could be very often that all of these elements are present and that the seven conditions for flow are also present. These variables make me wonder if happiness is quantitative in Csikszentmihalyi’s terms. Does happiness come from each experience of these variables being present simultaneously or is happiness the overall effect of a lifetime pursing these experiences and perhaps only stumbling upon a handful?

The idea of artistic expression or creativity as being a “novelty” is diminutive and offensive. It is incongruent with the assertion that Csikszentmihalyi makes at the end of the chapter that artists live exemplary lives. A novelty is an item or pursuance of value due to aesthetics. This definition diminishes artistic pursuance to a life driven by material importance and surface value, the opposite of what Csikszentmihalyi claims are the aims of creative individuals.