My first year of college, I took a seminar on play, art, and creativity. We spent a lot of time talking about the idea of flow — getting into that state of immersion and engagement, when you’re so deeply focused on what you’re doing, whatever it happens to be, that everything else disappears, and there’s only the task at hand.
The thing about flow is that it requires self-motivation. No one else can put you into that state; you need to get there on your own, by plugging yourself into a task that makes you feel good.
“There's this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the fathers of positive psychology, said in a 2008 TED Talk. “You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.”

When you’re in a state of flow, you’re doing the work, and it doesn’t feel like work. You’re in the zone.
I have not been in the zone. For like…a while.
Creative work is work, regardless of what the “get a STEM degree!” crowd insists. It takes energy, it takes motivation, it takes, at the end of the day, effort. The beauty of that flow state is that it doesn’t feel like effort, because you’re so plugged in to what you’re doing that there’s only the task at hand, and everything else fades away into the background. But when you’re not in that state, it’s hard. It’s a struggle. We push through it, because it’s our job — in one way or another — but, as they say on the internets, the struggle is real.
But.
A few newsletters ago, I brought up a quote from Toni Morrison, one I’ve seen over and over the last few months:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
As creatives, the desire to make something — anything — is what connects us. Whatever form our creativity takes, from art to writing to music to food, we’re united in our impulse to turn what we’re feeling into something tangible, something that can be shared with others to move them in the same way we ourselves have been moved. When that yearning to create hits a block, we feel like the thing we’re good at doing, the thing we’re supposed to be doing, is suddenly out of reach.
Don’t get me wrong — I’ve done my share of writing where I’ve had to drag the words have out kicking and screaming. But there’s a difference between pushing through a challenge and slamming into a wall. Writer’s block, a creative slump, executive dysfunction; all of these take our creative energy and drain them to nothing, until we’re staring at a blank page — literal or metaphorical — with nothing to put there. If flow is sunshine, bodies and minds full of the bright warmth of energetic creation, then these moments, here, are the rainy days, where the chill seeps into our creative bones. Some rain is cleansing, restorative, healing, but this is a soaking rain, caught-without-an-umbrella rain, splashed-by-a-car-driving-through-a-puddle rain, rain that leaves us waterlogged and heavy, waiting for a break in the clouds that never seems to come.

I’ve been in the rain for what feels like months. I don’t know how to make myself create when my brain is playing an endless loop of the world’s worst hits of genocide and bigotry and pain, and every day seems to bring a brand-new edition of “the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” The generative grief I felt in October and November has burned itself out, leaving only an exhausted, chronic mourning fog, thick and heavy and exhausting.
I think a lot these days about Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes’ Let This Radicalize You, and the titular quote: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.” Creativity is radical: it inspires us, it moves us. In these moments, the ones where, as Morrison says, artists go to work, we should be striving to turn ourselves to the energy of radical creativity, rather than the despair of stagnation.
And yet I have to believe, too, in the parable of the choir: The belief that when we sing as a chorus, it doesn’t matter if one or two people must pause to take a new breath — the chord itself goes on. If this applies to our activism and our organizing, then it must, too, apply to our creativity.
Creativity does not exist in a vacuum, and no creative work exists alone. Each creative work, whatever form it takes, joins an existing conversation, community of creation. I have to believe that a creative work comes into the world at the moment it’s needed most, and not a moment before. We don’t have to be in constant flow, and neither do we need to force the work from our hearts before it’s ready, just to say we did.
I have to believe that eventually, the downpour of exhausted, chronic, unending grief will give way to a more healing, nourishing rain. And that someday, the sun will shine again.

questions on creating for good
Where is your sunshine?
When was the last time you got into flow, and wat stands out about that experience? What were you working on? What was it about that project that made you feel motivated and energized? How did it relate (or not) to your values and what you care about in the world?
What happens on your rainy days?
How do you notice a difference between energizing versus paralyzing grief, anger, or other negative emotions? How do those different feelings impact your ability to create? Your creative process?
How are you staying dry?
How are you caring for yourself, your creative spirit, and your communities in this moment? Who are your supporters?
How are you making sure that when the weather brightens once again, you’re there to greet the sun?
updates from shelly
It’s time for another Goodreads giveaway! 😍😍😍 From May 13 to May 28, you can enter to win one of 10 print ARCs of Rules for Ghosting. You can also add R4G to your “want to read” list — it tells my publisher that you’ve got your eye on it, and will hopefully make them more likely to buy all of my upcoming books!
Rules for Ghosting is also available for request on NetGalley! I’m not allowed to read the reviews, but my publicity team tells me that good NetGalley reviews are super helpful, so if you’re over there, please give it a read! It’s very funny, and there’s a very nice dog.
Also, some fun news: We’ve got a launch event in the works! Details still to come, but know that it will be in a very wonderful community book space, and feature an extremely cool bisexual icon. Stay tuned for more!
resources, links, and further reading
spotlight on: resisting despair
read:
“Let This Radicalize You: Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba on Their New Book for Radical Organizing” (sarah baum in The Nation)
“10 steps to becoming an imperfectionist” (
for )“Creative activism 101: An antidote to despair” (ian mcintyre for The Commons Social Change Library)
watch: “Flow, the secret of happiness” (TED talk by Mihaley Csikszentmihalyi, PhD)
donate: center for artistic activism