How do you get into flow state writing? by Kyle Phoenix

I write.

I’ve read a lot of books on writing. One of my favorites, I found and read by accident, it’s by a little old lady. 

https://amzn.to/46znK3Z 

A Time To Write by Louise Grace Erdman

I’ve read all the others. (Personal Pet Peeve # 473—-when people suggest to me, a teacher, general books that everyone has read. Esoteric books, bring it on. King, Moseley, others on writing—-read it. Or other topics—-like business or African American culture or history or world history or women studies or LGBT stuff—-I own 5000 books, I’m sure 5000 more read—-trust me, I’ve read it.)

So writing for me is the summation of what I see/experience. Generally dreams.

I had one this week about—-a cult, I think—-they were wearing track suits.

But see my dreams aren’t like hey, what’s that monkey doing on the ceiling?

My dreams are: Go to work tomorrow, if you work at an office, go into the office, folk come over, papers are handed to you, you scan some emails, blah blah blah.

That’s what my dreams are like.

Less like dreams and more like consciousness sharing of another person’s reality. (No, I don’t know if it’s valid super power because I can only do it while asleep. Which yes, puts me up there with Franklin Richards in Power Pack.

(Some guy, it’s generally a White guy, will fill the comments section about how Franklin Richards is so much more powerful and don’t I know blah blah blah blah. I’ve had over 50k comic books in my lifetime. I often wonder if people really take in people who have written stuff, know stuff, kind of look at them and realize—-you don’t have to tell most of us the basic stuff. I digress…or do I? (Yes, that was a Peter David reference.))

I suspect the consciousness sharing is multiple things at the same time. I think one it’s bridging from one multiverse to another. Again, no deep incredible spectacular things occurring other than observing.

I think secondly, sometimes it’s my own imagination rearranging some things—-sometimes I can actively nudge an idea, a thought, a reality.

I am both observer and creator.

I then wake up and I jot down these ideas—-I have two ways I do it.

One I have notebooks, just for “dreams” that I try to get down as much of the overall “idea” as possible—-fragments, thoughts, colors, impressions.

Secondly, sometimes I type things into story form.

No 3D

In typing or handwriting in story form I can then build more, conversations, dialogue, descriptions, I clean up little bits and pieces. I pass on to another character, story idea.

I started writing up this whole track suit cult thing and I wanted to capture the cruelty that this woman was doing to the initiates. But at the same time the initiates were somehow undercover into this cult.

Yup, all in the singular dream.

Wackier still, it was a lot of White folk, one Black guy. It was like watching a 3D movie (which is why I have never interacted with a 3D set up nor drugs. Got to keep the mindscape purely unto itself, I am sovereign unto myself. Especially mentally.)

That’s him!

Start typing it up and I start grooving to the idea of flogging and having read all of Csikszentmihalyi’s work, I’m all in there, I know what I’m in, I know what flow is, and it’s a minute, ten minutes, an hour, two hours.

And I’ve got 10–15 typed pages.

Now within the context of that flow, typing up that scene in the room with that lady and seven other folk and her handing them something—-I took it farther—-and I’m thinking about multiple works as I’m typing up this piece. Rarely is one work completely unto itself in a raw typing/handwriting.

See, my work is like the whole island of Manhattan.

My work, my writing work, is the island of Manhattan.

Each story is a block.

Each book an avenue. Some books are neighborhoods.

So when I’m writing about this cult thing going on, I’m writing it from a mental helicopter and I’m looking down at the island of Manhattan that is Kyle’s works in progress—-all lit up below me—-and I’m thinking to myself is this its own section, its own piece or more insanely am I writing a chunk of something that is part of another already in progress piece?

Huh.

I have found that often as I doubt my creativity—-doubt isn’t the right word—-that I think to myself—-hmm, this is reductive or banal—-that what invigorates me about a piece is when I assemble disparate parts together.

Now, that’s interesting.

I’m writing a horror novel Mbube Mbube. Hmm could it fit there?

I’m writing a trilogy Race War, 3 Books, could it fit in there?

Wait, wait, wait, I have a 12 book series, Myriad, that I’ve mapped out and written some chunks of—-maybe, there?

Hmmm?

Then I was watching something and thought to myself, why not try and link up some of my work through some of the characters that have moved through the multiverse? How could I do that?

Does the 12 Book series—-Myriad—-could that be like the tree root/trunk that touches elements and chapters in the published and available on Amazon: Stay With Me, Hush, S, Puzzle, Mbube Mbube books?

I also have another faint idea for a book—-Holocaust that might be attached to Mbube Mbube. Hmm, maybe there?

What is Flow Then?

Flow is not simply productivity/production, the word to the written page, to the typed page, it’s also reaching your fingertips, your mindscape up into the ether, to the Universe itself and allowing it to seep into your ears, up your nose, down your gullet and chewing it, recognizing it as another universe, the multiverse, or the ascension to a God within one’s own mindscape and reassembling bits of collected reality into a story line.

I don’t know where the pieces will end up, I trust the Universe to bring me more as I open files, to bring me bits and pieces and truths and lies.

I’ve tried audio recording my words—-writing—-transcribing my thoughts. Doesn’t work.

What I am experimenting now with in the eventual launch of a podcast is 30 minutes of discussions, stream of consciousness about how and what a book is, how I conceived it, how it got to be, what I think worked and didn’t, that challenged me.

The work itself must be explored and questioned and then from the helicopter you drop in a whole new block to the neighborhood and command the neighborhood to sew itself together, to become interesting.

Flow is attaching to the frequency, the ephemera of the Universe itself and dreaming the dream of the Dreamer and recognizing that you just might be consciousness sharing like a little White boy in comic book or in a helicopter over an imagined mind palace of a Black man. lol

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow

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