Saying “YES” to Creative Flow

This article is for: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced—i.e. ALL of us!

If you want to be creative, attitude is the most important thing.

By “attitude,” I mean how you act towards your own creativity and ideas: how you react to them, what you think about them, what you do with them.

If you work on making a helpful attitude, you’ll find creativity joyful, spontaneous, and easy.

Whereas if you have a few bad habits, you can use all the creative tips and tricks that you like, and you’ll still end up blocking yourself and stifling your ideas.

But what do I mean by “helpful” versus ”bad”?

Let’s figure that out by way of a theater game that goes by the silly name of “Zip, Zap, Boing.”

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Zip, Zap, Boing explained

In 1997, I decided to take a short course in improvisational theater. Little did I know that this course was going to contain a vital important moment in my life as a poet!

It came right at the beginning, when the instructor was teaching us games to get into a good mind-space. The first game he taught us was called Zip Zap Boing, and it changed my understanding of what was happening in my mind when I wrote.

Here’s how the game works.

(It’s a group game, so unfortunately you won’t be able to do this by yourself as you read, but maybe you can gather some willing friends/victims later and try it out!)

Players stand in a ring, facing in towards each other, and imagine that there is an invisible parcel of energy flying around the ring of people.

This parcel of energy can be passed from player to player with one of three movements:

Zip: In this movement, a player receives the energy from the player next to them, and then passes it on as quickly as possible to the player on their other side, by swinging their arms in the direction of movement while saying “Zip!” loudly and energetically.

In other words, a Zip movement sends the energy quickly in the direction it was already going. If all the players do only Zips, the energy goes around and around the ring in the same direction all the time.

Once people have practiced this a bit, the energy can really fly around the ring, and it gets quite dynamic!

Zap: In this movement, when a player receives the energy, they can choose to “Zap” it across the circle, to any other player except the ones standing next to them. When someone receives the energy from a Zap, they can choose to send it on to one of the people next to them as a Zip, or send it across the circle again as another Zap.

When a group of players is using both Zips and Zaps, the energy zooms around the ring in fascinating ways.

Sometimes it flows quickly in the same direction for a while, as a bunch of Zips follow one another.
Then suddenly and surprisingly it leaps across the ring in a Zap, where it may start another row of Zips, or it may just as suddenly end up jumping somewhere else again in another Zap.

When you’re learning this, at first it’s sheer chaos! People don’t know what to do, they forget the words, they hesitate, they panic, and the thing breaks down or goes too slowly.

But as a group of players gets used to the game and gains confidence, they can pass the energy around and across the circle in a rapid, exciting way for minute after minute.

It’s fun to watch and exhilarating to be part of. You feel like you’re on your toes all the time, ready for the energy, and also in tune with all your fellow players on an intuitive level, working hard together.

However, that’s not the end of the story, because there is one last movement:

Boing: This is a block, when a player receiving the energy chooses to refuse it. They cross their hands in front of them saying “Boing,” and the energy bounces back to whoever sent it to them. That player then has to Zip it or Zap it to anyone else in the circle, except the player who just said Boing.

I wonder if you can guess what Boing does to a game?

You might think that this would be just another movement like Zip and Zap, but actually its effect could not be more different.

A single “Boing” stops the game dead.

The intensity drops out of it, the group of players becomes a bunch of individuals and not a team working together, and the person who gets the energy back often is nonplussed and takes an age to restart things with another Zip or Zap.

So, a group of people who enjoy this game will generally try not to put in many Boings. On the other hand, someone who’s uncomfortable with the game can bring the whole thing to a halt by Boinging a lot.

Zip, Zap, and Boing: 3 ways your creative mind works

In the words of Dr. Seuss, why am I bothering telling you this? Because these three movements have direct parallels with three ways that your creative mind works.

And by making different choices about how you play your inner, mental game of Zip Zap Boing, you can fundamentally change your creative output.

Zip is Creative Flow

Zip—the movement that send the energy quickly in one direction only—is like those times when you are focused on a piece of writing, ideas are pouring out, and you feel like you could go on forever.

This is also called “creative flow,” and if you’ve ever sat down to write for 10 minutes and stood up 4 hours later having forgotten to feed cat, spouse, and yourself, you’ve experienced it!

It’s a deeply pleasurable and productive state and we can do very good work in it.

So we really want to be able to get a lot of Zip going when we write, if we can.

Zap is Associative/Creative Leaps

However, Zip is not the end of things. Sometimes your mind wants to take you in totally other directions, the way that Zap takes the energy across the circle. The Zip flow stops, and a new idea springs into your mind.

At this point, you have a choice.

Do you accept this new idea, and try to start off a new series of Zips—a new creative flow?

Well, this is certainly the best outcome. You will now start writing confidently about the new idea and probably create a better poem than if you had stuck to the original Zips and just kept going in the same direction all the time.

But maybe you’re not sure about this new idea. Maybe you really wanted to stick with the other one!

So maybe instead of a new Zip, you respond with a…

Boing: Creative Blocking

Boing is the “No thanks! I’m not going there!” of creativity.

You don’t want to try out the new idea—you want to go back to your old one! Or perhaps the new idea is threatening or disturbing in some way.

So, you refuse this energy, and try to go back to where you were, thank you!

Trouble is, you’ve killed the game.

Just as in Zip Zap Boing, putting this kind of block on doesn’t take you back to where you were—it stops the whole process.

And it can take quite a long time to get it going again, too.

The main moral: Accept everything

So, what’s the big message that I got, and you can get too, from Zip Zap Boing game? Simply this:

For the best creative results, try always to accept the ideas that come to your mind. Do your best not to block them.

That way, you’ll find yourself in a joyful game of Zip Zap and no Boing: new ideas coming freely, easily, and happily—more than you can possibly use in fact.

Your creative unconscious will learn that you value everything it has, and so it will cheerfully give you more and more material.

Meaning that your poems will get more and more interesting, varied, and profound.

But if you block yourself, you teach your unconscious not to trust you, and it will clam up like a suspicious toddler.

What does “accept everything” mean?

To be clear, “Accept everything” does not mean that every idea you get should end up in a poem.

Not at all!

You may find yourself writing down things that are too personal to share, for example. Or ideas that just don’t fit in your poem.

So no, you don’t have to share them with anyone else, ever.

But you do have to write them down.

That’s all I mean: write them down, instead of refusing them, because they’re weird or personal or obscene or sacrilegious or whatever. By writing them down, you satisfy your unconscious creative self—and then you can throw them away later!

But it’s also true that sometimes those “weird” ideas turn out to be your best ones, so don’t toss the out too fast!

Other lessons from Zip Zap Boing

Speed helps

Zip Zap Boing works best when it goes quickly, and so does your creative mind. The faster you can write down your ideas, the more energy you’ll generate.

Creativity gets better with practice

Players of Zip Zap Boing start off terrible at it and get better the more they play! Similarly, both acceptance and speed get easier the more you work at them. So don’t expect too much of yourself at first—just keep trying and watch yourself learn it!

Mistakes are normal and you can always restart

Finally, don’t worry if you do a Boing block! No mistake is permanent, and your creative unconscious is always willing and ready to trust you. Just start again.

Next Steps

Use this exercise to practice the Zip, the Zap, and hopefully not the Boing of your creative mind.

Pick a topic to think about. If you can’t think of one, use Water.
Start to make a list of words that go with your topic, one under another. Like this:
flow
stream
glitter
wet
canoe
Whenever you find one of your words sparks a chain of thought, stop listing words and start writing down what has come into your mind.
For example, suppose “canoe” sparks this: “The canoe on our yard hardly used too heavy for us to lift onto the car the scrapes in the paint still there but the few trips with it were lovely still and calm on the still calm water fingers scraping into the shining surface…”
This is like a series of Zips.
Keep doing this until
EITHER you run out of ideas to write down;
OR, you get a new idea that’s unrelated to the first one—a Zap!
If you get a Zap, start writing about your new idea (i.e. make a new series of Zips).
If you run out of ideas, go back to listing words until some more Zips start.
While you’re listing words, be prepared to allow the topic of the list to change, because that also is a Zap! Like this:
flow
stream
glitter
party
shining shoes
dancing…
If at any point you Boing yourself, just start listing words again.
Keep going with your Zips and Zaps until you feel your energy getting low and/or it’s not fun anymore. Then stop!