The effective writer’s personality is not at the center. Her talent isn’t at the center. Her ego and self-worth are not at the center. The writing task is at the center.

This is how writers can quiet the conscious self and all the inner chatter that is the origin of resistance. The better we direct our attention away from our own qualities – our expectations, nerves, reputation – the easier it is to lose ourselves in the creative flow. We can prevent ourselves from thinking too much about ourselves as writers or about the quality of any given day’s writing – which is death to flow performance.