I was revisiting the first draft of a bit of future fantasy/science fiction I had written some month ago, and it just wasn’t feeling right. The flow seemed… stiff, here and there. This happens sometimes, in my experience, when you leave a bit of writing and come back to it, and you have a different… flow.

I don’t know what the technical term for it. I’m not formally trained in literature, which I do have some regrets about, but I also don’t like the idea of breaking down what an author does into infinitesimal bits because you don’t feel the flow. You get lost in details that really don’t matter as much as that flow.

Stephen King knows flow. I don’t know how he does it, but his most recent works are masterful with flow. I also like Stephen King because he can start with something inexplicable and weave it into a reality that is familiar to you. You find yourself just accepting some things. I do wonder how much he gets away with because his name is on the cover…

Douglas Adams, on the other hand – again, one of my favorite authors – has a clunky flow. You can feel it almost every time he got up from his keyboard and you don’t care because it’s a fun story and a fun exercise for a brain that has been in dire need of fun since the first brick was fired.

Of course, everyone may experience them differently, and that’s great.

But that’s what I am pondering today. Flow.