(This article uses affiliate links. If you click on a link that takes you to Amazon and you buy a product, we get a commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra.) In Meg Cabot’s All-American Girl, Samantha Madison is an artist, who loves to draw. When she talks about her art, she says:
When you are drawing, it is like the whole world around you ceases to exist. It is just you and the page and the pencil… When you are drawing, you are not aware of time passing, or what is happening around you. When a drawing is going really well, you could sit down at one o’clock and not look up again until five, and not even have any idea that so much time has gone by until someone mentions it, because you have been so caught up in what you are creating…
When you are drawing, you are in your own world, of your own creation.
And there is no world better than that.
The Flow
Mihály Csikszentmihalyi called this “the flow.” It is a state as Cabot describes it through her narrator, Madison. You can achieve this state through other endeavors, including sports, when solving a complex problem, and when participating in other creative activities. It is also known as “in the zone.”
‘All-American Girl’
All-American Girl is a quasi-romance seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old girl, who happens to save the President’s life. It comes with all the angst, worry, and love triangles that you might expect from the genre. It also faces the question of learning how to become one’s true self.
Creativity Notes
If you want drawing to be your thing, I recommend joining our Patreon and looking at the 2025 Advent Calendar for easy ways to draw Christmas. If you want to learn more about creativity, check out my books:
Penguinate! Positive Creativity 