The zone is a great place for a writer to be in; but it's so difficult to get there. And once there, you don't want to be pulled out of it for anything - visitors, phone calls, a favourite show; nothing.
However, it's the strange things that keep you from staying in the zone for too long. Usually there's the good old toilet break, you get hungry and then there's family coming home from school or work... then you have to break from your worlds of your creation and see them. It's like coming out of a dream, waking up from a long sleep - you're a little out of it, a little sleepy, but once you've sat down to dinner, you're okay.
Just okay... your brain is still churning over what you've written and saved on the computer, or on the typewriter upstairs in your office.
Yeah, that zone is a place of safety you create and it's wonderful to get there and stay there for as long as possible.
However it can also be very destructive as well. It can be the wall, the huge valley, the wedge which builds between a loving couple who started out okay, but then one of them starts writing a book - or a series of books - and the zone becomes something of an interference.
The writer stops coming to bed at the same time as their partner.
The writer starts thinking of strange things and keeps lots of notebooks about strange ideas - most of them have nothing to do with the family and a lot to do with off-world planets or fantasies.
The partner feels as though they're being left out of the writer's life - or at the very least a major part of it.
And this is where some of the zone can make people feel as though the writers of the world are lonely people. However, we're not. We have our own worlds which we have created, and we have our own circles of friends and publishing people we communicate with on a regular basis. There's also artists and other people we talk to all the time as well.
However, writers also have other activities outside their writing which most of the time, they do on their own. I love to garden, cook and paint as well as go driving around my home town just because I feel like getting away from my house - I don't care where I go, so long I get somewhere far away.
But at times, being in the zone is a great thing. I do find it difficult to get myself there most days; so when I am in the zone, I don't budge from my office chair. When the phone rings, it scares the crap outa me and snaps me back to reality. And the best thing about that phone ringing is that when I've hung it up and turned back to the screen and read what I've written, I'm regularly amazed at my work... and I often wonder how it all got there in the first place.
Aaahh, yes, the zone - a great place for the writer to be.
Until my next post, happy reading.
However, it's the strange things that keep you from staying in the zone for too long. Usually there's the good old toilet break, you get hungry and then there's family coming home from school or work... then you have to break from your worlds of your creation and see them. It's like coming out of a dream, waking up from a long sleep - you're a little out of it, a little sleepy, but once you've sat down to dinner, you're okay.
Just okay... your brain is still churning over what you've written and saved on the computer, or on the typewriter upstairs in your office.
Yeah, that zone is a place of safety you create and it's wonderful to get there and stay there for as long as possible.
However it can also be very destructive as well. It can be the wall, the huge valley, the wedge which builds between a loving couple who started out okay, but then one of them starts writing a book - or a series of books - and the zone becomes something of an interference.
The writer stops coming to bed at the same time as their partner.
The writer starts thinking of strange things and keeps lots of notebooks about strange ideas - most of them have nothing to do with the family and a lot to do with off-world planets or fantasies.
The partner feels as though they're being left out of the writer's life - or at the very least a major part of it.
And this is where some of the zone can make people feel as though the writers of the world are lonely people. However, we're not. We have our own worlds which we have created, and we have our own circles of friends and publishing people we communicate with on a regular basis. There's also artists and other people we talk to all the time as well.
However, writers also have other activities outside their writing which most of the time, they do on their own. I love to garden, cook and paint as well as go driving around my home town just because I feel like getting away from my house - I don't care where I go, so long I get somewhere far away.
But at times, being in the zone is a great thing. I do find it difficult to get myself there most days; so when I am in the zone, I don't budge from my office chair. When the phone rings, it scares the crap outa me and snaps me back to reality. And the best thing about that phone ringing is that when I've hung it up and turned back to the screen and read what I've written, I'm regularly amazed at my work... and I often wonder how it all got there in the first place.
Aaahh, yes, the zone - a great place for the writer to be.
Until my next post, happy reading.
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