The Zone

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
Gaston Bachelard
***

So you’re sitting there looking at the blank screen. You’re either drifting off into the zone or you are actually reading what I’ve written.

The zone, you ask? What is that? Well that is the place that your mind goes when you’d rather be someplace else, doing something else. You know, the zone! Writer’s have a tendency to weave in and out of the zone. We like to visit it as a place of solace when we’re bored and in our zone, this is where some of the best story ideas come into our head.

A story idea came to me this morning while I was in that place of hidden treasures. It came at me like a lightning bolt grazing the ground and I need to write down the idea before I let this one get away.

There is your tip for the day. Get out of the zone and write those ideas down before they slip away into the abyss. The abyss is a dark place where all our thoughts and idea’s go and are sometimes unretrievable. (Is that even a word? Those squiggly lines are appearing making me think I’ve just made up a new word, for crying out loud! Okay, the word I want is irretrievable! DUH!

Now where was I? The squiggly lines...no no that’s not it, the zone. Yeah I was in the zone thinking what a gray day it is and how much I’d like to be out walking so I can harvest some story ideas on my walk.

No no, I was telling you, my readers, about the zone. Do you remember sitting in school, a really boring class and you zoned-out of what the teacher was saying and went into this world of make believe? Thoughts of the previous day, possible thoughts of the next day? Maybe even a fantasy of a whole different world! THAT’S the zone!

I knew you were one of those people, okay maybe a few of you are one of those people. What? You are ALL one of those types who visit the zone? Yay! Maybe I’m not crazy after all.

There in the zone lay a treasure trove of thoughts and ideas that need to be written down. Get out your pen and paper, open up you MS Word, excel, whatever you use. Open the screen up so you can get those ideas out of the zone and onto your screen where they will soon leap up at you making you want to dig deeper and then write about what the hidden archeologist in you has found.

I’ll assume we all have an innate consciousness where we know there is more planted than meets the eye. The only way to find out is dig dig dig until you unearth something of value. Whether it is fiction, non-fiction, fantasy,sci-fi, write the idea down, go back to the page every now and again and see where the zone will take you after reading that one sentence.

Okay people, come back to this post you’re reading and get OUT OF THE ZONE!

Write Write Write!

Writer's Block

The wall that we hit as writer's is called Writer’s Block ~Repeat after me...I will not write, I will not write. Your mantra for when you suffer from WB.

We’ve talked about inspiration, motivation and all of the good stuff that makes your writing flow, but we haven’t touched the brick wall that writer’s hit in their writing routine.
Writer’s block isn’t just merely a hindrance in your writing it is a sudden blankness that covers you like a wet blanket adhering to your skin. You try to shake it off but it clings not wanting to give you any mobility

The old Block comes when you least expect it. You’ll be on a roll writing your heart out and one day you sit down and the vacant page stands up shouting out to you like a humongous abysmal billboard. It screams for something to be on it, yet you drive by glancing at it with your head out the window like a lost puppy with his ears flapping in the wind.

You begin daydreaming of what you should be doing (and that’s writing) but nothing comes, so you sit and stare hoping for some inspiration. Writer’s block can last a day, a week or sometimes a month! (YIKES) As you can see I’ve had it once or twice myself. I’ve never had it as bad as Mr. Henry Roth, author of Call it Sleep, whose block lasted for sixty years!

The day begins in anxiety and ends in frustration. I have a little trick I’ve tried and told a friend about who tried it and it worked for BOTH of us in overcoming the block!

First I relaxed my mind, I started the day by cleaning the house and not thinking of writing at all. I told myself the little mantra, "I will not write, I will not write." As I was cleaning, I had to dust the desk and keyboard. I gazed at it like a one-eyed cyclops, "Nope, I’m not writing!"
I continued trudging along with my day like not writing was nothing new, ignoring all the pings and pangs of anxiety, I just released all the tension through scrubbing and vacuuming. Boy did my place shine that day!

The next day I had nothing to clean, so I sat at my keyboard and blank screen. Did I write? You betcha! I couldn’t STOP writing! I went on and on about how my house cleaning went. Then I wrote about my elderly neighbor who was walking her dog again, and I wondered what her lonely life must be like being a widow, living alone in a big old house, how she must feel facing everyday without Henry, her husband.

Before I knew it I had a short story of almost 3,000 words or more!

Mind over matter can be a strange thing. You can trick your mind into believing something so absurd as, "I will not write." And before you know it, your talent licks you in the face, yup like a puppy again, and you’ve freed yourself from the imprisonment of The Block, Writer’s Block, (not the cell block.)

Inspiration

"Inspiration is the beauty we see in the everyday world that makes us have an intimate relationship with the awesome power of...ourselves."~joni

Now where, as writers, are we going to find the inspiration to carry us through a short story, article or novel? We need to look deep within our artistic self, get a glimpse of a character and build a house.

Take a log cabin for instance. In days of old, it was built one log at a time. They had windows and doors that allowed for a view and expansion of the outer world. Now, think of your story as a log cabin, building it one word at a time. Climb through the doors and windows of your imagination allowing the words to flow like silk in the wind.

First you’ll need a character. I like to find mine in everyday people that I see as interesting. Whether it’s a man walking a dog, or a woman jogging, or even a waitress serving food.

There are many circumstances that can lead to inspiration of a character in your story. You don’t need to pick any special person. Just pick out five people in a day that you have encountered. A policeman? A teacher? A businessman? Now give him/ her details of your own. Let’s mold him into who WE want him to be.

After you mold this character, give him/her a job to do. Is she a mother struggling on welfare with three kids? A father working seventy hours a week trying to pay for his six children?

Now lets build a plot, add some conflict, make the tension rise like a mountaintop peeking out of the clouds. Then slowly bring your character down the mountain and resolve any unfinished business. You now have a story to work with.

Like many people, ideas don’t just come from the rain falling on the ground and making a puddle. We need inspiration to move us along. If you’ve stumbled upon what to write, finding writing exercises usually helps alleviate the tension of not having a word on the page. (The link to your left, Pumping Your Muse, has EXCELLENT writing prompt ideas to get you motivated.)

Sometimes going through the dictionary and picking out ten words (related or unrelated to one another) can spawn a mecca of ideas. Don’t let the blank white space in front of you make you run for shelter, instead pick 10 words at random and build your log house to make it a wondrous story that you can tell all your friends about.

Once you’ve gotten your house built, furnish it with people and furnishings of whatever era your tale is set in. Now sit at the desk, (that you’ve placed right next to the window) and dream your way into the clouds, flying high above the earth. Do you see the world through different colors? I bet you do. I bet your imagination has taken on its own entity and is now inspired to roll right along, like a wagon wheel of motion.