In the zone

[Shadow_Ferret]

OK, we've discussed "Writer's Block" but how about the other end of the spectrum? Let's talk about, to borrow a sport's term, when you're "in the zone."

Have you ever found yourself writing on autopilot? Words, thoughts, ideas just flowing out of you from nowhere as though you were channeling someone else?

I have had this happen many times and it's often at a point where I've had "writer's block." Suddenly it's like a dam burst and my fingers are typing sentences and paragraphs and I'm really just along for the ride.

Often I have no clue where the ideas are coming from, it's not fully conscious thought, it's just happening and I'm vaguely in control.

Some of the more pragmatic among you will have a fully logical and boring explanation for this, I suppose. ;)

Me, I like to think that in these cases I'm simply an empty vessel and my "Muse" is control, filling me with creativity and ideas.

[PeeDee]

Sure, and those are the best moments in the world. Everything just spins out of you, you're hovering six inches off your seat, entire worlds are spinning through your mind and dancing out your fingers, and you don't have to do anything more than sit there and watch them take shape on the screen. When it happens, I sit, and I watch, and I smile a lot.

(I also get slightly dizzy, because my auto-pilot doesn't always breathe steadily in the excitement, which may explain the floating off my seat thing. Sometimes, it gives me hiccups. Very deep, artistically.)

[Maryn]

Oh, yeah. It's such a rush, to have it flowing from you as fast as you can type, faster sometimes.

Usually the fact that I drink coffee and eventually need to pee is what breaks it. Hunger and thirst never have.

Maryn, who's been looking for the zone for a while now

[PeeDee]

Usually, having to pee will actually get me INTO the zone. I guess I just do better with deadlines... :)

[P.H.Delarran]

Oh I totally get this way. I'm afraid someone will come drag me away for neglecting my kids, or lock me up for being obsessed with my keyboard. Or, (haha fantasy here?) one day my brilliant and awe-inspiring work will be so famous someone will do a biography on me and portray me as some lunatic who rejected reality for her craft.
Truth is, I rarely give in to the urge to write as I truly want to write, for fear I won't want to return to my real life. Seriously. I just babble on in my head, one day I'm sure it will all come spilling out.


~P.H. OK, I gotta go do laundry now...see ya...

[SusanR]

I love it when The Zone happens.

Every once in a while, something will crack open in the writing of my WIP, and it's like a giant wave. I can ride that wave for days (of lessening intensity) until it runs out. Then I twiddle, and type, and delete, and fiddle, and tinker until the next wave hits.

The one thing that seems necessary is that I have to be at the keyboard to get the wave in the first place. That's where discipline comes in.

But oh, how everything disappears during the crest!

SusanR

[PeeDee]

Usually, it's followed, for me, by several days of complete inactivity. Not because I run out of stuff to write (that very rarely ever happens) but because I wind up getting swept away by the rest of the world. It's my brain's precognative sense saying, "Look, this is all you've got for the next three days, get writing."