You know the feeling. You’re in the Writing Zone – the words are tumbling out so fast that your fingers can barely keep up as they flutter over your keyboard. You know you’ll need to edit later for perfection, but for now you’re content – thrilled in fact – to be producing. You feel like Stephen King (who advocates 10,000 words a day in his book On Writing). If you’re writing fiction, the characters you’ve created have taken on lives of their own and are leading the way, speaking to you in your imagination as clearly as if they were standing before your eyes. If you’re writing memoir, as I am, the memories are vivid and the larger meaning of each one seems crystal clear and the words to describe them seem to be hovering just below the surface, waiting for you to pluck them out and type them onto the page.
But what if you’re not in the Zone? What if the words aren’t flowing? What if you’re stuck so deeply in the writing muck that there seems to be no way out? Is there a way that you can get into the Zone? Is there a trick you can use to get the creative juices flowing? Or do you have to wait for the writing equivalent of divine intervention?
This question seems to be a central one for me as I work on my memoir. The first struggle for me, as it is for most first-time authors, is time. How do you carve out time amid full-time work, family and other responsibilities to put the proverbial pen to paper to write?
But what if you manage to surmount the time challenge to carve out an hour or two to write and then the words don’t come? Is there a trick to use to get into the Writing Zone? Is there a relaxation technique to clear your mind of the clutter that interferes with your writing? If you’re writing period fiction, do you watch a movie set in the period? Do you read other writing to inspire you? Or perhaps check out Wikipedia for facts on what you’re writing about to get you moving?
For me, I go back to what inspired me to start writing my book in the first place: the boxes of letters, unidentified family photos and other ephemera that remains from my mother’s mysterious life. I open a box and a whiff of stale cigarette smoke hits my nose, and I am instantly transported back to the days of my childhood. And that’s when I remember all the contradictions that abounded in my mother’s life and all the mysteries that confounded me about her and about my father.
And so, then, I write. But not always where I left off when I last wrote. But that’s okay. I keep a large electronic “notes” file where I keep my random thoughts, hoping to weave them into the book as they seem appropriate. As long as I’m actually writing, I feel like I’m being productive with the precious time I’ve carved out to work on my book.
So, what tricks do you use to get into the Writing Zone? Do you have a trigger that helps you to write? Do you have a special technique to overcome the blank page?
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