Zone

Wow! Here we are. The last day of the A-to-Z Blog Challenge and we’ve made it. The ups and downs have been worth it, just to say I’ve done it.

Today’s word is Zone.

One of the definitions of zone, according to The Oxford New Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, is ‘area having particular features, properties, purpose or use’. The writing zone is that place where the words just flow from your fingertips with little or no thought.

Writers seek the zone and can find it. Sometimes its luck and sometimes it’s not.

Tell any of your writer friends you found the zone and they all nod with understand. It is that moment that the world disappears and the only thing that matters is you and the words.

It doesn’t happen often, or at least not as often as we’d like. It would be nice if every time you sat down to write but too often the words come slowly. Or sometimes, not at all.

I’m not sure there is a “trick” to getting into the zone. I believe that a person can create habits that greatly increase the odds of reaching the zone.

Those habits include:

Writing daily – I find it best to write at the same time each day. Your muse responds to habit – usually.
Find other writers – Writing is often solitary and finding others who also write can shake up your own energy.
Create a ritual for writing – Using music, lighting a candle or the like can help you find the zone. I struggle to write if I don’t have a cup of coffee. I know things have been flowing well if the coffee is cold when I look up from my keyboard.
Read – Any time, all the time, when you aren’t writing. Reading books, whether they are nonfiction instruction type books, books in your genre or books out of your genre, can stimulate the brain to produce words.
Leave the inner critic at the door – Yeah, this is the difficult one. I’ve written about this before in this post.

These habits if modified a bit can apply to other things.

May all your words be written in the zone.

Have you ever written in the “zone” and how to you get there?