Authenticity and Writing

One could say that there are two “zones” in writing:  an inner and an outer zone.  The inner zone is where the words come from, that well where we draw the water of life.   It’s a space that is totally personal, solipsistic, dreamlike, irrational, undependable, moody, creative, volatile, immoral, temperamental, and unpredictable.  I use the word “inner” only to identify it, because it’s almost as if the words come from a source other than ourselves.  When we are writing in that space, in that zone, we have no concern what other people might think.  We are just writing, totally oblivious to anything except the flow of words.

The outer zone is rational, analytical, grammatical, logical, careful, and methodical.  It is the zone we are in when we edit our writing, for example.  When we are in the outer zone, we are very concerned about the process of communicating with others – with those people who might be reading what we wrote.  We are sensitive to the look of the words, the sound of the words, and the effect of the words on the reader.  Many types of writing, such as technical writing, require outer zone writers.  This type of writing is concerned with communicating information.   But no one ever gets excited over technical writing. 

The only type of writing that I am interested in comes from the inner zone.  This type of writing is concerned with communicating experience.

You know the feeling you get when you read a poem or a passage that speaks to you – that says something that you have felt.  It’s not even the plot of the story that is important – many great stories have no plot – it’s the experience that is conveyed in the words of what you are reading.  Plots without experience are just travelogues.  Life is about experience.  Edit from the outer zone, but write from the inner zone.  Write experience.