The Writing Zone

When I was a child, I read a story in Ripley’s Believe it or Not that Descartes could only write if he held a cold dinner plate to the back of his head.  So, the story goes, servants would spend all day transporting cold dinner plates from the chilly basement up to Descartes’ writing room when he was writing.  I don’t know if the story is true or not, but it does illustrate the lengths that writers will go in order to be in ‘the writing zone” – to be creative.

For me, it’s an issue of space.  I have to have a quiet place to write.  I prefer a desk with a supportive chair, a locked door, hot coffee (in the day) or red wine (at night), and a certain solitude.  Some Sibelius doesn’t hurt either.  But I have written propped up in hotel beds, on trains, in planes, and in bars.  I always carry either a small notebook, or at the very least some 3X5 cards to write on, because you never know when some line will be whispered in your ear.  For example, the line “the hills go by like years” came to me while riding a bus in Nicaragua and looking at the distant mountains.  I jotted down that line in a small pocket notebook I carry, and later expanded it into the poem “The Hills Go By Like Years” in my book I Sing the Body Politic.  The rest of the poem is true too – the young woman riding the bus next to me searching through her purse for her cell phone while inadvertently touching me – which brings me to another reason for carrying a small notebook:  Most poems are based on a true, real life moment, and those moments pass by us very quickly.  Unless we write them down right away, we will forget them.  It’s like with dreams – if you write down a dream the second you wake up, you will be able to remember it later that day.  But if you don’t write it down, I guarantee that it will slip away from your memory.

I wrote in a previous blog (The Eight Rules of Writing) about the importance of having a regular daily schedule of writing.  Here’s a tip for creating that schedule:  The personality of most writers is that they don’t like working for bosses.  I certainly never did.  Most of us quit our jobs so that we could be full-time writers.  But quitting your job means that you’re working for yourself – that you are the boss of your writing self.   So act like a boss!   If you’re late getting to your writing desk, call yourself up and berate yourself for being late to work.  Remind yourself that you can be replaced!  Tell yourself to get your sorry ass to that writing desk and start earning your keep!  Do whatever it takes to get yourself into the habit of writing.  Writing is a pump that constantly needs to be primed.  The more you write, the more likely it is you’ll find that sweet spot – that writing zone.