The writing process can often be grueling. I would much rather have the advantage of those days when I know I’m “in the zone.” The flow of concepts, thoughts, ideas, sentences, and words come with an ease that makes it hard for me to keep up as I attempt to type. More often than not, I’m in anything but the zone. Outside of that illusive zone are disciplines and tools that are for the usual course of things; those times when we have literally to fight for anything meaningful and coherent. I have discovered three valuable reminders that when consistently applied can even take the zone experience to new heights: write frequently, focus, and use fresh eyes. Writing can get better as a result of writing more frequently.

Frequent writing allows me to get in touch with my natural inclinations whether strengths or weaknesses and provides me with the opportunity to strengthen those areas that leave a lot to be desired. It also allows me to understand the nature of my strengths and build on them. In so doing, I am able to cultivate an approach to the writing process that is unique to my idiosyncrasies. Further, frequent writing provides more opportunities to enjoy the productivity of that inexplicable zone. Writing can also get better as a result of coming to the task with focus.

Focus not only means that I have limited my writing tasks but also that I have spent time and energy preparing for the writing task. I have harnessed my mental and emotional energies and directed them to the time I have set aside for writing. Focus is a discipline that pays huge dividends because the more you do it the better you become at it. Its effects are cumulative; and when the zone unexpectedly opens up, focus reaches the apex of its intensity.

Writing frequently and focus, when consistently applied, have done wonders for my writing but fresh eyes are what take it to the next level. A common pitfall of the zone is that like the joke that bombed, it sounded good at the time but “I guess you had to be there.” Whether in the zone or not, time away from things recently written allows for me to read those things with fresh eyes. What appears gripping and engaging one evening may appear flat and dry in the next. I am not always successful in recapturing or recreating the stimuli out of which those immortal sentences were crafted but I am fully aware that were they published, they might well have gone on to live in infamy. Fresh eyes allow for temporary files to be deleted from the hard drive of my imagination. Fresh eyes allow for new perspectives to be unblocked by the cookies of a temporary state of euphoric meandering. Fresh eyes, like a magnet, draw the outlying fragments of disembodied cognition into the equilibrium of the everyday where they can be properly valued and understood.

I was thinking….This note may need some fresh eyes.