Writing Zones
A Journalist’s Diary
Zones are fascinating. Sports science uses zones to describe training intensities. Zones factor into focus acquisition in photography. They describe geographical areas of special (often military) interest. When we push ourselves, we get out of our comfort zones. Being in the zone means we work on something in deep concentration.
Today, I’ll share a sneak peek of the zone I’m writing about for my short stories. I couple that with a train observation that relates and finish with a few thoughts on what being in the zone means for me in writing and how I get into it.
The purple zone
Progress on the backstory for my short stories made me think about zones.
I completed most of the exploratory writing I wanted to do when I launched this little big project. The final bits and pieces transported me to a zone.
It’s a mysterious, nebulous part of space. And I mean nebulous. Two purple nebulas play a role just as much as some new characters I still have to flesh out. All I know is I have found the setting for the serial events that will carry the short stories.
There’s also an asteroid belt, science stations, and a single species protecting the region of space they’ve called home for thousands of years. The anonymous character I wrote about last week is part of that species. The working name is Witabax.
In the zone?
The eastbound train sits quietly in the station. It’s still a few minutes to departure.
A mother and son couple boards the train and heads for a four-set compartment to my left. Across the aisle sits a young Arab with long black hair and a sizable beard.
He inspects his phone’s screen, which displays a WhatsApp chat and an image of an e-scooter. The large screen makes it impossible to miss such details. He voice-chats to someone about the scooter and a potential purchase. The conversation cuts sharply through the silent air. But it doesn’t last long.
Back to the mother: she types on her phone with a focused stare. She chews gum, wears dark-framed glasses, and collects her long dark blonde hair behind her back.
Every once in a while, she looks at her son, who works with a children’s tablet.
The turquoise device sports chunky plastic bezels all around. I can’t make out what’s on the screen, but it appears to be a 2D game of sorts, like a left-to-right adventure game in the style of Super Mario.
Something moves left to right, jumps up, and falls. The boy interacts with the screen and the virtual environment depicted.
His black curled hair is long and reaches his shoulders. He wears a navy jacket and light blue jeans with holes around his knees.
Mom rests her right elbow on her brown handbag. It looks like a tote but with some gimmicks. A heavy metal zipper runs on the outside, and the lower section of the bag shows three rows of metal studs, like small earrings.
Next to the bag, she guards her son’s backpack, a dark item with a pixelated graphic that could speak to the boy’s interest in computer games.
The two sit opposite and haven’t spoken a word since entering the train. The devices in their hands occupy their attention fully. Even as the train enters the darkness of a tunnel, the two don’t move away from the screens for a second.
We leave the darkness behind, a lake below appears, and the woman finally looks up. She seems confused about the train’s progress and skims the window view and info boards for clues about where we are.
The latter is of no help. It’s shown nothing but the train’s terminal station since I jumped on board.
But something must have satisfied her curiosity because she moved her eyes back to the comfort of her phone’s screen.
Being in the zone
Those last few writing sessions felt comfortable. I was in the zone. The world around me faded away and became unimportant. My thoughts circled JJ, Witabax, the zone, and how I could use that setting to conjure up the theme for the short stories. It’s the zone that made it possible to get to this point, and it’s the zone that will enable me to connect the final dots and finish my pre-writing writing.
Getting into that zone can look different and depends on how I feel, what is around me, and the circumstances I have to deal with.
Sometimes it’s as easy as sitting down and starting to write. At times, I have to force separation from my surroundings with the help of headphones and music (classical music almost always helps me).
Sometimes, where I sit down to write makes a difference. Or what I use to write can help. Reverting to pen and paper, even if I know the end product needs to be typed, can be a worthy detour to ignite that creative spark.
As inconvenient as it may sound, I believe everyone needs to experiment and find what does the trick for themselves. But at the end of the day, it’s a mind-over-matter affair. You have to want to write and find the right tools that’ll get you into your zone.
I hope you found value in all that zone talk and haven’t zoned out. I have to return to the land of the purple now and leave you with the promise of a gentle push coming on Thursday in the form of a running update.
