WRITING IN THE ZONE—HOW TO GET THERE.

I believe a lot of elements of writing can be taught. An inexperienced writer who finds the right teacher, right for him or her I mean, can learn a lot about things like characterization, plot, setting, novel landscape, pacing, even to a certain extent paragraphing and sentences. Putting it all together in a unique and powerful way, though, is something the writer has to learn to do himself/herself. And so the reason writing programs give a lot of people MFAs who never publish or who publish very little. I got an MFA after teaching myself writing by reading (to me  the single most important thing besides writing itself a writer can do to improve) and writing. Did the MFA help my writing? Yes. Is getting an MFA for everybody? No. Some it won’t help. Some don’t need it. 

When I was learning the martial art Taekwondo I realized the importance of breaking down moves. We’d work on part of a kick and then another part and then another part. It would take a long time to put it all together and be able to do a kick right and then even longer to be able to use the kick in combination with other movements. It would take still longer to be effective sparring with the kick and other movements. Some people never could get there. They knew what they should do but they couldn’t make their bodies do it. Or they couldn’t let their bodies do it. Some people could do it fairly well. Only a few were really good.


Writing is even more difficult. Still, I think most writing’s moves can be analyzed  by isolating each aspect of writing and then improving them. Do this work with intension and find your way and you will write some good work.

Are there some parts of writing that can’t be taught? Sure. The writer’s unique way of looking at the world. The writer’s style, too, can’t really be taught though it can be developed. The writer’s particular feel for language is, I think, like personality. And there’s that one very magical part to writing (like with Taekwondo); everything has to work together when you've drafted and revised your work. The writer has to write with intension without thinking about what they're doing.

That’s the place a writer needs to get. A kind of forgetting. When athletes talk about being in the zone that’s what they're talking about. That's the secret. You have to learn everything you can about writing and then forget it when you get lost in the writing.

How do you get better at writing fiction fast? You identify your strengths and weaknesses.

  

How do you get better at writing fiction fast? You identify your strengths and weaknesses.

 

Let’s say you’ve been writing a little while. You’ve figured some things out. You understand the basics. However, you feel like your writing isn’t what you want it to be. You can’t seem to push it forward. Let me give you some advice that might help.

 

Recently, I was listening to a famous football coach talk about how teams build an identity; it made me think about writing. Coaches obsess over figuring out what the identity of their team is. They want to lean into their strengths and protect their weaknesses. Eventually, they want to find an identity and use it to put themselves in a position to be successful. 

 

Take a simple example; say you’re great at dialogue.

You might be the kind of writer whose characters just start talking in your head. You hear their rhythms, their half-finished sentences, their awkward pauses. You know how two people can say “I’m fine” five different ways and mean five different things. On the page, your dialogue crackles. Beta readers say, “I love listening to your characters talk,” or “I flew through that scene because the conversation felt so real.” Nice things like that.

 

That’s me. I love dialogue. I can do all kinds of things with dialogue.

 

If you recognize that you’re good at dialogue you might:

• Use more dialogue-driven scenes rather than long internal monologues.
• Let conflict unfold through conversation instead of exposition.
• Trim narration and allow characters’ words to reveal tension, backstory, and desire.
• Create suspense through certain conversations.

 

 

Suddenly, your strength isn’t just “something you happen to be good at.” It’s an engine that drives your storytelling. You make intentional choices that help you use dialogue to propel your story forward, develop character, setting, plot. 

 

If you identify you’re good at description or humor or tense situations that create suspense or whatever, you can intentionally put more of what you’re good at in your novel. You can use what you do best to write better stories.

 

Then there’s the other side. What do you do poorly? Maybe you struggle with pacing or description. You keep trying to get better, of course. But understanding what doesn’t come as easily for you (and most likely you don’t enjoy as much) will help you. Also, understanding you struggle with some aspect of writing might help you understand how to improve it. For example: DESCRPITION.

 

You know the room your character walks into. You can see it clearly in your head: the crooked blinds, the ugly carpet, the stack of dishes in the sink. But on the page, you write:

She walked into the kitchen and sat down. You aren’t present in the imaginary room you imagined.

SO, no sensory detail, no sense of place. The scene could be set anywhere, and your reader feels it. They’re not grounded. They feel like they’re floating in white space, listening to voices with no bodies in a room with no walls.

 

So you pay attention to this and you make sure they’re grounded. You do it even if you can’t make it really strong. You don’t try to write long, flowery descriptive passages. Instead, you focus on short, precise, functional details.

• That way, you’re not ignoring a weakness; you’re containing it. You do enough to keep readers grounded without repeatedly shining a spotlight on an area where you’re less confident.

This is the heart of writer identity: you don’t pretend you can do everything equally well. You build around what you do best, and you design strategies to keep your weaknesses from derailing the work.

Learning your identity as a writer might mean realizing:

• You write tight, clear prose but struggle with complex plots.
• You’re great at internal monologue but shy away from action scenes.
• You have a gift for worldbuilding but your characters feel thin.
• You’re strong on structure and theme but your line-level writing is flat.

None of these are fatal flaws. 

Lean into strengths

• Become someone who writes character-driven stories, or twisty plots, or atmospheric settings.
• Choose projects that suit your natural tendencies instead of always fighting against them. Certain genres favor fast-moving narratives with sharp dialogue. Others favor long descriptive scenes.
• Train your weaknesses—strategically
• Study authors who do well what you struggle with and imitate small pieces.
• Ask readers for specific feedback: “Did you feel like you were in the room?” “Did the scene feel slow?” “Could you picture this character?”
• Design around your blind spots
• If pacing is hard, outline more deliberately.
• If endings are hard, sketch them early and write toward them.
• If description is weak, make a checklist for revision: “Can I see the room? Hear anything? Smell anything?”

 

The point isn’t to lock yourself in a box and say, “I am only this kind of writer.” The point is understanding your weaknesses and strengths can be a superpower when you’re writing, especially in revision.

 

When a team can identify strengths and weaknesses they know which situations favor them and which don’t. They’re still imperfect, but they know who they are, and that makes them more equipped to handle various aspects of a game.

 

When you identify your strengths and weaknesses you will become a better writer.