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.