Hello, WriteByNighters,
Yesterday was 65 and sunny in New York City. It made me feel bubbly and creative. Inspired, even!
So I grabbed my writing materials and walked, whistling, to my
favorite spring/summer/fall writing spot, envisioning, befitting the weather and my sunny mood, a marathon session of unprecedented brilliance.
Of course I wrote about seventy words, all of which were stinky garbage.
That's a feeling familiar to all of you, I'm sure.
On my way home I got to thinking about whether that writing spot (which I talk about in more detail in this week's blog post) is actually a creative place for me or if I just like the view.
Is my comfort zone also a productive zone?
And then I passed a guy lying on a stone
wall, horizontal, on his back, holding a notebook in the air and writing in it, a 25-foot drop to his left.
I wondered if this dude was in his writing comfort zone or if, perhaps, he was in just the opposite, trying a
new position in a new place just to see if shaking things up a bit might shake up his writing.
(Maybe he wasn't even a writer. He could've been doodling clouds or unicorns or succotash. Just go with
me.)
So that's what I want us all -- yes, myself included -- to do in the next few days:
Write outside of your comfort zone.
Define it however you'd like: Location, genre, body position, time of day. Anything that is not what you typically do.
And while we're at it, what is your comfort zone? What's your typical writing setting? Time of day/week? Posture?
Because if you don't know your comfort zone, you won't know how to escape it.
