When I’m writing and the words are coming, I’m in a zone. Do you know what I’m talking about? That zone where you feel you can work forever, because things are clicking along. Hours pass in a single breath and nothing interferes with your concentration. It feels good to concentrate like that.
Sometimes it doesn’t happen though. Sometimes I sit there with my mind rumbling and nothing coming out of my pen.
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Hi Ruth
This post jogged my memory. A few years ago I did some p.d. relating to ‘exemplary and effective’ teachers. That “zone” you mentioned is also known in psychological circles as “flow”. Thought you might be interested in this extract from my p.d.
THE NATURE OF EXPERTISE
Canadian researchers, Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia (University of Toronto) conducted an “inquiry into the nature of expertise” in 1993.
They found that regardless of the context – be it writing, academia, or sport – expertise is gained through:
1. Extensive experience
2. Constant reflection, and
3. An extensive repertoire of strategies.
They stated that:
• Expertise is a process of progressive problem-solving in which people continuously rethink and redefine their tasks. A future ‘expert society’ will not be a heaven in which all problems have disappeared, but a realistic utopia in which endless problem-solving will be a highly-valued part of life.
• Progressive problem-solvers stay healthier, live longer, and experience the intense mental pleasure known as ‘flow’. They repeatedly go beyond their well-learned procedures, avoid getting into ruts, and surpass themselves by reformulating problems at new and more complex levels. Yet many of our present institutions, especially schools, penalize expertise instead of cultivating it.
(Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1993, Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise’)
***** Flow is where you are so involved in what you are doing that you lose track of time – an experience of optimal fulfilment and engagement. Flow, whether in creative arts, athletic competition, engaging work, or spiritual practice, is a deep and uniquely human motivation to excel, exceed, and triumph over limitation. Satisfaction is gained as a result of the continual challenge to go beyond oneself as part of something greater than one’s own self-interest. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience)
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Yes, this happens to the best of writers out there! Just keep putting the pen to the paper or the keys to the keyboard and the works will come!
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I get into the zone so seldom that I truly love the work that come out when I do
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You bet Ruth,
The zone, when you are in it, it’s heaven. BUT it doesn’t always appear.
Bonnie
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