How Writers Get in The Zone (or, What We Can Learn About Transcendant Creativity From Basketball, the Tao Te Ching, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)
BlogTV Discussion Member: How do you get in “the zone”?
John Green: I don’t know. But when I do, it feels really good.
We all have moments of it.
People dub the experience with different names – Flow, The Zone, The Groove. Whatever you call it, when that fate smiles on your clumsy little noggin, you feel transported and greater for it.
One particular ZOMG Hallelujahz! encounter I had with this godly force came on the basketball court at my alma mater. I was a 4th Year then (and yes, we were designated by years, like sad imitations of the Hogwarts crew). First of all, understand: I stink at b-ball – I’m a mediocre driveway hoopster at best. But on this particular day – for which, regrettably, there were no witnesses! – I, Mike “Clumsy Noggin” Martin, began to toss swish after swish following swish.
A photorealistic portrayal of me from my spring 2007 ZONE experience...'Kay, not really.
The satisfying snap of net echoed on the hardwood. I put up threes, two-pointers, foul shouts, layups, Granny-style, skyhook: Nearly everything arced, twirled, sank – hold your breath – snapped.
It was one of the most rewarding and enjoyable experiences of my life.
The pertinent question: Just how the crud was I doing that?
The only way I know how to describe it: I suddenly understood basketball.
Without thought, I knew exactly how hard to put it up, the precise arc each shot required.
When I left, I was shocked to find three hours had passed in the gymnasium. Time had seemed to move both much slower and in an eye’s blink. And as I headed out to the parking lot, I specifically remember thoughts were like this:
ZOMG, I are prodigy wif skills! I can be pro now, preeze?
I was back at the gym before seven o’clock the next morning.
And I couldn’t sink a freakin’ thing.
I was haunted and depressed (completely unjustifiably, by the way, as I was, in fact, at film school, and not a tryout with the Knicks). What had happened? What had I experienced before, and how had I experienced it before, and how could I get it back?
Come this point, you might be wondering, Okay Mikey, nifty tale, and I’m real sorry nobody saw you, but I trust you, and I bet you’re handsome and you’ll be in the NBA pretty soon. If Mugsy can do it, you can, too. But one thing - what does this have to do with writing tips?
To Which I Reply: Firstly, you humble.
And secondly – everything.
Getting in The Zone is something that can make your creativity soar. It is something Stephen King talks about as an almost mystical experience, something Thoreau ponders time and again in Walden.
And most miraculously, it is something, I have been blessed enough to find, that we can do a lot to control and induce at will.
“Story of a Girl” Analysis (or, What We Can Learn About Defying Audience Expectations from Sara Zarr, Robert McKee, and “Rashomon”)
I remember starting to read Sara Zarr’s blog in something like spring 2006 – I would have been a third year in film school, if I’m right. I was disarmed immediately by the emotional honesty of her blog: As an insecure young man in one of the most stressful colleges in the country, it was like a joyous epiphany for me to realize I was not the only one who believed, despite outward signposts of the opposite, that I was TEH SUCK.
Sara’s fictional work has the same indelible feeling of verisimilitude that simultaneously makes my heart expand in recognition, and crumble in empathy. In fact, for novel-writing pointers regarding moment-by-moment emotional truth, I don’t think there’s any greater example than her work.
But that’s actually not what I’d like to look at today.
Rather (as the title of this post very subtly hints), I’d like to consider What We Can Learn About Defying Audience Expectations from Sara Zarr, Robert McKee, and “Rashomon.”
Story of a Girl Analysis
When she is caught in the backseat of a car – with her older brother’s best friend – Deanna Lambert’s teenage life is changed forever. Struggling to overcome the lasting repercussions and the stifling role of “school slut,” she longs to escape a life defined by her past. With subtle grace, complicated wisdom and striking emotion, Story of a Girl reminds us of our human capacity for resilience, epiphany and redemption.
That’s a quick summary – thanks to Amazon.com – of Zarr’s debut novel. I recently reread Sara’s National Book Award nom’d Story of a Girl. I’d gotten it from the library in hardback before, read it shortly after it first came out; and while I loved it back then – and learned a lot about how to write a young adult novel from it – I don’t think I fully gave it its due. Because what I’ve come to realize is that Story of a Girl is one of the wisest thematic powerhouses I’ve read in quite sometime.
But before I get to that, I want to point a couple things out.
Mike’s Story (or, How I Learned To Stop Living In Isolation and Get Involved in the YA Community)
My name is Mike Martin – more accurately, Thomas Michael Martin, Jr. – and I’m a young adult novelist.
I know you don’t know me yet, so you don’t know the back story of how I’ve gotten to the point where I may emphatically state that last sentence. (More accurately, the last part of the last sentence. I’ve been able to say my name since the age of two, yo.)
I’ll be honest: It’s been a booming, jaunty, exhilarating, obliterating road to get to this point. So, as opposed to me just type-type-typing away at it, how ’bout I just give a Timeline of My Writing Life as an introduction?
– 1984. THE TERMINATOR, GHOSTBUSTERS, and INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM are released. Also, I am born. Good year.
– 1992. “Welcome to Dead House,” the first “Goosebumps,” hits the streets, introducing the Nintendo generation to horror archetypes. I read the tome and promptly fall in love with Jovial Bob Stine.
– 1993. I write my first story, a two-page epic concerning a young boy named (I-josh-you-not) Max Maxwell who is troubled by strange anomalies in his own reflection, such as a skull showing through his skin and horns piercing from his scalp. It builds to a riveting climax, during which I build suspense admirably. (“Max looked into the mirrer. There was something wierd about the mirrer. ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MIRRER!’ Max shouted suspensfully!”) At last it is revealed that a ghost is in “the mirrer.” However, a shocking lack of foresight causes me to ruin the ending in the title: The story was called “THE GHOST IN THE MIRRER!”
– 1994. I write another story, this time about an archaeologist slug. When I am allowed to read it to the class, it goes down a storm. (I vividly remember that during computer class, in between rounds of Jezzball, a sea of peers crowded me, inquiring when the sequel would be written.) For the first time in my life, I am popular. Then the teacher installs Math Blaster, and my day in the sunshine is through.
