In the Zone

We made it!

This is the last day of April and the last letter of the alphabet, which means the final post in the 2013 A to Z Challenge. Again, a big thank you to the challenge founder, Arlee Bird, I have had a blast this month.

Originally, I planned on writing a lame post with Zzzzzz as the title as I’m knackered and plan on sleeping for the next 7 days.

But, I didn’t like the idea of a cop-out post and flicked through the dictionary, desperate for another Z title. I read all the words out loud to see if anything inspired me and as I moved beyond Zone, my wife stopped me and said, “why don’t you write a post about when you’re in the zone.”

Why didn’t I think of that?

Over the course of the month, I written posts about forensic techniques to inspire your crime writing, posts about festivals and writing techniques that help me get into the writing zone. Challenges like this and NaNo help push you towards a target or an end goal, but does a target help get you into the zone?

I’m not sure that it does.

The A to Z Challenge has made me write daily, like NaNo does, but I wouldn’t say I’ve been in the zone whilst writing the posts. Few of them were written in one draft and when I’m in the zone, I don’t stop writing for anybody.

As a planner, I think I head into the zone when I feel at one with my characters. They tell me what they want to do next and I pour those words onto my screen. When I’m happy with the plot and everything is in place, that’s when I’m in the zone.

Whether it be a blog post, the next chapter of my book or editing the previous one, when I can concentrate on the subject and my muse is by my side, I can hit the zone and ride like the wind for as long as I can. NaNo and other challenges help, but without knowing my characters and without my planning, I don’t always reach the zone. When I do, there is nothing like it. 🙂

How do you get into the right ZONE for writing?

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This is my Z post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. A list of all my A to Z Blogging Challenge posts are to be found here.

So, at the beginning of this challenge I had the crazy idea to post photographs inspired by letters of the alphabet. Like it wasn’t already difficult enough to write a post about the alphabet, I had to go and complicate things.

Now the challenge is over I can admit that I had photographs of Abe, my much-loved and much missed cat, and Billy our first family cat lined up and NOTHING ELSE!

I had nothing and yet committed myself to this CRAZY Challenge on two fronts. Thankfully, I take a lot of photographs and my pictures folder on my laptop and my printer/scanner being on hand to include some older photographs from storage in our loft, meant I’ve managed to hit all the letters.

Well, all except this last one. Today’s photographs are from what this post was originally going to be: Zzzzzzzzz. Snooze time and a couple of picture of our Munchie is full-on nap mode.

Sleeping Munchie

Munch curled up next to me yesterday