The Happy Zone

One thing I haven't really talked about on this quasi-writing quasi-demented blog is the Happy Zone, the name of which I just made up. Very clever, no? And what is the Happy Zone, you ask? Well, for me it's that special zone you get into when you're writing and everything is going more or less fluidly. Also, it's pretty much the best and most democratic thing about writing in general.

Writing is sort of like wrestling the Hulk, but the Hulk is inside you, and the Hulk doesn't want to sit down and pay attention. The Hulk wants to watch TV and play Xbox and run outside to the nearest tree fort. The Hulk no like sitting still and writing five pages. The Hulk smash puny keyboard! SMASH SMASH SMASH!

You see what I'm talking about, here? It's hard to concentrate and write, not that fun at all, really, at least at the beginning. But then you finally start writing something, anything at all, and that paragraph builds into the next paragraph, and soon you've stopped throwing pens around the room and watching the cat sleep and ladies and gentlemen you've left your physical body and entered THE HAPPY ZONE! You're writing, and writing, and it feels good, and suddenly you've got your five pages or whatever thou goal may be and you can get up and go back to reality, exhausted but mentally purged.

Hopefully, if you make writing a daily habit, you can get to the Happy Zone most of the time. For me, the Happy Zone is when you start listening to an album at the start of a writing session, write all the way through it, and keep on writing once it's finished playing without even noticing the music's stopped and you're now writing in perfect quiet. And, like sex, you don't even need to necessarily be good at writing to enjoy it, as long as you go about it in an earnest and energetic manner. Anybody who makes the effort to write can get into the Happy Zone, and you don't need a goddamn publisher to give permission to enter it. The Happy Zone exists above Space and Time, waiting inside your own heart and mind for you to make the effort to visit.