The Zone or Believing in Serendipity

One of my dearest friends, The Queen-a Athena, and I have children attending religious education at the same facility on Wednesday nights. In the past, I would drop off the Chromos and go home. Last year, I borrowed a cue from the Queen-a and started taking my AlphaSmart or laptop with me. We sit together in the library and write. It's productive time for us.

This year, we rearranged our critique schedule (we're in the same crit group, too) so that we would have Wednesday nights open for what I call Wednesday Write Night. The facility's religious leader calls us The Wednesday Night Regulars.

For the past several weeks, I've been working on revisions that my wonderful agent and I discussed. It's editing. It's tweaking. It's not real writing. It's tedious, but it's part of the process, and I embrace it.

Tonight, I worked on a brand new scene. It was wonderful. As I typed, things happened in the scene that reflected events occuring later in the book. Parts of what I wrote tonight were conceived a few weeks ago, but as I wrote, other things happened. I'm a "pants-er" by nature, and tonight is why.

I was in The Zone. X-Chromo said I looked constipated. Queen-a said: "You were VERY in the zone. It was most impressive to watch."

I wrote 3.5 pages in 1.5 hours. If you knew the distractions (including a brief, hysterical conversation with Lars Olafsson), you would be amazed.

I miss The Zone, especially since it seems like I've been revising and/or rewriting forever.

A moment ago, X-Chromo came into my office and asked me if I believed in serendipity. She defined the word from a book she's reading (Boy Meets Boy): "All the random moments coming together to make one beautiful moment."

I realized that that is what happened tonight. Serendipity. The Zone.

For all you writers out there: May the Zone Be With You.