Your Comfort Zone

What's your comfort zone?

You wake up at a certain time, day in and day out after having been to bed the night before at the same time night in and night out. You eat the same thing for breakfast, use the bathroom at the exected tiime, maybe exercise, shower up, dress, head to work, come home, Netflix, bed. Rince, repeat ... until the day you don't wake up. Unless of course, you get hit by a bus. Metaphorically speaking. Oh the drama.

No one's more guilty of adhering to the daily scheduled comfort zone than I am. I need it as a writer who's required to put out a certain word count everyday. It's all about the content.

But there are times where the comfort zone has to turn into the uncomfort zone. Times when there's no coffee, no hot water, no sleep, no decent food, no TV and for God's sakes, no internet. You eat somel eafy greens or you do something really stupid like brush your teeth with tap water or choose to use ice cubes in your your Coke and you end up you spending some quality one on one time with a fly infested roadside toilet. Don't forget to bring your own TP. But you can always get a Coke. No matter where you go in the world there's Coke and Pepsi. Talk about the comforts of home.

Some people need the seadside vacation. Some people go to Paris only to shop in the same stores they shop in back home. Nothing life changing in that. But who am I to knock it?

I'm presently in the uncomfort zone pounding out this blog awaiting what I hope is a decent cup of coffee. I have entirely zero expectations.

I love it. My writing will too.

www.vincentzandri.com

So what are you gonna write about?

So what are you gonna write about?

That's the question I almost always get when I tell people I'm here in a place like Romania and destinations beyond to gather research for a new novel. In this case, probably a Chase Baker thriller. I always answer them the same way.

"I haven't got a clue."

Then comes the scrunching of the forheard and the squinting of the eyes.

"How can you not know what you're gonna write about?"

That's when I really freak them out by saying, "I just write in the dark."

Now the brow scrunching and eye squinting is followed by a shake of the head and a confused grin.

"How do you see the words on the page in the dark?"

No one actualy asks this but I know it's what they're thinking. So before they can get another word out, I just tell them the truth. That I usually come up with a working title and a general plot concept and start writing. Amost always, the words flow through me like electricity through wires.

In other words, I'm not a writer so much as a conduit. Now how weird but cool is that?

www.vincentzandri.com