Legal Commentary

We?ve all experienced being in the writing ?zone.?  Crisp phrasing comes easily; arguments fall into a near-musical pattern; the brain crackles, the keyboard dances, and beautiful publishable text is produced in an intense outburst so enveloping that time evaporates.  You?ve become one with the Great Mind of the Universe.   

Other times, not so much.  There are the workmanlike episodes, where your text is a bit plodding, your arguments a bit floppy, your chair a bit uncomfortable.  Not art, but clear progress.  The worst times, naturally, are those mind-pinching, wince-inducing stretches where it feels like you?re writing with the tip of your nose.  You wonder if you?ll ever again write a single sentence that anyone could even pretend to want to read.   The DVR beckons. 

I wish I knew exactly what led to the zone.  My informal analysis is that the following three conditions, together, are most likely to lead to zone writing for me: (1) a publication deadline under four weeks away, (2)  authorial consumption of tasty meals slightly (but not outrageously) too high in caloric content, and (3) I have no idea what the third condition is.  I?ve done a lot of empirical work on condition #2.

I?m sure this topic or some variant thereof has been discussed here before, but does anyone care to reopen it and share what circumstances, for you, correlate with zone writing?