NC: Boringly, my creativeness is in no way pathological. I work very hard, every day, and on some level it’s a dogged nine to five slog, and if it seems like my output is greater than your average musician or whatever it is I am, it’s because I put in more hours. It’s as simple as that.

That is not to say that on occasions I don’t enter into that... See more

Here are some other techniques people use to access and maintain the zone:

• Introducing a long delay between when you do the work and when it is shown to the world. Annie Ernaux writes about this in A Simple Passion, a memoir about how she becomes obsessed in a banal way with a man who is having an affair with her—the thought that others will read

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