Where do you write best?

Where you write can be a very important question or an irrelevant one. It’s a personal decision based on comfort and need. To write well and often it must be a pleasure. If you’re just staring out experiment with several locations. Find comfortable and pleasant settings and write. over time one will stand out as your preferred place to write.

I need to be in my office to write. Having all my stuff – computer, books, notepads, different color pens and highlighters, my small and large dictionaries, my trusted thesaurus, refrigerator down the hall and Willie the Wonder Dog at my feet, helps me stay relaxed and focused. It’s a relatively formal setting with minimal distractions and, in my mind, that means maximum productivity. Being creative is not a problem for me, staying on task is.

Other writers I’ve met like an informal atmosphere. They like being in a park or lying in bed. I see people at Starbuck’s writing all the time and am amazed that they can concentrate with so much going on around them. Clearly, concentration is not an issue for them, being comfortable and having external stimulation is what they need to boost their creative juices into action.

Legend has it that author Thomas Wolfe wrote while standing up in his kitchen. At 6’6″ he probably wrote on top of the refrigerator. The point is there’s no single answer for where to write. The only wrong place to write is anywhere you are uncomfortable, a place you don’t like.

Final thought: Since writing and editing are two very different tasks, one is expository and free-flowing while the other is diagnostic and precise, having one place to write and another to edit is an idea you may want to explore.

Steve

This entry was posted on September 21, 2009 at 7:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.