Find Your Best Writing Environment
Not clear what your ideal writing environment is?
Think back to when you first started writing. Arguably the most challenging time for each writer is when they are first starting to write; they haven’t had time to establish a supportive routine. Beginners do what feels right to get to a place where they can get the words out; the circumstances they are drawn to are often what works best for them. When you first started writing, what was your environment like? What did you do to coax your creativity into giving up some words? Thinking back to when you first started out might give you some clarity into where you do your best writing.
Some writers do the opposite and find less than ideal working conditions as they claim doing so helps them produce their best work. Instead of finding the best working conditions in order to feed their imagination to write, some writers starve their imagination so it will work overtime to create an alternative environment. This method seems to work best for fiction and poetry writers. It may sound extreme to most of us but others claim it works.
To create your own ideal writing conditions, ponder the following:
Do you prefer total silence, earsplitting noise, or something in between? What type of sound is the most soothing?
How are you physically most comfortable? Think of clothing, body position, and furniture.
How much space do you need to be comfortable?
At what point in your day are you most creative?
Do you need people around you to be creative?
Can you write in tiny chunks of time or do you prefer one big, solid block of time?
Do you prefer your writing location to be the same every day or do you prefer regular change?
Give yourself the home-court advantage by figuring out how you can produce your best work. If you need to cluck like a chicken five times while standing on your head before you start writing, do it!
All this said, what if you can’t recreate your ideal working conditions? The most productive writers find ways to write no matter what, even under some unbearable conditions. As harsh as this may be, sometimes you just have to suck it up and write.