The Write Environment: Setting An Atmosphere Conducive To Work
If you ever want to write prolifically, writing needs to become a priority in your life - a skill that you practise daily. As such, you need to make it part of your lifestyle; it needs a dedicated place in your daily schedule, you need to factor in what you eat, drink, how you exercise and sleep. But these are many changes. Right now, I just want to talk about things you can do to your immediate environment in order to maximise your effectiveness as a writer.
Where is your writing space? Is it in the middle of the kids' play area, or facing the kitchen, which is always begging you to clean it? Do you even have a writing space? To be honest, I'm not going to tell you that you have to have a dedicated writing space that you don't do anything else in, though there are people who argue this. For the first month or so of my challenge, I wrote in my four-poster bed. Every night I would get home from the gym, have a shower, dinner, and then jump straight into bed and turn on the lanterns that I had hung from each post. I would then write for a few hours before going to sleep. Of course, this breaks my rules about how to get a good night sleep, but I have absolutely no problem with sleeping - it's the staying awake that is the difficulty. This was a great time in my writing life.
After my tax return arrived, I bought a present for myself and my writing life: my Writing Chair (it in itself is not special; it's IKEA and probably half the world has the same chair, but it's given significance by my treatment of it). I aim to do nothing in that chair except write. Is my writing any better for it? Hard to tell, but my back is happier. Having the chair also puts me in the mindframe of writing each time I sit in it, because that's its purpose in my house.
The location of the writing space is important. I live in a one bedroom apartment, so the spaces I could dedicate to writing are not very varied. My main living area is across from my kitchen, and my writing chair is in this space. It used to stress me that my kitchen (always in my line of sight when I was sitting in my special chair) was messy. It was very stressful, and while it's possible to block those nagging thoughts about cleaning-as-procrastination, the most effective way to rid myself of those nagging thoughts was to get myself a cleaning lady. So, for the price of staying an hour and a half longer at work (or not going out to a movie and dinner). I get a completely cleaned apartment every second week.
However, I have made considerable efforts to make my living environment nice. I have rearranged furniture so I have bookshelves with inspirational books within arm's reach. I have put up inspirational words and favourite quotes, and I have plants nearby. I don't know exactly why, but a healthy, flourishing maidenhair fern brings peace to my soul. (The wilting Japanese peace lily a friend has left with me, on the other hand, is not so great.) I also have large prints of places I've travelled to and adventures I've had, which excites my imagination.
Lighting is very important to me, a not just having a good light - it sets my mood, illumines my thoughts, and places the shadows of my plots before me. Sometimes low, mood lighting is the most effective, while at other times I need sunlight streaming in. I've experimented with my lighting options, and have a lamp that has a warm light bulb in it, along with my down lights, and moved my chair to be situated right near the windows. I love having lanterns around my four poster, and think fondly back to those times that I wrote in bed like a princess, but have not moved them to my current location so I still get princess reading time before sleep. How does lighting affect you? Are your lights too harsh? Do you need to invest in a lamp? You might be surprised the difference it makes.
I also have different scented candles that I light depending on the book I'm working on. This way, I associate smells not only with my writing, but a particular style and atmosphere of writing.
I once heard about writer who had tried unsuccessfully to write while raising young children. She eventually tried locking them in a play pen so she could sit down and write, but the complaints and noise made that impossible. So her solution? She set the kids free and locked herself in the playpen! And it actually worked for her, so don't be afraid to think outside the box (or in this case, inside it!).
Picture your ideal writing situation. What immediately jumps out when you try to picture yourself writing in the future, once you are rich and famous and can write anywhere? What are the key elements?
There are two images for me that recur in my mind:
The first is of a clear, light conservatory. A comfortable chair is surrounded by greenery, and beside it is a small table with shelves for books and can hold my pot of exotic tea that I breathe in deeply while thinking.
A warm, carpeted study, with large French style windows that look out into tree branches, dark wood bookshelves all around, and a large mahogany desk facing into the room. There are also comfortable chairs for curling up and reading beside the fire. The room smells of fresh coffee.
For me the colour contrasts and the amount of light are important, and the nearness of books inspires me, and the use of natural elements such as wood soothes me. The images probably mean I don't need much memory input, such as the photographs I have up around me, as the books do that for me. I try to recreate the essence of these two images as much as I can in my current environment.
Another task: describe your imaginary writing space in as much detail as you can, down even to the scent in the air. Spend five minutes trying to go deeper: where is the light coming from? What is closest to you? What colours dominate the scene? Are you sitting, standing, reclined? How are you supported: feet up with a neck rest, sitting on a desk chair, no back rest? What is your method of writing - desktop, laptop, typewriter? Once you have gotten as much detail out as you can, go through and make a list of elements that are most important to you. Then from these, implement any you can into your current space.
Where is your writing space? Is it in the middle of the kids' play area, or facing the kitchen, which is always begging you to clean it? Do you even have a writing space? To be honest, I'm not going to tell you that you have to have a dedicated writing space that you don't do anything else in, though there are people who argue this. For the first month or so of my challenge, I wrote in my four-poster bed. Every night I would get home from the gym, have a shower, dinner, and then jump straight into bed and turn on the lanterns that I had hung from each post. I would then write for a few hours before going to sleep. Of course, this breaks my rules about how to get a good night sleep, but I have absolutely no problem with sleeping - it's the staying awake that is the difficulty. This was a great time in my writing life.
After my tax return arrived, I bought a present for myself and my writing life: my Writing Chair (it in itself is not special; it's IKEA and probably half the world has the same chair, but it's given significance by my treatment of it). I aim to do nothing in that chair except write. Is my writing any better for it? Hard to tell, but my back is happier. Having the chair also puts me in the mindframe of writing each time I sit in it, because that's its purpose in my house.
The location of the writing space is important. I live in a one bedroom apartment, so the spaces I could dedicate to writing are not very varied. My main living area is across from my kitchen, and my writing chair is in this space. It used to stress me that my kitchen (always in my line of sight when I was sitting in my special chair) was messy. It was very stressful, and while it's possible to block those nagging thoughts about cleaning-as-procrastination, the most effective way to rid myself of those nagging thoughts was to get myself a cleaning lady. So, for the price of staying an hour and a half longer at work (or not going out to a movie and dinner). I get a completely cleaned apartment every second week.
However, I have made considerable efforts to make my living environment nice. I have rearranged furniture so I have bookshelves with inspirational books within arm's reach. I have put up inspirational words and favourite quotes, and I have plants nearby. I don't know exactly why, but a healthy, flourishing maidenhair fern brings peace to my soul. (The wilting Japanese peace lily a friend has left with me, on the other hand, is not so great.) I also have large prints of places I've travelled to and adventures I've had, which excites my imagination.
Lighting is very important to me, a not just having a good light - it sets my mood, illumines my thoughts, and places the shadows of my plots before me. Sometimes low, mood lighting is the most effective, while at other times I need sunlight streaming in. I've experimented with my lighting options, and have a lamp that has a warm light bulb in it, along with my down lights, and moved my chair to be situated right near the windows. I love having lanterns around my four poster, and think fondly back to those times that I wrote in bed like a princess, but have not moved them to my current location so I still get princess reading time before sleep. How does lighting affect you? Are your lights too harsh? Do you need to invest in a lamp? You might be surprised the difference it makes.
I also have different scented candles that I light depending on the book I'm working on. This way, I associate smells not only with my writing, but a particular style and atmosphere of writing.
I once heard about writer who had tried unsuccessfully to write while raising young children. She eventually tried locking them in a play pen so she could sit down and write, but the complaints and noise made that impossible. So her solution? She set the kids free and locked herself in the playpen! And it actually worked for her, so don't be afraid to think outside the box (or in this case, inside it!).
Picture your ideal writing situation. What immediately jumps out when you try to picture yourself writing in the future, once you are rich and famous and can write anywhere? What are the key elements?
There are two images for me that recur in my mind:
The first is of a clear, light conservatory. A comfortable chair is surrounded by greenery, and beside it is a small table with shelves for books and can hold my pot of exotic tea that I breathe in deeply while thinking.
A warm, carpeted study, with large French style windows that look out into tree branches, dark wood bookshelves all around, and a large mahogany desk facing into the room. There are also comfortable chairs for curling up and reading beside the fire. The room smells of fresh coffee.
For me the colour contrasts and the amount of light are important, and the nearness of books inspires me, and the use of natural elements such as wood soothes me. The images probably mean I don't need much memory input, such as the photographs I have up around me, as the books do that for me. I try to recreate the essence of these two images as much as I can in my current environment.
Another task: describe your imaginary writing space in as much detail as you can, down even to the scent in the air. Spend five minutes trying to go deeper: where is the light coming from? What is closest to you? What colours dominate the scene? Are you sitting, standing, reclined? How are you supported: feet up with a neck rest, sitting on a desk chair, no back rest? What is your method of writing - desktop, laptop, typewriter? Once you have gotten as much detail out as you can, go through and make a list of elements that are most important to you. Then from these, implement any you can into your current space.
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