Perhaps you’re the sort of person who can write anywhere – even at the dining room table while your offspring scream bloody murder and beat each other with foam swords. You are a lucky person.
For the rest of us who need to be at least somewhat in a good frame of mind to get work done, this post is for you.
This will vary from person to person. A lot of people like to create their own little writing cave, with inspirational artwork on the walls and their desk laid out just so for the best writing efficiency. Others just need any sort of flat, clean surface, as long as its either quiet and/or bright and/or you are the only one and so no one can bother you.
If you’re having trouble focusing, take a look at the environment you’re trying to work in. Is it messy? Clutter, for whatever reason, often manages to be subconsciously distracting enough to throw you off. Is it bright? If the room’s too dark, you might find yourself getting drowsy. Is it noisy? Sometimes it can be hard to focus around a lot of extraneous noise. Some people can listen to music to drown out random noise; others cannot.
Experiment with music, lighting, and location to see what works best for your creative juices. Sometimes you will need to leave the house to get work done – try a variety of coffee shops, libraries, and book stores – any place that’s willing to let you sit at a table for a few hours for the price of a mocha (or less) – and see if you can find one that suits you. My favorite one is painted with cheerful colors, has lots of natural light, and contains a constant low hum of happy customers.
Do you have any tips to share? What works for you?
For your male writer readers, I cannot recommend a man cave strongly enough. Mine in a shed that doubles for overflow storage (so a bit cluttered). But I can close the doors and the kiddos, even if they got into the backyard, still lack the dexterity to open them. Ditto for the dogs.
On the other hand, they *can* stand at the doors and pound/howl/scratch. (Those last two are mostly the dogs, though the kids can get their howl on when they want. Bloody distracting.)
Being used for storage, this also limits my ability to breakdance or get my freak well and truly on in the man cave, but from a writing distraction perspective, this is probably a good thing.