Learn to Write Anywhere

Learning to write anywhere is really important. On most mornings after the sun has come up, I undock my laptop from its station and move into my living room where the sun pours through an East facing window. In Spring I can hear birds chattering from an evergreen tree off the back deck and with the growing warmth of the season I somehow feel more energized to write than when I’m cooped up in my office.

I always wanted to have a work space dedicated to my writing and in 2006, the year I received my first book contract, my husband gave me an office. Complete with a small desk, a cushy chair, and a new coat of paint my little office is perfect, so then why do I end up writing in the living room almost every day?

After years of dreaming about having solitude and a private space for writing, I now find myself looking for more sound, light, and open space to write in. I may love having my own office, but sometimes I need to get out of it in order to really free my writer’s mind. This greatly amuses my husband when he finds me lounging in the sunny living room with my laptop, but it really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

I never had a real office in the past, so I always just did what I needed to do in order to find time and space for the act of writing. Most other writers do the same if they really want badly enough to write. Real writers will write wherever they can and whenever they can.

The skill of being able to write anywhere is really important; especially for writers who don’t have offices, which is a pretty standard situation in the beginning. Writers don’t really even need offices to write in, so stop waiting! I’ve heard far too many stories from aspiring writers saying they have no time or space for writing. Don’t let that be your excuse. Get up early or stay up late, make coffee, and start writing. A quiet living room while the rest of the world is sleeping makes one of the best offices I know of.

Coffee shops are good offices too. When I was a college student, back when quaint coffee shops were more prolific than the Starbucks chains we have now, I wrote amidst the clinks of ceramic coffee cups (before the rise of the to-go cup). I even wrote in a notebook because those were the days before most average people could afford laptops – another thing you do not need to have in order to write.

I know of another writer friend who swears by her kitchen as an office. With her kids crawling around her feet she writes for several short spurts throughout the day. Maybe she would prefer to have an office, but with toddlers constantly needing her attention, such a luxury would be pointless. She finds a place and time because she wants to write; the same as the folks who write in libraries and even on busses as they are headed to their day jobs. You’ll notice such offices are all free of rent, by the way.

It seems I find myself saying this repeatedly to aspiring writers, but stop wasting time on details (like needing an office) and get the book written and then polish it. It’s nice to have an office and a thousand other tools of the trade, but you don’t need them.

Go out on your deck, drive over to the coffee shop, put on your iPod and crank up Chris Botti or whatever you need to do to find that space inside of you that is your writing office. And even if you already have a real writing office, try getting out of it from time to time. Inspiration might be waiting as close as your own living room if you’re only able to learn to write anywhere.

This Article appeared in the May issue of the Rocky Mountain Newsletter from RMFW (www.rmfw.org).

2007

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