It’s important to establish the place where you write.
This place can be anywhere–a corner of your apartment, the bed, the kitchen table, a cafe, the zoo–but it takes time to cultivate.
You have to write there as much as you can, daily if possible. If you keep it up, you’ll find that before (too) long the simple act of going to your writing spot triggers your creativity. It’s sort of like how you can use a routine to train yourself to be creative.
(Side note. I’m convinced I once trained myself to have to use the bathroom every time I let the dog out. It started innocently enough. The dog’s doing it, I thought. Why not take care of business myself at the same time? That’s efficiency. Before long, it was a habit. Then it was a compulsion.)
Recently, my girlfriend and I moved a lot of furniture around in our apartment. I love the new setup, but my writing has suffered and continues to suffer as a result. Why? I have to start training a new writing spot.
I’m like a fussy plant that wilts when you repot it.
When I went away to college, I had to leave my desk. I’d been writing for years there, important years when I realized I wanted to be a writer, years when I wrote wildly, without agenda, without anything other than the desire to write something I thought was awesome.
Eventually, my dorm room, which more or less stayed the same from year to year, came to be a place that fostered my creativity.
Now, at long last, after the turbulence following graduation, I’m settling into my own new semi-permanent post-college writing spot.
Where do you like to write? How long have you been writing there? Have you noticed a difference in the quality of your writing when you write in your writing spot versus when you write in other places?