My ideal writing environment is the following scenario:
I have a couple hours free in the morning. I drive over to The Orange Cat Cafe, get my breakfast, and occupy a seat in the back room of the cafe. I pull out my laptop and work for an hour or so, pausing between paragraphs to nibble my quiche or sip my coffee.
I’ve done that maybe six times in the last year.
Sometimes this is what it looks like, darlings. Sometimes writing means scraping together a few minutes in waiting rooms, just before you go to sleep, while you eat breakfast, while you cook supper.
Messy, real, unfiltered and unedited, this is where I knocked out 307 words while I waited for my pots to boil.
I’m sure we all have our ideal writing environment, but if we wait for our ideal, we’ll have a really hard time getting anything done.
I’ve been learning that the hard way in the last year. I started working and being away from home a lot, plus overnight trips to the city for my mom’s neurologist visits and physical therapy appointments. I had to get good at writing in two and five and ten minute stretches.
I had to get good at being flexible. At making the best out of a bad job.
I had to decide what was more important: getting the work done, or getting it done the way I wanted to get it done.
Because the way I wanted to get it done wasn’t an option.
But you know what? The more flexible I got, the more I got to experience my ideal. My ideal shifted. Now, my ideal is a cup of coffee and something to nibble, period. That sometimes means the cafe, and that sometimes means sipping a cold cup of coffee and typing four sentences on my phone while I wait for a soccer game to start. I’m happy there. I’m writing, I’m in an environment I enjoy and take delight in, and I can work well there.
Still working on taking delight in the ‘laptop on the kitchen counter’ environment, but hey, at least I’m writing.
I first wrote this up in a post in the Go Teen Writers Facebook group.