Where one writes
Writing is one of the few occupations that aren't tied to a particular place and time. It's something that you can do anywhere, any time, if you want to. So I used to find it odd to hear so many writers talk about their desks and offices (and I thought it was especially odd that some writers actually went out and rented office space. Why spend money when you didn't need to?).
A lot of this bemusement was because I started writing my first (unfinished) novel when I was in 7th grade. Literally in 7th grade - during the class. Sister Mary Louise never quite caught me; it was occasionally obvious that I wasn't quite paying attention, but she never seemed to figure out why I wasn't paying attention.
Starting off that way was excellent practice for the writing I did in college - at the library, outside in the arboretum, in the cafeteria, in the dorm elevator, in class, even sometimes in my dorm room with my three roommates talking on the other side of the big room we shared. Which, in turn, was excellent practice for the writing I did when I got out of school and got my first job, which once again was mostly in the company cafeteria, in coffee shops, on the bus (though not often; it was too hard to decipher the results), in restaurants, and, occasionally, on the dining room table in my one-bedroom apartment.
In other words, I started out writing anywhere and everywhere that I could carry a notebook and pen, mostly regardless of other conditions. Okay, I didn't try to write outside in the rain, or in places where it got cold enough to make my fingers stiff, or in the dark, but basically, I didn't worry too much about where I was working or what else was going on around me. I'd learned to block it out, so that I could grab writing minutes whenever and wherever they happened to occur.
And then I got a house, and a computer, and set up an office to write in. It worked well for a long time, but gradually, I came to realize some things:
1. Having an office is great, because if you go there every day and write, your backbrain gets used to thinking "Hey, we're at the computer in the office; must be time to write!" and you start getting more productive after a while.
2. Having an office is terrible, because it trains your backbrain to only write when you're in your office, so you stop grabbing those minutes at the bus stop or the coffee shop or the dentist's waiting room, even if you have a cool new iPad that you can take everywhere (with a nifty app that lets you scribble notes right on it) just the way you used to take your paper and pen. Also, your frontbrain starts using "I'm not in the office" as an excuse to not-write. Like you need another excuse.
3. Having an office is really terrible, because the minute you start doing things in it that aren't writing (like paying bills and answering e-mail and searching the web and playing FreeCell and Civilization), your backbrain decides that maybe it's not such a great place to write after all, and now you don't have anywhere that your backbrain likes writing.
4. Fixing points 2 and 3 is really hard. Especially #3. It takes time and energy and application.
Once I realized all that, I figured that despite the fact that time, energy, and application are all in chronically short supply in my life, I had better get busy on fixing things so that I could maybe get back to #1 again. I started off by getting back in the habit of hauling writing implements around with me wherever I go, and using them, even if only for a few seconds. "Writing implements" used to mean paper and pen; now it means iPad or laptop, but it's the same old principle. The laptop turns out to be a little clunky for grabbing quick minutes - mine's several years old, and takes long enough to warm up and shut down that if I only have a sentence or so to grab and a minute to grab it with, it's not the right tool. So my iPad has become my notebook-of-choice for wandering around.
The next thing I did was to start taking advantage of time-chunks that were already built into my day. Three days a week, I go walking with my friend Beth, and afterwards we stop for coffee (tea, in my case). So now I haul the laptop along, and when she goes off to work, I stay in the coffee shop, plug in the laptop, and get an hour or so of work done before I leave. For larger chunks of non-office writing time, the laptop is perfect…plus, I've gotten myself in the habit of dumping my writing session onto the flash drive I carry on my keychain before I pack up to leave, which a) makes it easy to transfer to the desktop when I get home and b) means I have my most recent data backed up and with me at all times.
And then I started making new chunks - nipping out to the library in the afternoon, stopping somewhere that has a bench and an electrical outlet on my way home from shopping, etc. All of which got me to stop using the "I can't write now; I'm not in the office" excuse.
Getting the office back to being a primary writing environment is going to be a lot harder, because the e-mail isn't going to stop coming, the research and blogging have to be done, and there's no point in taking Civilization off the computer when I know perfectly well that if I do, I will just put it right back on the minute I get the urge. (My sister borrowed one of my games once…and I went out and bought a second copy because I was in the mood to play and I couldn't wait for her to return it. I am hopeless.)
So I have to come up with balancing writing in the office with all the other things I have to do there. I'm starting small - when I return from a laptop session at the coffee shop, I'm now in the habit of immediately transferring the files from the flash drive to the main hard drive, and then opening the file to check over what I did. Usually, that means I write a few lines more, which always makes me feel smug and virtuous (because I generally get my day's word count done at the coffee shop, so those extra lines are gravy).
