A Change of Scenery

his weekend I was asked by my friend to house/pet sit for him while him and his family are away, being that my writing was basically nil, I leapt at the opportunity because I knew that a change of pace would with any luck, help inspire me to get some actual work done.

Writers block, or writers time-out (as one of my friends insists that unless I haven’t written anything for months I can’t reasonably call it a writers block) are tricky. They can be caused by a million and one things and each author has a different way of combating it. But one method that seems to work across the board, is getting a change of scenery. Which if your lucky enough to have a friend who needs house sitting is actually pretty easy to come by. However, if you are stuck, and you don’t have the money to perhaps rent a hotel room (it’s fairly cheap here in Vegas, so if I was really desperate I could do so rather easily), then you may have to get more creative. Depending greatly upon your ability to write in a less than empty environment you could go to the library, or over to a (quiet) friend’s house. I suppose even going to the park or (I shudder to even suggest it) a Starbucks or some other coffee house could be beneficial.

I realize J.K.Rowling wrote all of her books in a coffee house and on trains, but for me there’s something about attempting to write in a Starbucks (as there is literally no small coffee houses except maybe on the strip and I have literally no energy for that), has always seemed rather pretentious to me. I don’t want to be seen writing. That doesn’t intone being a writer to me, besides something about the sounds of blending coffee and how loud it can get in a Starbucks makes it difficult to even imagine getting anything written… maybe with music in, but frankly I could get more work done in a classroom or in the library at my school than I ever could in a Starbucks.

All of these aforementioned places may or may not work for you, in fact, depending on how bad exactly your writers block is, a change of scenery may not be enough, but it’s a start and I’m hopeful that it will be enough to get me back to work after a very very long ‘intermission’ let’s say.

PS: Obviously a change of scenery helped me come up with this blogpost, so it’s a start.