Changing Scene

While we happen to be on the topic of settings, I have another approach to offer.

We all know how easy it is to get stuck in a rut, creatively (and otherwise). Even if you don’t believe in writer’s block, I’m betting you’re familiar with ruts: nothing comes out right, or very little does, productivity crawling at a snail’s pace, creativity seems tapped dry . . .

Sound familiar?

Problems focusing tend to typify these phases for me. Really, that’s one of my greatest challenges, period. (And when I do focus, interruption is grounds for bodily harm. You have been warned.)

You would think that trying to write someplace with more — or at least different — distractions would work in opposition to attempts at focusing. And you’d be right. Some of the time.

I have friends who write best in coffee shops. I write best when I don’t have the distraction of the internet. (Harder to achieve, now that I have a magic phone.) But I also have the tendency to fall into habits, often bad ones, and the only way to break them is to shock the routine.

One reason I like to get out of the house and write at other places is because it shakes things up and keeps those bad habits from sticking.

At the same time, I’m cheap, gas isn’t, and it’s nearly a half-hour drive, minimum, to places I can write without my fingers going numb.

I can’t wait for summer.

Recently, I took a break from the novel (it’s so close to done, this is driving me crazy) and all the bad habits that have slowly settled back into place, and spent a morning at a coffee shop owned by friends of mine.

The place is amazing, as are they and their coffee, so if you’re ever in Bar Harbor, I recommend stopping at the Trailhead Cafe. Seriously.

I needed the break from home both because of my recent rut and because of the need to switch gears as I went from rough drafting a novel to editing a short story. It worked. Between the time at the cafe and the time in an empty theater (one of my favorite writing spaces, by the way), I edited the whole short story. While visiting with friends and watching a show.

It’s dangerous — new spaces can become their own bad habit — but it can be a necessary shock to the system. It’s one way to get past ruts and writer’s block.

Do you have any favorite methods?