Writing Environment

[Tsujigiri]

I'm curious about how other people structure their environment while they are writing.

I know some writers who have music playing, others who can literally sit down anywhere with pencil and paper or a laptop and write and still others who like myself after about 5 minutes get irritable at any noise.

Personally I tend to start off with a coffee and something relaxing playing on the pc, but as soon as I feel the process taking hold the music goes off and woe betide any interruptions from that point on.

When I wrote my first book, which was around 70,000 words I just sat and wrote for two and a half weeks. My ex wife brought me food and left me to it, it was quiet and peaceful and I will always count he moment when I looked down at the printed first draft as being one of the highest points in my life.
In fact it ranks with the births of my children.

So, what do the other writers who visit this board prefer?

 

[Drachir]

I surround myself with multiple distractions including watching TV and the internet, including this Forum, and then attempt to write something coherent. It is not working out as well as I would like.

 

[Tsujigiri]

lol, how peculiar

 

[Estelthea]

I usually write with music playing because it helps me to shut out what is going on around me and concentrate on writing. Although I just have the same CD on repeat so it is not too distracting. Sometimes I sing along or just mutter to myself incomphrensively!

This might be a bit perculiar but I find myself saying dialogue aloud in different voices or pulling faces to try to describe the way a character speaks or looks. I'll make gestures as well if I want to have a character move in a certain way or I'll get up and walk around to try and imagine the place a character is in (so if they walk though a door on the left and then one on the right I'll do the same to get a feel for the layout of the building they are in).

I'm much quieter when I'm editing my stories but even then I'll read some lines aloud to get a feel for them. My favourite distraction is to play mahjong on the computer or to open a reference book, I usually write surrounded by piles of books and reading them can be a good destraction.

 

[Isolde]

I cannot write with music or the TV on. I can write anywhere, as long as I have a pen/pencil and some paper and an idea, but I'm a very slow writer. I tend to skip the first-draft scribbles, and try to write as if it's the finished product. I can do dialogue in my head, but often find myself muttering words for describing the scenes that happen in my book, as I mull over each word to use.

 

[Space Monkey]

lol - pulling faces - I get accused of that all the time, especially when I draw people's expressions.

I don't have any great particular needs about the environment when I write, but I DO need somewhere quiet so I can think without distractions. Noise irritates the hell out of me when I'm trying to 'be' somewhere else in my head.
Plenty of caffeine too, that always helps.

 

[Tsujigiri]

Yeah, caffeine seems to be a constant when I'm writing as well.

Although that said, I finished my last novel sat in a pub with a pint of Scrumpy Jack cider next to me.
When the owner of the pub reaslied that I'd just finished the 1st draft he bought me a meal on the house and the rest of my drinks that day for free!

It was a very good day

 

[Leto]

American or continental caffeine ?

 

[Tsujigiri]

American or continental caffeine ?

It depends upon my mood. I have a fairly large collection of beans from around the world and I also blend my own.
At the moment I'm drinking Colombian Supremo (Taylors of Harrogate) which is rather nice, after dinner probably Venetian....

 

[Leto]

So i take you drink it the expresso way and not boiled and watered down as I had the 'mis'opportunity (to my own taste) to drink it the few times I went in UK, US and Canada (except an especially good café just at entrance of Chinatown in San Francisco - even if the owner is a phallocratic idiot but that's another story - and another one in the Bronx, owned by a great couple).

 

[Tsujigiri]

Espresso, with the machine warmed through first and the cup warmed for the full taste. I do drink it watered down sometimes, but I make the original as a double espresso and then add half a mug of near boiling water.
I don't take milk, but I do like a chunk of unprocessed molasses sugar in sometimes.

 

[Leto]

With the little tiny bit of dark chocolate by the side of the cup ?

To be back on the writing environnement topic, I need noise around me, usually radio (a talkative one in morning for infos, a rock exclusively in the afternoon). Or in summer, sitting by a grave in Père Lachaise.

 

[Circus Cranium]

I usually need silence. And lots of tea. The only time I used music is when I was getting myself hyped up about a character who was a punk rock star. But once I'd get in character mode, I'd shut everything off.

I also prefer it to be cloudy out when I write, as odd as that may sound. It makes me feel comforted and like I'm not missing anything; like it's a 'writing day'. Sometimes, if it's particularly sunny out, I'll shut all the shades and put on my sound machine, set to thunderstorm, to kind of fool my subconscious into the storm mode.

 

[Tsujigiri]

I always have the curtains drawn in my study and the shutters behind them, so it's a fairly constant environment in here, I think I must be part vampire...or maybe it's just a leftover from the days when I didn't have kids and could live nocturnally.

The dark chocolate with the coffee...not so much really...only when I'm in a coffee shop.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

When I have a story in my head, the atmosphere doesn't matter. It's just the pen, the notebook, the word and me. Music, incense, lighting - that stuff is for making out, not for writing, y'know?

 

[Tsujigiri]

Yeah I agree, when you have something burning in your mind to get onto paper then anything else becomes either irrelevant or an irritation.
This is why even if I start with music or a film playing, it quickly ends up silent apart from the tapping of keys....

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Exactly! Most of my story ideas these days come to me in dreams so I do a lot of my writing early in the morning or at odd hours of the night - I certainly have found that these times of the day are good for creative work, no distractions and noise.

 

[Tsujigiri]

I live with small ambulatory noiy distractions...which blessedly are in bed between the hours of 7pm - 7am