Where is your favorite place to write

[ratsy]

I'm sure we have a thread like this somewhere but in my pathetic attempt to find it, I came up empty.

I'm just wondering where you all like to write. Do you bring a notepad to the beach? Write on the train?

Personally I have two places I like writing the most. One is a cozy coffee shop by my house. You know the kind that has art for sale on the walls, the tables and chairs are all retro and unique, and it always smells like a combo of Americano and Vanilla Lattes. I like to hunker down in the back by the wall, where there are less people and get to work.

Then there is my 'writing room' at home. I am lucky enough to have a room just for me to put my stuff. I have a desk, bookshelves, a comfy chair, and a Yoda clock with a Raphael keychain hanging from his ear. What better setting to write from? I sit in there and pound the keys, listening to classical music quietly and attempt to ignore the distractions of the world.

How about you?

 

[Chris Guillory]

I am usually in the office, or at the kitchen table. The latter may not seem conducive to writing, but I've just sort of gotten used to it.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Your room sounds perfect Ratsy.

I have two favourite places. The first is the sunroom at the back of our house. It has good light all day even in winter (although I haven't written through a winter yet so this may change - brrr). I have views across fields to a lake then hills at the other side. Usually there are horses grazing in the fields. Great for inspiration.

The second is a café too, inside the Ulster Museum. For some reason it just has the right atmosphere with good coffee, yummies and really nice staff who genuinely thought I worked there and apparently had been giving me a staff discount because I spent so much time there!

 

[Zoe Mackay]

This is going to sound weird, but I'm most productive on trains, in odd moments at work, and sitting in front of the television. I seem to need exactly the right level of distraction to enable me to write - if it's too quiet, I'll struggle to engage. Yes, I know it doesn't make a lot of sense. Also, I write in bursts - I'll do 2000 words one hour, 100 the next.

 

[Zoe Mackay]

Also, I am always aware of Kathy Read's quote

"Like many writers, I have rituals. Before writing, I pour coffee, open the window by my desk, and attempt to read the entire internet."

 

[Phyrebrat]

For me it's not about where I prefer to write, but when. I am by far, much more productive from 10pm - 4am so will end up writing most of my stories at that time. The road outside is a main one into London but has very little traffic after 1am. I love the look of the trees and road all orange-lit by the streetlamps. I live on the corner of Epping Forest and on a very high hill so winter-writing is perfect for my stories - we get noticeably harsher weather up here than even a few miles down the road in Hackney, and I love the sparkle of ice and frost at night. It just all seems to lend itself well to horror.

I always feel a bit jealous of you guys who are able to write in coffee shops. I could but I always feel pressured to leave by the staff - and that's crazy because I've never been asked to! Just my Britishness I suppose.

Using Scrivener is my ritual and although I sometimes write on the tube (esp the 75 or 300 word challenges) or bus, I am not comfortable writing outside of Scrivener, so am usually limited to working at home on my Mac.

pH

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I have lost my office - sob - and been relegated to the kitchen table. But I quite like it and have a very comfy chair. I quite like having a notebook and writing outside at my little table in a private corner of my front garden.

 

[HareBrain]

Coffee shops are also my favourite, but I never nurse a drink for more than an hour. The staff at the independent tea rooms in our Waterstone's even named a cake after me, because after their first one (an experiment) I kept badgering them to make another. Now it says "Bryan's Coffee Cake" on the label, and I can die happy that I've got my name in Waterstone's at least.

 

[Chris Guillory]

I have lost my office - sob - and been relegated to the kitchen table. But I quite like it and have a very comfy chair. I quite like having a notebook and writing outside at my little table in a private corner of my front garden.

Ha! Didn't know I'd see another kitchen table writer. I thought folks would find that a strange place to associate with writing!

 

[ratsy]

I have a built-in desk in my kitchen too that my holds my computer much of the time, so I do writing on that as well on occasion. That way I can cook and write at the same time if I feel so obliged. It is also where my wine is stored....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

In my home office. At least the one I have now. Since we have a habit of taking in relatives when they fall on hard times (or we do), the number of rooms available changes, and sometimes I have an office and sometimes I have to squeeze all my books and everything into a dark corner of the bedroom, which I hate. But right now I am back in the little room that has been my office on and off, and it's the place I like best.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Ha! Didn't know I'd see another kitchen table writer. I thought folks would find that a strange place to associate with writing!

I actually like it, it's nice and sunny and it's at the back of the house so when the kids are at school it"/ quiet. I also have a chair I hide the pc on when it's closed down - I do my real life work as well as writing on it, and I'm not good at switching off. .

Plus I have a dog at my feet and two relaxing fish to watch.

I still miss my wee office, though. But it's now a teenager's den and not. At. All. Relaxing.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

I technically have an office but the desk is buried in veterinary books and chicken food.

Somewhere under there is an elderly pc which I periodically dig out to read the mark up on word documents, which the ipad can't cope with. It's outside so it's too hot in summer and freezing in winter.

I prefer the café!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

My "Library". It used to have two sets of bunks. Four boys. Of my children; Four have left home, one died (24 years ago) and the youngest is now in the small room.
The library has 2 x desks (one inaccessible with a test server's screen and A3+ plotter plus junk. the other has my laptop and SCSI scanner).
12 bookcases, so it must be a library, it also has maybe 38 40 45 radios, 6 shelves of wool, 20 boxes/drawers + 2 shelves of Lego. Possibly.

My remaining at home son has my original kitchen/dining room desk (which I built) for his gaming PC. He does his writing* on the Living Room coffee table.
The desk in kitchen/dining room is near the stove. The laser printer still lives (on network) on the shelf above. Server in Attic.

(*his writing isn't at all like mine).

 

[FibonacciEddie]

... if I am in story building mode (i.e., with a notepad and pencil), then I like to write on the train, assuming I have a table

If I am in rough drafting mode ... with a laptop but doing v1, v2 or v3, then I prefer a cafe

If I am in finishing mode (as I am now) then it has to be locked room, silent house, curtains closed, just a desk and no internet

 

[Juliana]

I have an office corner in the bedroom, though if I'm doing things like plotting or editing where I need space to spread papers out I often move to the kitchen table.

Used to be that I could only work in silence, when the house was empty. As my 'writing muscles' harden, I find I can write pretty much anywhere, anytime. My local Barnes and Noble (where my critique group meets), the living room sofa, the waiting room in my daughter's dance school...

But my desk in the bedroom is still my favorite place.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's just possible that a relative may be moving in with us in the next few months (the only relative against whom I would not fight tooth and nail for the space) and I might have to give up my home office yet again and move somewhere else in the house. If this happens, I think my family might be surprised and considerably less than thrilled with the space I will choose to go -- because I am not going back to the black hole in the bedroom -- but I will fight for it. No privacy and no peace and quiet, but it will have light and room for me to put everything I need. I find that sufficient natural light is essential to my creative process. I have been in some inconvenient places over the years, moving from house to house, and then from room to room, but I've always done much better when I had enough light.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

I far prefer the peace and quiet privacy of my bedroom for writing-in fact, it is the only place I could ever write.


I'm lucky enough to have a window right above where I sleep and use my laptop, which works well, but if anyone is ever around in view, I am unable to perform the craft. Self-conscious.

 

[Michael Colton]

I personally never can write of any sort unless I am by myself. So that means at my desk with headphones on.

 

[RobPrescott]

I'm also a fan of the kitchen table. It's a nice big surface to spread out over, plus the kettle is right there. And the fridge.

I've probably done the most part of my writing in a coffee shop though. Just enough distraction to keep focused and the one I usually frequent has slightly unreliable internet to keep my attention where it's supposed to be!