The Perfect Writing Environment Is a Figment of Your Imagination

I sit on the balcony of the twelfth story, where I can hear the waves crash onto the shore. The sun is in a good mood, shining brightly. My chair is comfortable and ergonomic, and my table is just the right height. My laptop is open, and my coffee cup is full. I take a sip of the freshly ground coffee, with toasted marshmallow mocha creamer because it’s always in stock here. My internet connection is speedy, and my laptop is fully charged. No visitors to entertain, no doggies to corral. It’s time to write, and my writing space is exactly how I like it. Thanks to the near perfect writing environment, my fingers dance around the keyboard, and words, sentences, paragraphs form one after another.

But that’s just a fantasy. The truth is, the perfect writing environment isn’t a reality for me.

In fact, what I wrote above came from my imagination. It just isn’t reality.

Instead, I sit on my recliner in my home with the annoying hum of the refrigerator. My lap is my table, and my coffee cup is begging for another round. Toasted marshmallow mocha creamer is as easy to find as a needle in a haystack, so I settle for hazelnut or Bailey’s. My laptop is at 17% because I forgot to charge it last night. And my WiFi hasn’t been connected for a week, thanks to a historic ice storm that left thousands without power here in Oklahoma. My home is a revolving door, and my three dogs whine to sit in the recliner with me. I let them. My fingers so rarely dance over the keyboard because I stare at a blank page for 5 minutes, 10, 15, wondering when the bolt of creative juice will course through my veins.

I suspect your writing environment is similar to mine. Maybe it includes kids and their blanket fort they built around your desk. Maybe it includes stacks of mail resting on your laptop. Or maybe it includes a chewed-up MacBook charger, thank you so much, little doggo.

Your writing space is wherever you can write, when you can write. No, most times, I don’t get to sit in my office at my desk with my ergonomic chair to write. Most times, my reality is sitting in my recliner or at the kitchen table with constant interruptions.

I had to learn how to write with interruptions. I had to learn how to write with distractions. I had to learn how to write with people in the house and dogs clamoring for my attention. If I didn’t figure out how to do that, then I’d never be able to write.

Writers want this perfect writing space so they can create characters and worlds and plots. But they must learn to do that no matter where they are.

If writers don’t have that “perfect” writing environment, then they won’t write. They think, Well, this isn’t comfortable enough for me to get some real writing done. Or: This won’t work since we’re having people over in an hour — I’ll have to stop and that’ll throw me off. Or: There’s no point in writing today since my headphones aren’t charged — I won’t be able to concentrate with all that background noise.

You have to find a way to write even when your writing space looks bleak. Not every writer has a writing hut like Roald Dahl or a house on an island overlooking the English Channel like Victor Hugo.

Most of us have crowded homes, messy desks, whiny pets, busy children, hungry spouses, cold coffee, shoddy WiFi, and a hundred other frustrations.

But you must write anyway. You must make do with your imperfect writing space, or you’ll never create the art you were meant to give to the world.

So stop trying to create something that doesn’t exist, and get to writing right where you are.

An expert editor, best-selling author, and book marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with authors and business owners every day. A lifelong lover of books, she has edited over 400 books and has launched several Amazon best sellers for her clients.

Her award-winning blog teaches new and established authors how to write, publish, and market their books.

She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, “The Rotting” (in Shivers in the Night), The Suicide Tree, and The 10 Commandments of Author Branding. In her not-so-free time, she acts as organizer for the Yukon Writers’ Society, volunteers at the Oklahoma County Jail, and obsesses over squirrels. She lives in Oklahoma with her dogs, Chanel, Wednesday, and Baker.