Tip 7: Write Anywhere

The next tip for your Daily 30 success goes hand-in-hand with tip 6, as it’s gonna be incredibly useful to have multiple mediums at your disposal. Without further ado, here’s tip 7:

“Write anywhere.”

This may sound either impossible or very obvious, depending on your usual writing routine, so let me explain.

The Perfect Time to Write

You might know the feeling: You want to write. You’re motivated to write. But you simply can’t get started because it doesn’t feel like it’s the perfect time to write. You’ve gotta catch up with friends, do your laundry, or take your car to the garage.

Let’s face it: there is no perfect time to write. So we might as well pick every imperfect time instead.

Especially when you’ve got a busy day, you’ll want to take every moment you can to dedicate to your craft. This can happen in the broadest sense of the word: You don’t have to be alone to write. You don’t have to be at home. You don’t even have to be stationary. As long as you’ve got your brain available and your hands free, you’re good to go!

Creating the Right Environment

Getting in the right zone for writing looks different for everyone, but it can be nice to train yourself to be flexible. The more you challenge yourself, the easier it’ll be to keep working on your writing projects in the long run.

One way to do that, is to write in different places. This’ll give you more options to get your 30 minutes a day done. And it can be easy – if you make it easy for yourself.

Here are some of the things I do to create the right writing environment for myself wherever I go:

Pack something to write with (pen and paper, laptop, phone…).
Bring headphones and some way to access music (hello Spotify!).
Ensure I’m in a safe place where I can get lost in my brain.
Let any people I happen to be with know I’m writing.

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A perfect moment to write, for me, is any time I spend waiting. Arriving at a café early so I can write while I wait for my friend. Pulling out my phone to jot down some thoughts on plot while I wait for my ride in the parking lot. There’s no such thing as boredom when you’re a writer!

Of course, finding viable places to write in looks different for everyone. If a busy environment tends to trigger you, it’s best not to take this too far. Know your own limits and work within them. The goal is the writing, after all!

Training the Muscle

I’ve mentioned it a few times before, but I want to reiterate it here: The longer you stick to your writing habit, the easier it’ll be to drop in and out of it. This will also make it easier to write in different places, which in turn makes it easier to stick to the habit itself.

Five minutes might not allow you to be very productive when you’re first starting, but you’ll soon find that even a short amount of time can be valuable once your brain is used to it. Then those five minutes in the parking lot quickly become the exact time you need to word that tricky paragraph or come up with that vital plot point.

Build a Good Home Base

Being able to write anywhere is great, but don’t forget about your own HQ, either: a solid place at home to write in.

First of all, make sure that place gives you the peace you need. A private place where no one can disturb you while you’re in the middle of writing a high-stakes fight scene is best.

It can also be good to keep some useful tools nearby. Perhaps the scent of your favourite candle helps you get into the right zone. Experience has taught me that the promise of a snack also helps. This information comes directly from the hot chocolate powder container smiling at me from the corner of my desk.

Finally, make sure your home base allows you to write in a healthy writing position. This means: a good chair at the right height, correcting your posture when needed (which, in my case, is often), and possibly an ergonomic keyboard and mouse. We want to make sure those hands can still write without carpal tunnel syndrome when you’re on your 30th book!

An Incomplete List of the Weirdest Places I’ve Written

I won’t pretend I haven’t made a bit of a game of writing in different locations. Like, what are the weirdest places I can say I’ve written a chapter of a book?

Well, here you go:

In line for the bathroom at a Louis Tomlinson concert
At a high school reunion
From the balcony during the intermission of the Book of Mormon musical
On the curb of a parking lot
On the stairs of a London hostel at 11:59 PM

I guess this is my odd way of saying that anything is possible, if you set your mind to it. Plus, it comes with some funny stories to tell your friends later.

Writing Prompt: Use Your Surroundings

Today’s writing exercise is a bit different – let’s put theory into practice a bit more drastically!

“I spy with my little eye…”
Go to a place where you haven’t written before. Pick a detail from your surroundings and write it into a story.

The World’s Your Page!

Ideally, when writing, you’d want to sit down somewhere quiet and give yourself time to drop into your writing world. It’s great if that’s possible, but on the days when it’s not, it really helps to just do the writing, anyway.

New places can become new inspiration, so make use of that. The world is your stage! Or… in this case, your blank page.

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Priscilla Kint