Location, Location, Location

When working at home isn't working, it's time to go somewhere else.

Location matters.  I’m not talking about the setting of your novel or work in progress;  I’m talking about the place in which you write.  I’ve come to realize that home is not it.  Not by a long shot.  I can set aside a “special” place to write.  I can devote an entire room to it.  I have a spare room that is actually a study, yet I never sit in it.  I find it impossible to write my novel home.  And yet.  I keep trying.

So today I fled home for the library.  And magically I wrote.  What I’ve realized is that I associate home with work – kids, cooking, housework, the grind.  I can carve out whatever space I want at home, it’s still home.  The strange thing is I seem to have no trouble writing short stories from home, especially when there is a deadline involved.  I have three stories out to literary magazines at the moment, all the result of a deadline.  The novel though just won’t be written at home.  I don’t know why this is exactly.  Perhaps it’s too expansive or unformed or maybe I just need to shoot the thing. I’m not sure.  But one thing is clear, I’m not getting any closer at home.

The other problem with home is the siren song of the internet.  When stuck with a piece of writing, I suddenly need to pay bills that aren’t even due with bill pay.   Suddenly it’s critically important I find a reason to research tulip bulbs, though I have little interest in gardening.  I once spent an entire day researching the Wizard of Oz because I was writing a story set during the filming.  I used research as an excuse not to write.  My friend Ellen Sussman, a great writer who has a new novel coming out with Ballantine, says that instead of wasting writing time on research she just skips over whatever needs research and simply writes in parenthesis: (research).  She knows she needs to go back to it later, but when she’s on a roll, she won’t let herself get derailed by the rabbit hole that is the internet.  That was a lot of mixed metaphors I think, but you get the idea.

So be honest with yourself.  Is home a problem either because of the distractions or the internet?  If it is, try somewhere else.  Even better, try somewhere with no internet.