Develop a writing routine

Your Writing Space Doesn’t Need Another Plant.

Hate reading? Want to listen to my gravelly-ass Voice instead?

You can follow the podcast on iTunes, Player FM, Google Play, Spotify and more.

Listen to the audio podcast of this post.

What’s with writers & their spaces, anyway?

You know that mythical perfect spot you imagine will make writing easy and comforting and PERFECT? Well…it’s not real. You can’t find a place that will magic away the difficulties of writing, but the yearning for a perfect writers’ space endures.

We all covet a perfect writing space and dream about what we might create, if only we had one.

It’s not just us beginners and journeymen who love our writing space dreams. Many famous and accomplished writers derive pleasure and comfort from the space they use for writing too.

From Virginia Woolf’s famous need for “A Room of One’s Own” to create – to Wallace Stevens, who composed poetry on his walk to work. From Raold Dahl, who wrote in a tiny shed behind his home to Ernest Hemingway who made his corner stool famous at La Floridita in Havana.

Creating a space to create is not simply a tool of procrastination.

Margaret Forster was quoted in an article in the Guardian about how her writing space works for her. As a person with a lot of life going on around her that threatens to distract, her space is very important.

“The minute I walk into this room of my own, I swear I become a different person. The wife, the mother, the granny, the cook, the cleaner – all vanish. For two or three hours only the writer is left.”

Margaret Forster

It’s a beautiful and almost Pavlovian response. She walks in, and her mind and creativity wake up. Because this is their home and playroom and workroom – all in one.

Your Writing Space is Legitimately important – because SCIENCE!

If you search a second online or in psychology journals, you’ll find the importance of space on how the brain functions. Everything from the colour of the walls to the smells in the space or the height of the ceilings can affect your mind. And plants! They all say we need more plants.

That can put some pressure on you though, right?

Especially if you aren’t in a situation where you can create a perfect space. A room with walls painted the colour of imagination and carpeted with focus-inducing texture doesn’t come cheap. The internet democratized writing for all of us. Didn’t it?

I refuse to make writing into an elite activity, reserved for fancy-pantsers with oak walled studies and working fireplaces – or airy lofts with floor to ceiling windows. Click To Tweet

Developing a writing practice & claiming a space of any size or colour in your life and dedicating it to that practice?

That is what it takes to be a writer – not a fancy studio or study.

Your space can be a shoulder bag you keep your laptop and notepads in for a trip to the café. It can be the tray you keep a candle and notebook in beside the couch where you curl up to free-write every morning.

Or a book and pen you keep at your desk at work, with a timer you set to give yourself a moment for journalling.

Claim your Writing Space to tell yourself – and the world around you – that your writing is important enough to have its own space.

Your writing space might be the desk you set a sweet lamp on to light your page

Just making that decision, and taking that space, will change the way you feel about sitting down in it to write. It becomes an act of rebellion against all of the things that may distract you from your Voice. And an act of courage standing in the face of those who might judge it.

When I claim a space for my writing – physically in my home or in the world around me – it changes my relationship to writing.

It becomes something I owe attention to, and something that cannot be taken from me. It’s MINE, and it is important; it has a sense of permanence and so too does my commitment to it.

And the coolest thing? It gets used!

I start writing and revelling in it, and the space becomes even more mine and comforting.

So take space in your home and life and time – and take space in the conversation happening around you. Because every one who wants to create deserves and needs a room of one’s own to do so – just like Virginia Woolf said.

Join the #30DaysWithaK challenge today, and find your Space and Voice with us!

We spend the first 5 days of the Challenge thinking about making a space where our writing practice feels good.

It’s a free challenge designed to help you create a writing practice you love and trust in the Voice you have. It takes 30 days, but you can take as little or as much time as you like.

You don’t need to own the perfect #WritingSpace for it to work; you just need to claim a spot as your own & use it. #30DaysWithaK” Click To Tweet

Thanks for hanging out with me today! Join me next week for the next post in this series about developing a Writing Practice. The next piece we’ll talk about is all about rhythm and routine, so get your tap shoes ready (ba-dum pshhhh).

xo
Kris

Kris Windley

Kris is a writer, editor, illustrator, teacher, mother of two amazing young ladies - and enthusiastic cat-belly snuggler. A certified teacher, long-time blogger and experienced brand consultant, she writes about Writing, Business and Blogging...and sometimes about Changing the World.

Kris Windley

Kris is a writer, editor, illustrator, teacher, mother of two amazing young ladies - and enthusiastic cat-belly snuggler. A certified teacher, long-time blogger and experienced brand consultant, she writes about Writing, Business and Blogging...and sometimes about Changing the World.

Have a perspective to share? Please do!

1 Comment

  1. Talk to Walle on March 3, 2021 at 2:52 pm

    I guess everyone knows this kind of procrastination well 🙂

Leave a Comment





Want to read more? Check out these recent articles.

GIVEAWAY – 5 Ways You’re Killing Your Writing Flow – and How to Bring it Back to Life

By |

It’s all about the Process, Man! Keep reading to find out about the first GIVEAWAY contest I’ve ever done on Keyboards and Kickstands! You all know how I feel about applying a Process to writing. I don’t think I need to hammer that anymore today, but if you somehow missed it – go read about…

Free Prewriting Worksheet: Your Perfect Blog Post Outline

By |

Here it is: One Last Prewriting Worksheet! Next week, I’m going to start talking about Step 2 in the Writing Process – Drafting – so this is a pretty special day for you, writers: It is the LAST Prewriting post in this series! Doodoo doo mmm doo DOO!! *JAZZ HANDZZZZZ* Ok. I’m done. I have no idea what…

“But I Can’t Write!” 5 Ways to Avoid Writing and Still Give Great Content

By |

I hear the same thing over and over again: I Don’t Wannnnnaaaa Wriiiite! Ok – so maybe they’re not a bunch of whiney-guts like that, but when I talk to clients about writing a blog for their business, their first concern is often this: “I Can’t Write!” My response is always, “YES YOU CAN! Just let yourself…

Why I’m Taking Mr. Rogers’ Advice Today

By |

I’ve been Trying to Figure out How to Address This Week’s Post… This past week in Moncton, NB – where I live and where my children go to school and learn about life and reality and all of the ways of the world – something impossible happened. I have been mulling over this dilemma for…

Blogging is a Team Sport: How to Build Community Online – and Why you Should

By |

Writing can be a lonely job Writers spend a lot of time alone. We have to, in order to focus on what we are saying, but MAN it can get lonely in our ivory tower (of course, by ivory tower, I really mean messy home-office or local coffee shop – table for one). Blog writing…

Free Prewriting Worksheet: The 5 Keys to Unlock Prewriting

By |

Why Keys? When I taught Writing  at a local private school, here in Moncton, I had to use some clever tricks to keep my students from jumping straight to Drafting. Remember the elephant story? They were trying to eat the whole stinkin’ elephant in one bite, and you and I know that doesn’t work out…