omething I have discovered as I have developed as a writer is how different environments and different mediums affect how I work. By this I mean the environment I am surrounded by, the control I have over it and the busyness of it, and in medium whether I am writing by hand or on a computer. These may seem extremely obvious things, pointless to write about or discuss, but I do believe they have a strong degree of influence over the creative process. Perhaps this is placebo, perhaps not. However, even the effect of a placebo is real and should be noted.
During undergrad, the campus libraries were hugely popular spots for working, and when I tried these out I was able to get academic work done, but creative work was a real struggle, even with my earphones in and a suitable film soundtrack playing. At first I thought maybe it was because the music was too loud – too close to my ears with my earphones – (something I still find vaguely distracting) and therefore my mind was focused on what I was hearing rather than what I was working on. But turning down the volume only increased the ambient chatter of those around, which was even more distracting. The result of this was that napping in the bean bag room of one of the other libraries was a better employment of my time between lectures.
I finally cracked the nut of what was limiting me when I was working at a table in an island café in a shopping centre some years or months later. I was highly aware of the flow of people around me, of the visibility of my screen and my face, and this awareness not only distracted me from my work, but also made me self-conscious. What if someone was reading over my shoulder? What if someone was watching my expressions and I was showing the emotions that I was writing? Writing by hand decreased these concerns greatly – narrow cursive or a looping scrawl on a page is much harder to read than an illuminated screen of 12-point Times New Roman. Even so, I now had a new piece of the puzzle to understand, and I began to realise what environment I needed in order to best write.
Self-consciousness or excess self-awareness whilst writing are things that I consider the enemy of natural flow, at least for myself. Were the thoughts I was thinking an anxious over exaggeration of what was really happening? Most probably. However, the effects were still real. I was still stymied. To quote Mr Darcy, “That is the material point.”. Excess self-awareness has a similar effect, and is something I find arises when I watch myself too closely when I’m writing, usually if a particular habit or tendency has been pointed out a few too many times, and then I try to consciously and deliberate catch myself at it, or else to not do it at all. The upshot of this is that I will be so busy watching myself that barely anything gets written, and even that which does is extremely poor quality.
It is important to note at this point that these are restrictions for me and my writing process. What one person finds a barrier, another might find conducive. But more on that later. Knowing that having people moving behind me, or people able to see my expression were environmental factors that inhibited my ability to fully immerse myself in my work. Immersive is the key word here. When I write, my goal is to relinquish a lot of conscious control, to silence any distracting thoughts of “what’s happening next?”, “is this characterisation accurate?” and the like – the conscious chatter, and instead simply let the characters and the target point of the chapter guide me. I work best when fully immersed in the world, and things that prevent that make writing a struggle instead of a flow.
A good way to visualise it is like a river with a weir. If the gates are mostly closed, only a very small trickle is able to struggle through. But if the gates are fully open, with no barriers to impede the flow of the water, the torrent gushes out. Being aware of how my environment can limit my ability to write therefore is an important part of my process when I am getting ready to sit down and work. Knowing these factors means that it becomes easier for me to set myself up for an easy start to writing. For me the aim is to achieve a flow state. Almost like I’ve reached terminal velocity, and at that point the gentle effort of guiding my mind in the right direction to work is no longer required, and instead the work simply pours forth, seemingly without effort.
My work environment became an extremely important factor during postgrad. In my first year I attempted to study in my hall’s library. I had a desk in my room, but I figured it would be good to try and work in other spaces, and the library was small and very nice. This had mixed results. The library wasn’t a thoroughfare and I could face a window. So far, so good. This was fine for academic work, and even some short fiction. However, this brings me back to the point regarding immersion. When I write I tend to channel the emotions of my characters in the scene that I am working on. I find it easiest to portray their emotions when I have my own in immediate reference. In highly charged scenes, this means that I will often be actively expressing these emotions as I write. The easiest example to give in this instance are the scenes involving sadness or suffering, when I will be writing in tears with the characters.
Given this example, it quickly becomes evident why working in a solitary environment is an important factor for me. I don’t want to concern or distract those around me, nor do I want to be distracted from my own work when they are kind enough to enquire after my wellbeing. After this I returned to almost exclusively working in my room. There the environment was controlled, I could relax in comfortable clothes, and have the necessary atmospheric background music quietly playing from my speakers instead of directly into my ears whilst I wrote. The result of knowing my environmental requirements, and other aids that made my setup as conducive as possible (i.e. the right music, easily accessible water, a good chair and desk, appropriate lighting, et cetera), meant that I was able to very easily power through the work I needed to achieve for my thesis in second year.
Now, as I have mentioned previously, the effect of these factors is solely that of my own experience. Everyone has different requirements. The preferences of other writers are actually something that fascinate me quite a lot, simply because we can be so different, but have the same end goal (writing). In postgrad I was able to work with other writers and discover that they had wildly different environmental requirements to my own. For many they thrived writing in a busy environment, and cafés were a popular working location, the background chatter becoming a helpful kind of white noise in a similar way to how I use orchestral music.
In addition to this, I also discovered that many preferred to write in notebooks by hand, and later transcribe to a computer. I can understand this impulse. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, there is something that feels more welcoming and organic about writing on a physical page, and the act of handwriting seems to help slow and guide the brain as a story is generated. For me, this medium is best utilised at the beginning of the idea creation process when I am still feeling out the story and putting together the bones. After it is stable enough to survive the sterile environment of a Word doc, writing there comes relatively easily to me.
And this is the most important point. The immense variety of tools and techniques that different people will find useful or an impediment cannot be stressed enough to young writers. It is very common to want to emulate a favourite author. However, what works for them might not work for you, and there is nothing wrong with that. Discovering all the ins and outs of what is useful and what isn’t for you is part of the work of being a writer. The processes and preferences of others are there for inspiration, a menu, if you will, from which you might select various methods to try and see whether they suit the palette of your writing process. There is no value judgement associated with what you require or the methods you use. If they work for you, then that’s all that matters.
