I have a secret writing place. For the second time in two weeks, I leave my office on my lunch break and drive to the outskirts of the huge parking lot behind the campus where I work.
What is it about this place? The spot I like faces away from the activity of students coming and going. I look out my windshield and instead of seeing familiar faces or cars driving around and around, I see a small patch of grass with yellow wildflowers and a clump of trees with leaves and branches blowing in the breeze. Last week it rained while I wrote in my car, then cleared up again by the time I finished.
I wish I could make it rain every time I write in my car.
I put on my earbuds and find a Spotify playlist that I like: Deep Focus. The ambient music taps the sediment loose, wakes me up. Thoughts and images bubble up. My eyes rest on the trees. The leaves rock slowly, hypnotically. I face away from the campus and its courtyards and breezeways. For a brief time, I forget that I’m at work. I’m alone and I can think my own thoughts.
I eat my lunch and let my mind turn towards a story idea, calmly, without forcing anything. Then it’s time to capture some of these images. I set aside my lunch bag and either grab my laptop or pull out the pale green notebook I picked up at the Japanese bookstore a few weeks ago. I set a timer and head off on a journey.
Eventually, I come back. I move my car back to the main parking lot, closer to my office. I throw away my trash, and head back upstairs, ready to get back to work on the project I set aside an hour before.
What’s unusual, I suppose, is that I have my own office space with a door that I can close and lock, and yet today I had to get up and walk away from the projects and emails I had been dealing with all morning. I know that I’m lucky to have a space of my own. I have written–or tried to write–in this office at least three times a week for the past couple years. But sometimes I can’t shut off the work thoughts. Or a colleague who doesn’t know I’m a lunch time writer knocks on the door. Sometimes the group study session in the room next door gets a little too crazy.
Even though I’ve trained myself to write in all sorts of conditions, I have to keep coming up with new ways to leave the ordinary world behind so that I can fall into the timeless world of my stories.
This is how it should be. Find a way to make the separation between your work life and your writing life. Change your location, stare at the trees, watch the rain.
A Writer's Habitat 