A writer is always writing even when there is no pen or paper in sight. In the grocery, driving, sitting at a movie, an evening out with friends, lying awake in the late hours or early morning, walking the dog, cooking a great meal, and just about everywhere else. The creative mind is always churning and processing some thought that would make a great story.

The discipline comes into play when one can take those constant inspirations onto a piece of paper. To me that does not mean simply scribbling them somewhere, jotting an idea or a character sketch into a notebook when the idea hits, or making mental notes to someday use an enlightening scenario in a future story, but rather it means truly writing the words. Not the kind of writing on the fly on loose pages, but the process of sitting down to gather all those scribbling and notes and creating the whole from the parts.

The place from which a writer writes is as important as what they write. The private space where the surroundings are inspirational, where the surface feels rights, where thoughts can flow unedited and safely to the page without judgement or a second eye constantly peering into the process is key. The impeccably personal private space from which to write becomes as vital as what one writes.

It does not have to be an elaborate character desk oozing in history, or a sanitized industrial-like clean surface from which to create. But it does have to be private, your own, and tucked away from the distractions of the world. Perhaps you don’t even have a desk from which to write but rather your desk is an old leather valise with your papers and pens and you cart them to your favourite spot in the world to sit and write and your desk is under a tree somewhere in a quiet park. What works is that you create your room, your desk, your place, your very own private personal space where you go to every chance you can to write.

In this place, at this desk, you must respect and honour your platform, your easel, your palate from where your work flows. If you are inspired by personal items in your life surround yourself with them, your family pictures, your good-luck charms, your totems and mementos, your collections that bring you passion, and all things personal. Do not clutter the surface with distractions or negatives, leave your household bills and to do lists in another room away from the creative process and positive space of your writing. Don’t email friends in between writing paragraphs, don’t answer the phone, and don’t even play music if it distracts you, but blast it if it inspires you. Creating your place to write, your room of one’s own, is as important as creating the words. It is the place from which you create and you need it to be as right as any other profession needs a workplace, an artist and a studio, a mechanic and a garage, a doctor and a clinic, a writer and a desk.

Create the private personal inspirational space for the words to flow. Give yourself the gift of a place to write.

“A Women must have money and a room of her own if she is to write” ... Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own