Write in the Place and Manner That’s Best for You

I subscribe to quite a few newsletters, but none provide the daily brain candy in the way Elevator does.  It describes its curated content as “No news. No politics. No BS.

Just the good stuff.” For example, the articles in today’s Elevator include “A Few Things to Consider Before Committing a Museum Heist” and “The Best Horror Movies To Stream Right Now.”

An Elevator from a few weeks ago included a Wallpaper* article titled “Where writers write: 12 Booker Prize 2025 nominees share their writing spots.” The Booker Prize is a literary award given each year for the best novel written in the English language that was published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

Now, I am not going to waste your time with a play-by-play of an article that I found in a curated newsletter, but if you scroll through it, you will see that these authors' preferred workspaces differ widely. One prefers to write outside on deck furniture, beaten down by rain, while others have meticulously organized desks.

My point is that most of us are self-aware enough to know the types of spaces and environments where we do our best work. As writers, our goal should be to try to put ourselves in those areas as much as possible when we work. For me, that is in front of my desktop computer in my office.

The key is to be honest with yourself about what works best for you. Two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo did some of his best writing in his bathtub, while Virginia Woolf often wrote standing up in a cluttered office. Whether it is the office, the coffee shop, or in a van down by the river, decide what’s best for you and run with it.

If you enjoyed this piece, you might also like my earlier blog on the correct way of using E.g or I.e.

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