COVID had a profound impact on what we think of as home. Many of my contemporaries have explained to me how they once thought of home as a sanctuary, a place to escape from their work and to retreat to their personal and family lives. As we all escaped the pandemic into our remote work environs, we instinctively, and without forethought, turned this oasis into hybrid work/home combination settings.
As an author, this oasis was already my work setting. Ironically, it was this oasis aspect of my home that made it such a wonderful work environment for me. As COVID set in, my family invaded this retreat. I love having my family around, but it was those quiet hours when my kids were at school when I was able to get my best writing done. As I reflect upon this transition I am raised to question when and where I as an author do my best writing and what makes my best muse.
I am a romance author but prone to solitude. Two times of day suit me best for writing, early morning before my dog wakes and before my kids need to rise for school. And mid-day when everything is calm, and the world has that warmth of the mid-day sun but the lull of the noonday rest. These times lend well to my rhythm. They lend well to my creativity and my spirit. In the early morning, I like to curl up with a fire in the fireplace with my aging chocolate lab on the couch beside me and imagine how the romantic life of my protagonist would be as it unfolded in this tragic world in which we live. In the afternoon, I enjoy taking creative walks, or sitting on my porch and writing verse around resolutions of the conflict we face which holds us back from the love we feel for life and ourselves.
For me, these settings have been intertwined with my home. They have been intertwined with my oasis. As this space has become more noisy, if you will, I have found this sanctuary less creative. For this reason, I have found myself seeking out new and inspirational places to explore my creativity, the park, a local restaurant, and even my car. I find it interesting that while others are turning to their homes for remote work and escape from their corporate offices, I, an author, am finding myself turning to places outside of my home to work. I recently heard about another writer who was renting a space in an office building to do their work as they felt they needed someplace more constructive and corporate.
I guess, to sum it up, where you write is important. As an author, it is essential that you find the space and setting that allow you to engage and support the creative cycles of your writing emotions or habits. For me, I am not able to sit at a desk and crank out my next work. My writing environment is as important as my writing content. They work in harmony. I suppose it is different when I am working on a technical piece or a research document. However, you need to support your writing health. Just as the corporate world came home from COVID and is now looking to, in many cases, stay home, as writers, we need to find and embrace the space and inspirational places that support our writing.
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