My Best Creative Space

The one place where ideas flow more than any other is the shower. Something about running water just gets my thoughts organized.

The second place is the quiet of a car. When sitting at a light, a few flickers of ideas will rush by that will eventually become a great idea to explore later. Obviously, these two places aren’t great for writing notes about what one thinks. (never daydream while driving. Seriously, don’t drive distracted)

I’ve since learned that it is more about having an organized quiet space that helps me come up with ideas. The less clutter, the less mess, the less distractions, the better the idea generation.

Having a lot of distracting items about seems to arrest my mind on the todo list of chores that never seem to end.

The second thing I’ve learned about my best creative spaces is having time. Time to think. Time to let ideas come to you. The train commute to and from work affords me predictable time. A structured predictable blog of time each day just for thinking. Same for the shower. I take about the same time to shower every day. The mind knows that it has that brief window to just run with ideas before life interrupts.

Plus, those times rarely vary from day-to-day. This is the one area of life that is not easily affected by the chaos of life. A form of security blanket so to speak. A place where I can slip away and create a world without having to rush back from it. The cadence of time is the same, so the return is rarely super rushed.

That definitely implies that different ideas come from each of the respective places they originate from.

Meaning.

One event/memory/inspiration will develop differently based on where I’m at during the creative process. The shower versus the train commute versus the car; each shaping a different aspect and complexity to the idea being created. This then allows me to craft and add complexities to the story I write, hopefully making them more enjoyable to read.

Let’s give a quick example to help out

Let’s say that I’m thinking about a certain song from the 80s. In the shower, I probably will get a motivational styled set of ideas and feelings. In the car, I’ll get a more aggressively powerful version of that idea. It will be filled with more vivid images of what activities I might have been doing when that song played. It probably will remind me of car trips from that era too. Keep in mind, a red light is but so long, so the ideas are cramped, compact, and blisteringly fast.

On the train, that wave of ideas will have a more romantic slant to it. Might let my mind wander about relationships I saw around that song, people I met around that song, ideas of what adolescence was like around that song. The memories and concepts will hold a lot more emotional weight to them. Even a hint of sadness, depending on the song.

If I find a quiet office to dive into during the day, that same song will evoke more movie like concepts and ideas with far richer sets of emotions. That office has to be very organized/clean/neat to get that to work however. It’s these work spaces that helps me generate the most complete emotional reach of ideas when writing.