Are there any nearby parks that aren’t a pain to get to? School/church playgrounds also make good places if you don’t go during primetime for kids. Lastly, maybe there’s a cafe or restaurant with outdoor seating?

Any suggestions?

I’m not a superstitious person, but I even have my own work ritual when I’m there. I like to think of it more like how basketball players each have their own free throw routines: the actual details of the routine don’t matter, it’s just the confidence that comes from having one.

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Location is crucial for me when it comes to creativeness and overall work energy. Chair is definitely an issue — I can’t seem to get any work done if I’m not sitting comfortably.

Overall “feng-shui” energy of the place, as you say, counts a lot too. Take a look at this post by Alexander Kjerulf who discovered this amazing shared office space in Coppenhagen, looks like my dream-come-true creative place:

http://positivesharing.com/2009/04/office-envy/

Actually I’ve noticed that the city where I happen to be at the moment has a huge impact on my creativeness too. New York and Buenos Aires have the sort of energy that feeds me the most, but one of the reasons I had to leave a city like Dubai, despite all of its bells and whistles, was because its architecture, its weather, the necessity to drive everywhere you go and the socio-political model under which the country is run induced a sort of metaphysical asphyxia on me that literally disabled me from creating anything.

Cheers,
Alan

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As cliche as it sounds, for brainstorming, I find that the new Starbucks is a great creative space. I don’t know if it’s the music, the activity or the smell of coffee that does it, but it works.

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His book is an interesting read, whether you agree with his suggestion or not. It is half autobiography and half discussion of his method. Instead of a listening to someone like Constantin Stanislovski tell you how “to act,” Stephen King tells you how “he writes.” He leaves it to the reader to incorporate whatever works best for them. But for the reader who wants specific instruction, he writes:

“By the time you step into your new writing space and close the door, you should have settled on a daily writing goal. As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first, to avoid discouragement. I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with. No more; you’ll lose the urgency and immediacy of your story if you do. With that goal set, resolve yourself that the door stays closed until that goal is met….

Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time. The door closes the rest of the world out; it also serves to close you in and keep you focused on the job at hand. ”

He also acknowledges that forcing a routine on yourself can feel a little too much like work. But he believes that creating and sticking with that routine can generate a “creative sleep.” Not to suggest that one’s creativity lies dormant, rather that creativity may be roused by routine.

At the risk of posting too many characters, here is the summation of his theory:

“Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream. Your schedule … exists in order to habituate yourself, to make yourself ready to dream just as you make yourself ready to sleep by going to bed at roughly the same time each night and following the same ritual as you go. In both writing and sleeping, we learn to be physically still at the same time we are encouraging our minds to unlock from the humdrum rational thinking of our daytime lives. And as your mind and body grow accustomed to a certain amount of sleep each night … so you can train your waking mind to sleep creatively and work out the vividly imagined dreams which are successful works of fiction.

But you need the room, you need the door, and you need the determination to shut the door. You need a concrete goal, as well. … Don’t wait for the muse. As I’ve said before, he’s a hardheaded guy who’s not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. … Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ’til noon or seven ’til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping on his cigar and making his magic.”