Want a new result? Change your place...and write on

Part One: Place and The Way It Makes Your Feel

For some time to come, I’m going to be riffing on place. Place and writing, place and attachment, place and how you feel. Why? Creativity, art, writing, expression…are all deeply connected to an inner seeing that I believe is made possible by the place your in.

Having returned from Iceland, and responding to the standard (and welcome) question, “How was Iceland?” (always asked with a bit of a high-pitched squeal because people are in awe and infinitely curious about the land of fire and ice)….my response always lands on this:

I am more me, more creative, and more alive when I change location and Iceland is a place I thrive….I LOVE everything I’ve seen of the place and intend to see much more.

Place, just to dip your toe into the way I’m inviting you to consider it —the desk I’m at, building I’m in, town I’m staring out at, landscape within my view and geography I’m presently in—on all the scales, is central to my contentedness. The energy barometer I use as my internal gauge for anxiety, (or overstimulation) comes down to a lovely 2 out of 10 when I’m in the ‘right’ place. Like I said, that can be a coffee shop in Reykjavik, the chair in my suburban backyard in Ontario, or a desk in front of a window with Ludovico Einaudi playing in my headphones just about anywhere (Clonakilty, South West Cork, Ireland, Acton, north of LA in California or Colorado Springs, Colorado).

Think about this for yourself. Look up, look around, look away. Cast your gaze at your context just now.

What about this place makes you feel something?

Many many years ago, (those of you who read Loving Large will remember) when I was learning some dog training skills with Reef…while I didn’t become a skilled trainer, nor did he become incredibly or highly skilled because of my weaknesses, I learned something that came into my writing life__if you want a new result, change everything. I’ll avoid the psychology here, and say this: I write differently when I change the place I put my butt in the chair. Yes, this means the pillows, blanket, position of my gorgeous gray editing chair in the family room, but it also means going to the coffee shop, writing in my bf’s backyard, or plopping a chair down in a park.

Writers - consider your place and change it. Yep, right now. grab the notebook, laptop, loose stack of pages and go.

Nod to Chloe Aridjis, who I met and savoured time with at the Iceland Writers Retreat a couple of days back. She told a group of us in a workshop that she works at home in the morning and then prints a stack of pages that she is working on and takes that bunch of printed sheets off to a London library with her. (Sorry, Chloe, which library is escaping my jet lagged brain just now.) She changes places, ways of working, her view, her situation, and that makes all the difference to her creative process and personal satisfaction. Pretty clever, and super easy right? (More on Sea Monsters here, which I’m reading right now.)

Drop me a comment if you try this, and even better, drop me a note if you’re stuck for ideas about what to try.

Here is a place I loved from my time in Reykjavik…

[I’m working on my next memoir about the role of yearning for place and rewilding myself and it ties in here too. I write better, breathe better and live more happily when I change location. My next memoir will try to answer to the question: What location is home for me, then?