Setting

I'm talking here about the setting where you write, not the setting for your stories.

I'm pretty prolific I think. I write all day as a part of my job. And I can still get 2,000 words per day without intense effort, usually.

However, last night, something interesting happened.

On a complete whim, I took my laptop down to Starbucks, ordered a hot chocolate and started playing with a short story idea. About an hour and a half later, the complete first draft, which started from nothing more than an inkling of an idea, was done. The short story's length was 2,750 words -- and to crank that out in 90 minutes when I really only had the nugget of an idea is quite an accomplishment even for me.

At this point the story is just OK and certainly not as clean as most of my first drafts are. I still have a good deal of work on tension and need to do something more with the twist at the end.

I'm wondering how much a change of my setting resulted in the quick write.

Lawrence Block is a prolific writer. He has written more than 50 novels and countless short stories -- enough to fill 8 books as collections of his stories. In an interview, he once spoke of change in location in regards to where he writes.

As an example, he spoke of being on a cruise in Scandinavia with his wife. He said on the third day out, he took a yellow pad and went to the ship's library to write for a while. Words poured out and at the end of the week, just going an hour or so a day, he had a 7500 word short story.

He also talked about how after a while, he comes to hate writing whereever his "office" may be, so he often writes in coffee shops, hotel lobbies, libraries, etc.

It was just an interesting observation for me, although admittedly I did feel funny...it seems that Starbucks has become the home of a million aspiring writers and I'm just another one.