Authors can seriously be crippled by the lack of a proper atmosphere. This is a huge helpful tip for anyone who hasn’t figured out the full deal for themselves, and a great pointer for someone currently trying to figure out how best to do their work.
Step #1; Find your happy place. Overlook the cliché of that statement, it holds vast truth and importance. You have to find where the you write best. It may be somewhere quiet, it may be somewhere loud, it may not even be the same place all of the time, but you have to use it when you find it. While the place may take some time to find, you’ll definitely know it when you do. It will be the place your writing comes most naturally and easily, and where the flow of your words is best. The atmosphere must be perfect to get optimum work, for a lot of people anyway. Granted that, as much as anything else, can vary from person to person, it is something that absolutely must be paid attention to. Your work area is your happy place, your safe place, your haven, and it must fit your standards to the finest points. Whether you like it quiet or loud, bright or dim, crowded or completely empty, it must be the place that most helps you do what you do best.
Step #2; You must find your time also. Most people can write at nearly anytime, but there will be a certain time of day (not necessarily an hour or minute per se, but more a generalization like morning, dawn, dusk, afternoon, evening, night) that they find their work absolutely at the top of its game. This must be taken advantage of. That is the best way to deal with your day, and can even be a great stress reliever in itself. Just finding what time works best for you gives you an idea of how you can literally schedule your entire day around your writing and get top quality work without having to edit as much (which always helps in the end).
Step 3; Utilize every second of your time. Setting up a schedule will definitely help this, especially if you have taken the time to follow the first two steps. Going to your ‘happy place’ at the time that you have found to be your best work period is going to make you feel you have become increasingly accomplished in the craft, and help to complete your project as quickly as possible.
These steps are probably fairly generic to most people, but they can still be very helpful to new authors, and we can all admit that it never hurts to be reminded of such things. Life can cut its way in on us and ruin our mood and inspiration. Stress has killed more books throughout history than book burning protesters have, most likely, and we have to do all that we can to fight it at every turn. These steps will help most authors on their way to success (or at least completion of projects), and I really would like to hear what you all think about them. If they have helped, let me know. And if they haven’t let me know also, and hopefully you’ll share why they have or haven’t. And if you have any more tips definitely leave them in the comments, and of course you will get all of the credit. I look forward to hearing from everyone.
-Damean
Damean Mathews 
When I was traveling a lot, I continually believed that my hours on an airplane would be perfect to get a lot of writing done; I had nothing else to do. After about four times in which this proved NOT to be the case, I couldn’t understand it. I thought I was just being ridiculous.
Then, one year, I was forcing myself to get my writing done everyday and was taking it pretty seriously. As I sat there at the airport waiting for my flight, trying to work in a notebook, then on my ipad, in a seat, in the bathroom, at the Star Buck’s tables, on the floor, I realized that I wasn’t getting it done because of the atmosphere. It wasn’t conducive to anything.
I ended up figuring out that the most comfortable way for me to write was on my ipad’s touch screen (Not my bought-for-this-exact-purpose keyboard), scrunched up with my feet on the chair, the thing sitting in my lap.
It’s interesting how much the atmosphere of a place can mess with you.
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I understand this completely. One of the most productive places I have ever been able to write in was the classroom years ago in high school. And the most productive is during a summer thunderstorm. Environment is extremely important to work, and that knowledge is lost to a lot of people. In fact there are a number of young writers who have trouble finding the right environment, which leads to trouble writing, which leads to a lack of faith in their writing. For this reason many people just think they are terrible writers and end up disregarding their passion just for want of simple encouragement, and that is a true shame and something I am trying to actively prevent with this blog.
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