When it comes right down to it, being a successful writer can be the easiest thing in the world or it can become impossible. There is a potent formula to being a writer. The formula consists of two ingredients that, if portioned appropriately, make for the best writers in the world. Those ingredients are focus and environment .
Time was I could write anywhere. I did my best work on the back of the M1 bus around a bustling crowd of people talking, pushing sighing, all impatient to get home. I hoped the ride wouldn’t end. Sometimes I’d even miss my stop and have to walk back two even three stops because I was lost in a world of my own words. The writing wasn’t about escaping from anything. Writing isn’t an escape. It is a destination. I used to think it was a matter of me escaping from the real world into these epic fantasy realms with walls so high that I could no longer even see the reality around me. It turns out that the walls built from my focus. Brick by brick I would surrender myself to the task of writing the way someone surrenders to prayer or meditation. The story was all that mattered and I would cut myself off from everything else in pursuit of the next powerful line. I still get to that space sometimes but it takes longer to dive deep. I’m a grown up with all the pressures and distractions of adult life. I have a family, friends, teams to coach, even video games designed to rob me of my focus. When I can push all those things aside the words come–reluctantly at first, but after a while they flow freely and I can get lost again.
I cannot get lost just anywhere. The M1 was part of the equation. The noise and energy of a bustling metropolis was part of the energy. I wrote for ever a year about Arizona being the land of white picket fences and slow, boring lives. There really isn’t a whole lot of intention in this state. That makes a difference. Where you live–be it state or home–makes a difference. I live in a place where the family really doesn’t understand what it means to make room for writing, so when I write I leave. Environment is more than physical. It is spiritual, emotional, and intentional. Partly it is about being around go-getters and those who crave more and want to achieve more. Partly it is about being around those who have a desire to understand and nourish the process. Partly it is being a little bit malcontent yourself and needing to satisfy that hunger with the words.
The combination of these two ingredients can be explosive or they can leech the words out of a writer. It is the responsibility of the writer to recognize what their proper mixture looks like and strive to achieve it.