Setting Up Your Blogging Paradise

Let’s take a journey to where your ideas come from. Let’s run through fields of caramelized clover and dance with Pepperidge Farm Puppies until we get to the valley of blogging paradise where you can sit in peace and write opus after manifesto and every one wins the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness.

Yeah, so unfortunately that place doesn’t exist, but we all have to sit down and write somewhere and the environment we place ourselves in while we write may be affecting how we write. Have you taken a lot of time to properly set up or explore your writing space or do you just choose wherever you happen to be at the time a post is due?

I don’t have all the answers on this one because the perfect writing space will differ for almost every individual, but there are a few suggestions that can be made to make your space and your writing more comfortable.

Make Space

I don’t care if you live in a 20-room mansion or currently inhabit the remains of a refrigerator box, find a specific place that is yours in which to write. Make sure you have enough room to breathe and move comfortably and that there are no distractions like hanging wires or peripheral shenanigans. The living room chair while your kids and wife watch Wipeout in the background does not count, albeit awesome and cozy.

Your space should give you the room you need to spread out books or notes or pens or whatever you require while writing. If you reference a lot of books and constantly need them open to quote from, don’t set up on the corner of a counter or on a rounded kitchen table. Currently I’m sitting in an upstairs bedroom my wife and I have turned into an office with my notes spread out around me on a large cherry oak desk I bought off Craigslist for 50 bucks. It doesn’t have to be the prettiest of places, just make sure it works and it’s yours.

Sittin’ Pretty

I don’t know how long it takes you to plan, compose and edit a blog post (or multiples, if that’s your thing), but more than likely you’ll be sitting for quite some time. Invest the money (or time searching) in a quality chair with ample back support. If possible, try to avoid writing for long periods of time on a stool, couch leaning over a table, kitchen chair or crappy desk chair with no support.

Even in the best of chairs, sitting for long periods of time will cause undue stress on the back muscles, so you might even want to look for one with extra padding or order an additional back supporter to help out. Back support is key, although it helps when the chair isn’t too hard on your tookus either. My chair is one I “borrowed” from a job I had a long time ago that they were throwing away. Instead of going to the dumpster as instructed, I rolled it to my car.

All About The Vibe

Do you need music when you write? Do you need complete silence? Do you need 12 siberian huskies trained to juggle lumps of avocado to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher? Whatever you need, make sure it’s in avid supply in your space. I have a stereo hooked up by AV port to my computer so I can stream Spotify while I write, which I love, but I have friends who have to write in complete silence. Set up the sounds to your perfect frequency.

Lighting is also important. If you’re spending large amounts of time reading and looking at book pages or your computer screen it’s important to have a good amount of natural light available. Do you write first thing in the morning? Maybe you’ll want to find a room on the east side of your house with a good-sized window to be your space. If you’re like me and prefer to write at dusk or in the evening, put your space on the west of the house and have a lot of lamps ready to go. There’s nothing worse than setting the mood for writing only for it to cause you to get drowsy 20 minutes in.

Color is important as well, but if you don’t have the time or resources to repaint a room, it’s understandable. Ideally, you’d like to have the room be neutral or lively colors so you’re surrounded by the energy of the room as you write.

Tools of the Trade

I’m not going to tell you what to write with. I know people who write it all out on paper and then transfer it to their blog. I also know people who write in a Word Processor and then transfer it to WordPress (or whatever they use). I, myself, like to write from my notes directly in WordPress, but that’s just me. Normally I would tell people to have a dictionary or thesaurus handy, but with the Internet merely a click away, that’s not as necessary anymore.

Exceptions

There are exceptions to every scenario and that means writing as well. Maybe you’re on vacation and are writing in a hotel room. Maybe it’s a beautiful day outside and you want to head to a local coffeeshop with a porch to write. That’s all totally fine and I’m not saying that you can’t produce quality writing at those places, but in my experience it helps to have a place to call “home,” so to speak, where you know everything is set up how you like it and you won’t be disturbed. Adventures are fun, but there needs to be a safe castle somewhere waiting for you.

Where do you write? Describe your writing space in the comments or even upload a picture and I and maybe some other For Bloggers, By Bloggers elite will give you our suggestions on how to improve or enhance your space. Ask questions regarding what you have at hand and let us know how you surround yourself when you create your masterpieces.

Also be sure to help welcome Brankica Underwood to the FBBB family by telling her how awesome she is in the comments!

Thoughts?

P.S. Oh yeah, this is what my writing space looks like, in case you were wondering.