While there are places we regularly create- write, paint, sculpt, whatever it is you do- I wonder what favorite places people have for creating. Is it a cottage on a lake? Do you need Internet or does it hamper your process? Fresh air? A view? Music? A hustle-and-bustle community around you?
Is there a favorite city? Maybe it's New Orleans. Maybe it's Montreal. Maybe it's Manhattan. Or a region like the Monterey Peninsula, one of my favorites in the USA.
I think a small apartment in Prague would be my ideal place to write, but I also once let a room in Rueil-Malmaison just outside of Paris where I did quite a bit of writing. I loved it there. It was small, with large windows which opened wide. On the corner there was a great patisserie and in the cafe below they served an amazing duck dish I ordered several times. The streets were lined with wrought-iron fences atop stone walls and it seemed each fence was draped in the branches of cherry trees. It was a great place to get words down.
In the Swissôtel Beijing, where I spent nearly a month, I found it difficult to write. I'm not sure why. I think there was just too much "new" outside the hotel that while I was in my room, I just wanted to be out, experiencing instead of creating.
That's not to say we need to be in boring places to create, and sure, creative people can create anywhere if they have to. The question, however, remains are there places that seem to help a writer or artist clear mental space enough to aid the creative process? Are these places providing something from which we draw that other places do not?
I like to create in a small space. I used to create the most in my closet like room in Santa Fe, I used my desk from my bed it was so cramped. There was a view of the mountains. It inspired me to sew, and write the most I ever had.
ReplyDeleteI dream of creating and being inspired in an English country side cottage often, and would love to achieve that someday to see if my dream is true.