I got up at 5am this morning to write but I also came to a certain spot. Instead of my office, I am in my living room working on my MacBook Pro with its endearing keyboard fault. (There’s something wrong with the W and Q keys so every time you’ve read w or q I have actually keyed Apple-1 or Apple-2: I set a Keyboard Maestro shortcut to save me having to take the keyboard apart or take the time to bring it in for repair.)

But the reason I’m here is that here is where I started writing a short story. I’ve been commissioned to write one and as part of the job, I had an evening with a readers’ group. When I got home that night, I had an idea pounding away at me and I had to get it down, so I sat on my couch and typed a few notes. That was the intention. I ended up writing around 500 words of story, feeling it out, experimenting, testing whether the idea was really a story.

And every now and again, I come back to this couch to continue it.

It just feels right. I had this with The Blank Screen book which I wrote primarily on my iPad while working on a massive non-fiction title in my office.

Location matters more to me than I realised and I think it might mean more to you than you’ve thought. I don’t know, but I’m surprised at the depth of difference it’s made to me and if it helps me this much, in some intangible way, then I want to see if it helps you.

Follow. I don’t consider myself a journalist any more but I certainly was one for a long time and as part of that I grew the ability and the preference to write wherever I happen to be and for however long I happened to have. A sentence here. An article there.

Part of moving to drama is that I’m having to reach further inside myself and somehow what’s around me physically is getting in the way.

I still can and I still do write wherever and whenever I can. But coming to this couch to write the short story, going to the Library of Birmingham to do my regular OmniFocus reviews, it helps.

I’ve found this through accident. Can you try it deliberately? Try writing your next thing somewhere else and see if it helps you.

And then explain to me how I can claim this helps me write my short story when I’m visibly not writing it, I’m visibly talking to you instead.