Insomniac Nightmares

I have two means of writing. One is an iPad with a battered keyboard case – one that seems determined to imitate Paul’s typewriter in Misery by randomly throwing keys – while the other is my computer station upstairs.

Now, in theory, that means I can write anytime, anyplace. I can just whip open the iPad and go to town, right? Yet I almost never do. I almost never did even before the keys started disappearing from the keyboard. I’ve owned several iPads over the years, and always get a keyboard from them, and yet almost nothing has been written on them except in periods where I didn’t have access to my computer for one reason or another.

I’m wondering if it’s a space issue, more than a tool issue. When I go upstairs and turn on the computer, it’s a conscious choice. I’m going up there to write or work on my site or do something else work related. It’s what the computer is for. The iPad, meanwhile, is usually left downstairs. The same place I game, watch YouTube, scroll idly through Twitter and do any of a hundred things that aren’t writing.

The office is sacred ground, meant for the creation of art. The living room is not.

I don’t know if it’s just a psychosomatic, superstitious pile of voodoo bullshit or not, but I feel like I have to be in the right place, both physically and mentally, to do this. I wonder if I’m the only one, or if it’s healthy to have such a divide. Sometimes I wonder at the big-brain decision to keep the computer upstairs when pulling myself up here is a nigh-Herculean task on some days. But maybe that factors in, too; I have to put in a lot of effort to get to my workstation, so I’d better make it worthwhile.

What about you out there? Is there a particular place you prefer or have to write in? Is there a place that you just can’t write, no matter how hard you try? Let us know down below.