Dwayne's picture
Dwayne from Cincinnati, Ohio (suburbs) is reading books that rotate to often to keep this updated July 28, 2013 - 4:54pm

I've noticed my writing has lots to do with back ground noise. My first few apartments when there was a lot of people in and out it was very muddy, human stuff. Shared a house it was almost no writing, but I think I was just busy and bummed. Not a good combo. When I started working security I started doing some at work and it became very had action. Probably because I was bored, almost no noise. Stuff I wrote at my last apartment was very dark and moody, and it had an echo. Here,I write more things that police are part of, even if only bit parts, and I live by a fire station near a road lots of ambulances take. Just wondering if that bleed over happens to others. 

*This is sort of rip off of SappleScoot's http://litreactor.com/discuss/ambient-sounds-as-an-assist-to-writing thread.

Tim Johnson's picture
Tim Johnson from Rockville, MD is reading Notes From a Necrophobe by T.C. Armstrong July 29, 2013 - 8:33am

I don't think so. Typically, I have a pretty good idea of what I want to write before I sit down to write, so I'm influenced more by the environments that I don't write in. That is to say I'm less inspired by my work environment and more inspired by what I experience when I'm just going about my life. For example, I might be walking down the street to the metro station and make an observation, commit it to memory, and pop it into a story I'm working on.

My work environment is terrible, though. I live in a 1 bedroom with my fiance, and my desk is in the corner of our bedroom. So I have little privacy. There are also a lot of distractions. Thankfully, I'm near a few cafes and a library, so I can get away. But that has its own difficulties, chiefly being that it's hard to relax, and after a while, I just want to go home.

What I mean is I'm definitely influenced by my work envrionment, but it has to do more with how engaged with my writing I can be and less to do with what I actually write.