Do we need a perfect place to write?

I have spent the last few weeks writing. Where I am it is quiet and lovely. I couldn’t help feeling that it was the perfect place to write. Everyone knows there’s only one perfect place to write, after all. So, do you have to put yourself in that perfect place for the muse to make an appearance?

Rituals always help. I light a red candle, a stick of incense, and then start. If I want I can travel down the road to the ocean, I can write while hearing its soothing and peaceful noises. Laptops are portable and allow me to move. Our cabin is surrounded by trees and the quiet of the forest is broken only by the calls of birds and the skittering of squirrels on the rooftop.

But maybe it’s not the quiet, the setting, and the solitude as much as it has been the routine. We wake up at 6:30 AM meditate, journal write, run, have lunch and then write for five hours everyday. We are here to write. So the writing comes. Maybe that is why this is the perfect place, because we have decided that it will be.