Read Time : 2 Minutes

Landscape is part of a creative response to our environment.

When we’re in a place we love, such as the woods or the beach, we create a different response in our minds to creativity. Most of us actually relax and become more creative because we’re responding to landscape. But what happens when we can’t get away to our favorite place?

We forget how to tap into our creative selves. Suddenly the dishwasher, the honking horns, and the train clattering along the tracks distracts us. We object to our landscape and shut down our creativity. I won’t say I can wave a magic wand and enhance your creativity while you’re distracted, but we choose to let ourselves become distracted and we make excuses as to why we’re not finishing that novel or new vocals, for example, because we can’t get away to a perfect landscape.

I, for one, hate construction noise, but I’ve trained myself over the years to work alongside noise by merging sounds so the noise isn’t noise, a distraction, but a part of the creativity. Ok, I admit that sounds a little wonky, but I’ll try and explain.

By listening to the inward voice, and not my outward environment, the inward voice gets stronger and louder than say the construction noise. By focusing on the construction noise, I will lose the inward voice, the writer’s voice, but by allowing the construction noise to be there, not trying to mask it or run away from it, I create a place where I’ve learned to balance outward sounds and mind chatter with the writer’s voice. It’s become a mind game not to listen to what’s going on around me or get distracted by all the chirps and bings on my computer telling me I have a message. We can think of plenty of excuses not to work alongside distractions, but if we do we fail to create. While choosing to create amid distraction, acknowledge it, work with it, focus on the desire to be in balance, and you will create a more rewarding experience.

I often tell the story of when I was first began writing.

I would do so at the kitchen table while my two young daughters played in the same room alongside me. Best training ever to teach myself how to balance distraction and creativity! Trust me. It can be done! It takes enormous patience with yourself and a desire to muddle through. We’re creatives. Creatives create. Be patient with yourself and you, too, can muddle through. Focus on the competent you. Listen to that inward voice and the outward sounds will diminish. I promise.

Finding excuses not to do something is easy, but reevaluating landscape and making it a part of the process, an accessory to creativity, will give it less attention. And when there is less attention placed on where you’re writing, or what you’re listening to, suddenly the train, or the children playing under your feet, becomes a comfort and never a distraction because it was never defined as such. xo