I've always found writing in public difficult but tonight completed nearly 30 pages of editing in an hour and a half in a public bar. I haven't been able to work for a month. Various work and home commitments have got in the way and when I've finally found the time I've been too tired. But tonight I was that keen my being trapped on the other side of town waiting for my children wasn't even an obstacle. Strangely, when I got home I'd lost my enthusiasm again.
Are there places you can't or won't write? Does a change of location help you when you are finding work hard? Do you always write in the same location?
A few idea about where people write..
I sometimes get an idea for a poem while riding my bike - a line or an image comes to mind and stays there. I think the physical act of pedalling helps.
But if "writing" = actually putting things down on paper or on a screen, then I have to be at my computer - a desk top machine, I can't cope with a laptop.
One of my friends claimed that she did her best work in a Little Chef cafe.Wouldn't do for me.
Trains nowadays and even our local buses come equipped with wi-fi and lots of people seem to spend long journeys writing on their laptops.
Your question really got me thinking. Much as I spend all of my "actual" writing time at home at my desk (writing new scenes, editing, etc), I do an awful lot of the imagining whilst sitting on the London Underground or on the top deck of a bus while I'm stuck in traffic at Trafalgar Square (again). In addition, when I was commuting from Bath to London a few summers ago, I scribbled almost all of my story notes and supporting info into a notebook in the second class quiet zone of the First Great Western express train. So, initially, I was going to say, "No, I do all my writing at home and not in public," but have actually realised that I do quite a lot of writing activities (in their broadest sense) on public transport. Thanks for prompting me to realise this. It's always useful to realise something new.
I had a colleague who asked to read some of my work while we were stuck waiting and he had run out of newspapers. I gave him a quite long piece without really expecting him to stick all the way through it. I was delighted with his respoonse and the fact that he discussed the whole thing with me. It was the first time that anyone really got into anything I had written.
Still waiting he asked for more. I only had a hard copy of a short piece that might be described as "controversial". It's sort of a post apocalyptic Alf Garnet raging against having been captured by my good guys while attacking their area. My colleague read it quietly and then said one word that I can't repeat here I'm pretty sure that he meant the character and not me though...
So long as I keep hold of the hard copy letting other people look and comment can be really encouraging. If they don't like it they will, as "Brits" usually go all coy and back off... And if they're not Brits they are entitled to be wrong :-) (I worked with the travelling public in Central London too long to not have a rhino hide - most of the time).
With suitable caution applied I would encourage people to let others see their work and comment on it. After all - we all have to dive in somewhere. A bit of a paddle with a face-to-face reader is surely a lot safer than the prospect of rejections from unseen faces... Provided of course that they don't roll up the MS and whack you with it...
David