What is the one thing you need when you sit down to write? I don’t mean the obvious pen and paper or computer, but that one other thing that you always have when you write? Maybe it’s a tall-soy-caramel-macchiato and a corner booth at the local coffee shop. Maybe it’s a stack of papers with all of your research, or an expanding file folder packed full, yet obsessively organized, with research material. Maybe it’s not even a physical thing or place. Maybe it’s nothing more than a seed of an idea or a spark of inspiration.

For me it’s mostly the latter—a spark of inspiration that strikes at the most un-opportune time. Like when I’m driving, taking a hot shower, or while I’m out jogging or riding my bicycle. I think it is always at these most unfortunate times that I have the most inspiration to write because my mind is free to wonder—to focus on nothing else but the silence and the words and ideas stumbling, swirling, and dancing together in my head. As soon as I can I get to my computer, or use the notes feature on my phone, to try and capture the same way the words and sentences flowed in my head when I couldn’t write them down. Still other times I need a change of scenery, usually a seat in a coffee shop accompanied by a fancy coffee drink with a ridiculously long name, in order to get the words flowing.

What about you? What is it that you need when you sit down to write? We can’t always wait for that spark of inspiration to strike. Sometimes we need that jolt of coffee and a coffee shop corner booth to get the words flowing and down on paper.