overlaylink

Cómo crear el espacio de escritura perfecto

Bryan Young
junio 13, 2024 | 3 lectura mínima

Los espacios de escritura son cosas intensamente personales. Todos tenemos un lugar —quizás incluso más de uno— donde nos encanta escribir. Si tenemos suerte, podemos organizarlo a nuestro gusto.

La clave es crear un espacio que te ayude a concentrarte y te inspire. Porque ese es el espacio ideal para escribir: ya sea un punto fijo en tu casa o un lugar que lleves contigo, el objetivo de este espacio no es ser bonito o profesional, ni impresionar a los demás ni quedar bien en redes sociales. El objetivo es crear un ambiente que te anime a escribir .

Claro, cómo se ve eso depende de qué tipo de persona seas y de lo que te funcione. Gran parte de crear un espacio de escritura que te ayude a concentrarte se trata de conocerte personalmente.

En mi caso, tengo un escritorio frente a una ventana, desde donde puedo ver el frente de mi casa. Es un escritorio de pie para poder estirarme y ponerme de pie cuando quiero. También tengo una silla carísima que me ayuda a no dolerme la espalda mientras estoy sentado.

El espacio de trabajo de Bryan Young

El espacio de trabajo de Bryan

Algunos escritores encuentran las ventanas demasiado distrayentes, por lo que su espacio se ve más fácilmente pirateado si colocan su escritorio frente a una pared. Stephen King aconsejaba a los escritores que colocaran sus escritorios en una esquina de la habitación:

Cada vez que te sientes a escribir, recuerda por qué no es en el centro de la habitación. La vida no es un sistema de apoyo para el arte. Es al revés.

Asegurarse de que la ergonomía y la iluminación sean las adecuadas también es importante. La ergonomía no se limita solo al teclado. Asegúrate de que tu escritorio esté a la altura correcta y de no lesionarte al trabajar. Estírate y ponte de pie con frecuencia.

Asegúrate de que la iluminación de la habitación te permita ver lo que haces sin cansar la vista, pero que también fomente tu creatividad. En mi caso, las cálidas luces Edison parecen funcionar cuando no hay luz solar. A veces, temprano en las mañanas de invierno, la luz de las velas me anima a escribir en mi diario.

Espacio de trabajo de Freewriter @nok2da
Espacio de trabajo de Freewriter @nok2da

Mantener una temperatura agradable también es vital. Si te preocupa pasar demasiado calor o demasiado frío, no estás pensando en escribir.

El desorden en el escritorio es algo que varía según el escritor. Personalmente, puedo manejar el desorden en mi escritorio, los restos de los últimos proyectos y las tarjetas de visita de mis últimas apariciones, hasta cierto punto. Después, no puedo concentrarme y tengo que limpiarlo todo para empezar de nuevo con mi desorden. Lo difícil es reconocer cuándo es el desorden el que inhibe mi productividad y no algo más que me afecta y me hace procrastinar.

A veces, cambiar por completo de espacio de trabajo añadirá novedad a tu rutina y te permitirá concentrarte en el trabajo con un ligero cambio de ritmo. Esa cafetería, bar o biblioteca podría ser la oficina ideal fuera de la oficina para cumplir con tu próxima fecha límite.

El espacio de trabajo de la escritora libre Annie Cathryn

Espacio de trabajo de la escritora libre @msanniecathryn

Tu espacio de trabajo digital también es importante.

Hay muchas cosas que puedes hacer para aumentar la concentración y la productividad con las herramientas digitales que utilizas. El legendario escritor de cómics Brian K. Vaughan dijo una vez:

"El bloqueo del escritor es simplemente otra palabra para los videojuegos".

Elimina todas las aplicaciones de juegos de tu teléfono. Cierra aplicaciones como Discord o Slack y activa el modo "No molestar". Para mí, lo mejor es cambiar mi forma de escribir. Cambiar mi método de entrada.

Mi escritura libre es mi forma de redactar mis novelas, precisamente porque me proporciona un espacio de trabajo sin distracciones. Si tengo dificultades con una escena en particular, puedo hacer el trabajo del día con lápiz y papel. O con mi máquina de escribir. Cambiar la forma de escribir activará diferentes partes del cerebro y te permitirá avanzar en lugar de consultar los mismos tres sitios web una y otra vez en un bucle constante durante días y días.

Lo más importante es descubrir qué trucos funcionan para ti . Experimenta.

La prueba y el error son la mejor manera de descubrir cuál es tu espacio de trabajo ideal para tu proceso creativo.

Regresar a "Trucos para mejorar la productividad al escribir"

agosto 26, 2026 5 lectura mínima

Freewriter Mike Somerby left a lucrative marketing career in e-commerce to start a print-only literary magazine by and for Montanans. Yes, you read that right.

We sat down with Mike to find out how ... and why.

Mike Somerby identifies as a writer — with some reservation.

"I think all who write are 'writers,'" he says, "even if the writing itself amounts to a simple letter to a friend or a personal journal entry."

We couldn't agree more. And we're thrilled that this particular writer writes his essays on Freewrite. Maybe that's why we felt comfortable asking him:

What inspires a professional brand marketer to leave his 9-5 and jump feet-first into the literary world of Bozeman, Montana?

Luckily, he was happy to tell us.

AC: Before we get into the lit mag, it actually isn't your first foray into the literary community, right?

MS: For about ten years — the lion's share of my professional chapter — I worked, in some capacity, as a brand marketer. Last spring, while enduring a particularly grueling stint as CMO for a Montanan e-commerce brand (yes, those exist), I found myself revisited by the remarks of an old journalism school professor: from his perspective, journalism students who apply their storytelling talents toward PR and marketing have crossed over to "the dark side."

While I find this a touch heavy-handed, I get the point, and I believe his notion resurfaced to meet the moment: we live in a world sorely hurting for analog (human) creativity and high-quality longform.

So I quit, traveled west with my dog in a 1986 U-Haul I'd converted into a camper, and plotted.

Step one: I founded Pulphead, a lounge (named after John Jeremiah Sullivan’s seminal 2011 essay collection) where Bozeman writers commune and grind out their prose until 2 a.m. Entry is a flat $5, which comes with unlimited drip coffee and tea.

Step two: leverage the Pulphead regulars and its online following to secure contributors for my new literary magazine, ANEMONE. Thus far, everything is going to plan.

We live in a world sorely hurting for analog (human) creativity and high-quality longform.

AC: Why do you think it's so important to create and preserve these spaces for authentic writing?

MS: Writing is a solitary act. Nonetheless, younger generations, in particular, struggle to forge IRL community in the way older generations might understand as an ordinary facet of being human.

By building a space that is as homey as it is supportive of their literary interests, we’re not only helping these individuals find their birds of a feather, but also providing them with a dojo that mandates setting aside blocks of time away from phones, home lives, and the other distractions. Win-win?

Incidentally, Livingston boasts the highest per-capita concentration of professional writers anywhere in the country. Couple this with another statistic — that Montana has more bookstores per capita than any other state — and it becomes clear southwest Montana is as fertile a place as any to invest in literature and its related industries.


AC: That's so interesting. What have you learned from being in community with creatives in Bozeman?

MS: In terms of writing, I've learned plenty. What has excited me most, however, is what I’ve learned from a small group of Indigenous women who come to the shop to write poetry and make beaded clothing in the traditions of their respective tribes (most notably, Crow, Cheyenne, Shoshone).

This is a group I’d otherwise have limited opportunity to engage with outside of Pulphead, and learning about their traditions, beliefs, hopes — even a little vocabulary — through firsthand conversation has proved incredibly edifying.

AC: And you mentioned you've seen Freewrites pop up in Pulphead. You use one, right?

MS: Yes. About seven years ago, not long after moving to Montana from New York, I purchased an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter from eBay. It appeared that a romanticizing of my newfound remoteness had rekindled my interest in writing.

I loved the mechanical feel and distraction-free interface, but the inability to edit line by line proved a notable annoyance for a mind habituated to modern computers. A few years down the road, some digging for alternatives led me to a blog post about smart/electronic typewriters. Voilà.

I purchased a Freewrite Gen3 Smart Typewriter, and I've been hooked ever since.

AC: That's awesome. So tell us about ANEMONE. What is it?

MS: ANEMONE is a print-only magazine (printed in a traditional broadsheet newspaper format). As for for theme, broadly, the world as told by Montanans. Short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, reportage, photography, and visiual illustrations comprise the submission categories.

AC: Print-only!

MS: Print is only dying because we let it.

AC: Is there a story about the name?

MS: Most people know the word anemone to describe a family of flowers — a 200-plus-species family of buttercups, comprising varieties both wild and domesticated. Dubbed “windflowers,” their delicate petals are said to blow open in the breeze; the ancient Greek word anemos means “wind.” I was drawn to the metaphorical value of beauty and how it can be revealed to us through an invisible force.

To add another layer, when I was a boy my father and I would spend weekends at the beaches north of San Francisco, where I was born and raised until I was seven. We would study the massive turqoise, kelly green, and purple sea anemones clinging to rocks left exposed by the receding Pacific tides (as to why, I can't say, outside of them looking funny, almost alien). A good memory.

Finally, “Anemone” is the name of an exquisite song by The Brian Jonestown Massacre, an irreverent and controversial rock band led by Anton Newcombe, an obsessive creative who rejects the surrender of culture and art to commercial interests. The track has a hold on me. It's like a portal to another era.

AC: Why do you think this sort of analog creativity is important?

MS:  I'm told the unending deluge of digital interface is leaving humans less and less capable of “deep work.” Will we ever know the difference?

Will we recognize what a society incapable of deep work looks like compared with those that came before it? Or will the transition manifest as a gradual degradation of quality, much as Coca-Cola was slowly, but surely, divorced from real sugar, such that to taste what Coke used to be like, one must order a Mexican Coke, still made with real cane sugar?

For me, analog perspective (and any creativity wrung from it) is rooted in continuity, tangibility, lived experience, slowness, spatial relation, nuance, emphasis on process, and grace for imperfection — antithetical to one of replicability, speed, binary outcomes, predictability, and optimization.

I prefer the former, and I suspect those who prefer the latter don't read or write much — life is a beautiful, taxing mess, and good writers find merit in this duality.

For me, analog perspective (and any creativity wrung from it) is rooted in continuity, tangibility, lived experience, slowness, spatial relation, nuance, emphasis on process, and grace for imperfection — antithetical to one of replicability, speed, binary outcomes, predictability, and optimization.

AC: Who is invited to submit to ANEMONE?

MS: We do limit submissions to Montanans, past and present, though we will feature writers from other states should the content of their writing bear an obvious relation to Montana — a requirement not imposed on Montanan writers.

All information regarding submissions can be found at www.anemonereview.com, along with all other facets of the magazine.

agosto 26, 2026 1 lectura mínima

Love the Freewrite 500? Here are 3 more writing contests for competitive short fiction writers.

1) Writers' Hour Magazine Prompts

The London Writer's Salon (a global writing group — no London residence necessary!) regularly host a writing contest via their Writers' Hour Magazine. Want to know a secret? Their September theme is all about freewriting.

Join them for a free workshop, Introduction to Freewriting, on Thursday, September 3, and get all the details about the contest.

The winner of the contest will win something Freewrite-shaped. 👀

2) NYC Midnight Challenges

This organization (again, no affiliation with NYC necessary) regularly hosts short story contests. Their next challenge is all about writing a rhyming story.

Learn more and register here.

Note: NYC Midnight writing contests generally have a fee to enter.

3) Henshaw Press Short Story Competition

This short story competition is open to anyone over age 16. And the best part? There is a cash prize, and profits go to charity.

Learn more here.

julio 30, 2026 2 lectura mínima

PRESENTED IN COLLABORATION WITH

Calling all micro-fiction storytellers! 🏁

For the second year in a row, Freewrite is teaming up with Grant Faulkner, co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute and author of The Art of Brevity, to bring you the fastest, most adrenaline-pumping writing event of the year.

Whether you're a seasoned writer or a creative rookie, the Freewrite 500 is your chance to rev up your imagination, write a 500-word story, and win big.

You do not need to own a Freewrite to participate.

[REGISTRATION CLOSED]

 

How It Works

🎟️ Fill out the form above to secure your spot. It's totally free. (You must register to participate.)

📖 Watch the free mini flash fiction lesson by Grant Faulkner, which includes the announcement of the prompt for the contest. WATCH IT HERE.

📝 You'll have the weekend to finish and submit your 500-word storybased on the prompt by end of day on Monday, August 17. Entries must be 500 words or less. The entry form is plain text. Any necessary formatting should be noted in [brackets]. [SUBMISSIONS CLOSED]

✏️ Our judging panel, led by Faulkner and made up of writers from the Freewrite team and the Flash Fiction Institute, will judge each piece based on: length (500 words), relevance to the prompt, and creativity.

🥇 NEW THIS YEAR: The panel will select three finalists, and then announce one grand prize winner.

All work must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. ET on Monday, August 17, 2026.

The Prize Pack

One winner will receive:

  • Publication on the Freewrite blog and Flash Fiction Institute blog
  • 1 Freewrite Traveler
  • 1 hour-long one-on-one coaching session with Grant Faulkner
  • 1 free Flash Gym session with the Flash Fiction Institute
  • 1 Words Are Hard prompt deck
  • A paperback copy of Set Your Story Free, the ultimate guide to freewriting
  • A digital copy of the opening chapter of Grant Faulkner's book, The Art of Brevity

Second and third place writers will each receive:

  • Publication on the Freewrite blog and Flash Fiction Institute blog
  • 1 Freewrite Alpha
  • 1 free Flash Gym session with the Flash Fiction Institute
  • Words Are Hard prompt deck
  • A paperback copy of Set Your Story Free, the ultimate guide to freewriting
  • A digital copy of the opening chapter of Grant Faulkner's book, The Art of Brevity

The Schedule

  • Thursday, Aug 13: Lesson & prompt announcement
  • Monday, Aug 17: Submissions deadline
  • Monday, Aug 31: Finalists announced
  • Monday, September 7: Grand prize winner announced

Questions? You can reach us at hello@getfreewrite.com.

Write on.

The Freewrite 500 Pit Crew 🏁 

Full contest terms and conditions