The first, because it is largest, most evident, and the most mechanical (which means the easiest to think about and implement) is your environment.
The pervasive image of the starving artist huddled, shivering in their garret leads us, perhaps unconsciously, to believe that art is immune to environment, or even that art is created by pain and suffering.
Your rational brain knows that this is nonsense. The world’s leading expert on creative flow agrees:
“Even the most abstract mind is affected by the surroundings of the body. No one is immune to the impressions that impinge on the senses from the outside. Creative individuals may seem to disregard their environment and work happily in even the most dismal surroundings . . . in reality, the spatiotemporal context in which creative persons live has consequences that often go unnoticed. The right milieu is important in more ways than one.”—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, p. 126
A proper environment, as Csikszentmihalyi points out, adds enormously to our ability to create.
Here are a few things you should carefully inspect to ensure that they are the best you can arrange for your writing environment. Some will have a large effect. Some will have a small effect. But all will affect the comfort and ease of your creative abilities.
… more … “Environment (#1 of 6 Tools to Get You Writing)”
To many artists it seems nonsensical to sit down and intentionally crank out 14 songs in 28 days. 