Non-fiction writing is helping to pay the bills more than fiction is, so when it comes down to a finite budget of coffee and sleep, fiction is sailing to leeward. See Personification for things set aside in favor of non-fction.
On the other hand, fiction is a spiritual exercise.
Consequently, the partner and I are at a yoga retreat center in the Berkshire Mountains. In the dead of winter. The bulk of the campus is a connected pair of buildings, so the howling wind doesn’t impact us directly.
What impacts me is a really strict “no electronics” rule. It raises the bar on intentional writing.
There's a really strict silence during breakfast rule, too, but it has little personal impact. I’m not chatty.
This is a yoga retreat center. It’s about yoga a least three times a day: a difficult discipline. The whole point is to leave your computer(s) at home and come here with your whole self and nothing but yourself. The science of love starts with observation of yourself without judgement.
The writing becomes challenging in a way: it requires more intent than simply sitting down at the table in the apartment (or the navigation station on the boat.)
The yoga center sequesters electronics in a tiny "wifi lounge” with perhaps six chairs. There’s a coffee shop on the first floor that tolerates electronics, also. It’s — of course — nearly silent except for what little noise drifts down the hall from the entrance: the gasp of the doors, luggage, greetings from the front desk staff, whispers from passing yoga students and teachers, the howling wind.
Our bedroom has a lonely chair. No desk.
So writing today involved finding the wifi lounge. It’s a bit like finding a coffee shop. But quieter. And more confusing because the signs are mostly on the second floor. What I thought was a direct route led me to an exit into a parking lot.