The highlight of a recent trip to Key West, Florida, was getting into Ernest Hemingway's home. I'd missed it on a previous trip but this time I was determined to see where great writing was penned. It looked like any other person's living room, except it was on a tropical island, with palm trees and everything. I celebrated by buying a compilation of Hemingway's thoughts on writing with a special stamp that it was bought at his house in Key West.

Hemingway's Key West Writing Studio

Whatever it is you're creating, your best results will come if you have a dedicated space for it-somewhere where you can leave out your tools of the trade and your project and not have to pack them away. Now if you carve wood or paint large scale canvases you will need to plan your space logically. You shouldn't be spray painting in your kitchen, for example. And not everyone has the space for entire studio or sewing room but if you have to drag tools and pieces out and set up every single time you want to create something, that will seriously impact on your creative productivity.

Some creative pursuits don't require much of a set-up-knitting, for example. You only need knitting needles and yarn and it's portable. (On a side note, I have seen some people's yarn stash take over a living room, but that's another story.)

If you don't have all the equipment you need, make a wish list and make sure friends and family know of it so that you can add to your creative space over time.

Now I understand Hemingway dragged his typewriter all over Europe, Africa and the United States, so he made his creative space wherever he could and he still managed to churn out award-winning articles and books. You can still be creative without the space but it's so very worth it to be able to retreat to your space whenever you can.