How Traveling Taught Me That Creativity Doesn’t Live Behind a Desk
- Brainz Magazine
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Written by DDL Smith, Author
DDL Smith is a British novelist known for ‘Detective Dion’ and the eco-horror novel ‘Decay’. His independently published novels have attained global reach with his ‘think like a publisher’ mentality.
Travel has a way of loosening the creative knots that office walls tighten. What began as a frustrated writing retreat to the Swedish wilderness quickly became a lesson in presence, environment, and inspiration. By stepping away from the desk and into a new rhythm, I discovered that creativity thrives not under fluorescent lights, but in motion, curiosity, and lived experience.
From the London office to the Swedish wilderness
It started, as most creative breakdowns do, in an office. London rain tapping on the window, a half-written outline mocking me from the screen. A growing suspicion that inspiration had left with my idea, leaving it just an idea. My latest novel, Decay, existed only as scattered notes and half-hearted research. I needed motion, not motivation.
The idea for Decay had come to me around a month before, but the idea was only half-formed. Hints of its plot and setting were flickering around. A hidden scientific monster somewhere in the wilderness. I had notes, references, and a couple of documents open with basic notes. It felt like a chore to start the project properly, to at least get the first draft started. I eventually had a location in mind, Östersund.
A few more days went by with extra planning, mostly procrastination. I eventually did what any writer would sensibly do, I booked a flight and called it research. The research that would take me from a blinking cursor into the slower rhythm of central Sweden.
I landed in Sweden thirty-six hours later. It was also raining. But something felt different from the depressive drizzle falling down glass skyscrapers. The feather-like droplets floating down felt more freeing and romantic here. There did not seem to be urgency anywhere. An occasional skier trained before going to the Åre slopes, with the smell of pine trees by a vast lake. The change of pace from the city felt freeing almost immediately.
When work meets holiday
My plan was clear enough on paper, a short break. I had the location, and I wanted to write truly to the place Decay would be set in. I would wander through the small city, take notes on the landscape, talk to some people about the city, and perhaps take a bus out to the surrounding villages.
That plan lasted about forty-eight hours.
I awoke in my room in Östersund feeling inspired. The icy air, even in the summer, had a bite that seemed exhilarating. I took my laptop out and started to write the first pages. Characters I could just about see in my mind for weeks were now vivid. Inspiration overtook the slog of starting a new work.
The holiday part of the working holiday quietly dissolved. I had meant to rest. But now I found myself on a research holiday, doing the work that seemed impossible in London. I walked more, wrote more, and thought less. The rhythm of the place reshaped how I worked. What began as a working holiday quickly became something else, a quiet revelation about how my new environment was shaping my lifestyle and relationship with work.
By the time I realised it, I was not researching Decay anymore, I was living in its world.
Writing from experience, not just research
Back home, writing had started to feel mechanical. I gathered facts like ingredients, climate reports, the flora of the area, and its geographical features. In Östersund, everything was different. I did not need to imagine the endless light of a northern summer, I could see it. The late-night glow that refused to die even at 2 a.m., a stubborn Nordic twilight that painted the lake in silver. The air bit at my cheeks when I walked. Those sensations did not need translation, they simply slipped into the prose.
Writing stopped being an act of reconstruction and became an act of observation. It struck me how much of my old process was built on distance, writing about places I was not in, feelings I was not currently feeling. I was not forcing myself into the work, I was being pulled into it.
Deadlines did not matter, nor did the word count. When the rain paused, I would take a walk. When the inspiration came, I would write, no matter the hour. For once, the pace of my surroundings decided the pace of my story, and that made all the difference.
This was not about being more productive, it was about being more present.
Truer writing through travel and language
It was not only the writing that improved. It was my state of mind. Indulging in the location and culture I was writing about changed how I saw my project. Winding speech of my characters started to shorten. Pauses in the subtext did more work. My characters were not a Brit's interpretation of Swedish characters, they became Swedish. I started noticing how people spoke. How they paused. How humour landed softly instead of sharply. How understatement carried more emotion than exaggeration ever could.
Those nuances began to bleed into the characters. I noticed the subtleties of speech. How people spoke, how humour landed softly instead of sharply. How understated silence carried more than exaggeration ever could.
As for the work-life balance, that had disappeared. But not having that overhyped healthy balance did not affect me negatively. Being surrounded by my work and enjoying it felt more freeing than leaving a desk at 5 p.m. and hoping tomorrow's start would not feel stressful.
When I finally looked back at what I had written in the first draft the day before I travelled back home, I was shocked at the detail and quality I was able to put into my prose. Once I was back in my office, I was already inspired and had most of the first draft complete. I could now sit at my desk with a renewed sense of my project and what it was like to experience the environment I was researching. My routine did not go back to how it was, it remained for whenever I was inspired enough to do my best work.
Work-life integration
If writing Decay taught me anything, it is that the notion of a work-life balance being the best way to go about your writing is a mirage. Balance implies two opposing forces needing to be complete. Creativity is not about keeping things perfectly aligned. Creativity is messy, sporadic, and wonderful. Work does not have to mean structured meetings and group focuses to see what ideas you have that are going to sell. Travel and holidays do not need to mean escapism and idleness.
I stopped forcing myself into productivity windows. I stopped scheduling creative hours. Instead, I let my surroundings decide. Creativity, I realised, flows best when you are relaxed enough to listen to it.
This is not advice just for writers. Data entry can feel lighter when you are sitting on a beach café balcony. Marketing ideas hit harder in the middle of a gallery. The trick is not escaping your work, it is aligning it with your environment, your rhythm, your curiosity.
The novel, Decay, started as a hopeful idea with no way to start. Trying to force the first page did not work. Then, once I travelled to the right location for a break, when my curiosity piqued, a thousand words turned to five thousand, then twenty thousand, then fifty thousand.
The Swedish word förfall means decay in a literal sense. But it also means decline, transformation, the slow breaking down that allows something new to grow. That, to me, is what creativity and travel really are, the breakdown of old habits so inspiration can take a new stage.
Förfall is now available across Sweden, while Decay can be found in the UK and the US through Waterstones and Barnes & Noble. A story written in two locations, in both it rained. One in the London drizzle that confined me, and the other in Swedish rain that set me free.
Read more from DDL Smith
DDL Smith, Author
DDL Smith is a London-based novelist whose cross-genre, contemporary fiction reflects issues and fears in modern society. His creative roots started from a young age with theatre and scriptwriting for online content. When transitioning to novels, his goal was to use marketing techniques to ‘think like a publisher’ while staying independent. A tactic that has his books available in book chains across the globe.
