Change Your Point of View for Better Writing

I mean that literally. Change what you’re looking at while you’re writing, and you’ll probably find you write better.

My writing encompasses a wide range of genres, from the articles and copywriting that keep me afloat financially to books that try to help others navigate life, to novels, short stories, and essays. A panorama that sweeping really calls for an equally sweeping backdrop, but it took me a long time to understand that.

I did what I thought writers do: I sat in a room and wrote.

And I got published; I won’t say that it was bad. But there invariably came the day when I found myself staring at the same four walls I’d been staring at for the past several years and realizing that something wasn’t working.

I decided that I needed to shake things up a little. A family member owned a vacation condo on the Jersey Shore, so I took a deep breath, borrowed it for two weeks, and one very cold November found myself walking on a very solitary windy beach … with ideas coming at me faster than I could grab them.

It was, I decided, a sign from the writing gods, and immediately made the pilgrimage a permanent one. Every year I started spending two months in an apartment (often different apartments from year to year) by the sea, and I found that everything about my writing…