I’m a creature of habit. I get up, work out, eat, sleep at pretty much the same time every day.

When it comes to writing, I’m comfortable in familiar habitat, which means if I’m not traveling for business or doing interviews out of the office, I write at the desk in my office. I’ve worked in coffee shops, cafes, airport waiting areas, hotel lobbies, convention press rooms, wire service bureaus, new-to-me newsroom cubicles, and more. But given the choice, I prefer what I know.

Today is the second theme day of the 2011 blogathon, where 200+ and bloggers participating are writing about their favorite writing spaces.

Here are my favorite places to write, including one that might surprise you:

1. My office. That’s it in the picture. It’s not much to speak of: a desk from Cost Plus, an ancient computer – a major upgrade is on my post-blogathon to-do list; phone, headset, desk lamp, pile of papers that’s a permanent fixture when I’m on deadline (which is most of the time); and scanner/printer/fax machine. In the past two years, I’ve  painted the office a warm butterscotch that feels cozy during Oregon’s drab winters, added a couch, coffee table, lamps, chair, plants and art. A built-in bookshelf takes up an entire wall and is fulled with books. It’s my favorite writing space ever.

2. A hotel room. When J.K. Rowling was finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows she stayed in a hotel rom. I read somewhere that when Susan Straight, a Riverside,California, author of books like Blacker than a Thousand Midnights and Highwire Moon, is finishing a book, she checks herself into the Mission Inn. I know why. When you’ve got a husband, kids, carpools, dishes, laundry, dogs, yard, and on and on, it’s hard to carve out the uninterrupted time it takes to finish a lengthy piece of writing, and I have a hard enough time finishing a 3,000-word feature these days, let along anything longer. I rarely travel by myself but when I do it’s normally for work, and when I do, setting up my laptop in my hotel room is the ultimately luxury. I can wake up and write. I can come back to the room after a meeting and write. I can wake up in the middle of the night and write and not have to worry that I should be doing something else.

3. An airplane. My editor and friend Neil Chase jokes that airplanes are made for editors. For however long it takes to get where you’re going, you’re in one spot with nothing to do but work – and no way for anyone to interrupt you. It’s the perfect time to edit manuscripts because you can give them your undivided attention. Something about being on a plane inspires me to think big thoughts, so I find flying conducive to brainstorming, whether it’s coming up with story ideas, new markets to pitch or new directions for this blog. All this could change since airlines now offer in-flight WiFi, which lets you check email and use the internet from the air. But there’s a simple solution to that – don’t buy it.

4. My bed. I lug my laptop into bed to work every once in a while. But more often the writing I do there is the brainstorming variety – in long hand. This blog was conceived from notes I took in a cloth-covered journal four years ago, and until about two years ago, I still used it to jot down ideas for posts, story pitches, to do lists and the like. Most of that I do at a keyboard now. But I keep the journal in the top drawer of my nightstand should inspiration strike and the story lead that’s been eluding me all day pops into my head as I’m falling asleep.

5. The shower. Speaking of inspiration – you might not think of the shower as a good place to write. But it’s where I go when I need to stop actively thinking about work and let ideas bubble up from my subconscious. I don’t know how it happens, I just know it works. Jonah Lehrer, who wrote about inspiration in an article called “The Eureka Hunt,” in The New Yorker in 2008, talked to scientists who study the brain and they came to some of the same conclusions that people who work in creative fields know intuitively. If you walk away from a problem your brain continues tackling it and will come up with a solution when you least expect it. They also discovered that being relaxed helps the brain do its thing, and that the best time to work on creative endeavors is in the early morning when your mind is half-asleep but more open to new ideas than when you’re fully awake.

Where are your favorite places to write?

But if you let it, lightening can strike. You could be anywhere: a steamy shower, a long walk, falling asleep, in the middle of the night. And wham, there it is, the lead you’ve been searching for. The perfect structure for that feature story. The idea for an article you just know your favorite editor will love.

I call these “aha” moments. For me, they normally come when I’m relaxed or letting my mind wander.

I was inspired to think about inspiration by an article in the July 28 issue of The New Yorker on the subject of insights and how people get them, “The Eureka Hunt: Where in our brains do insights come from?” by Jonah Lehrer. (When I checked today, this article was not online yet. I’ll make the link live when it is.)

In his story, Lehrer interviews a variety of scientists who study the brain and comes to some of the same conclusions that people who work in creative fields like writing have discovered intuitively: that if you walk away from a difficult problem your brain continues to tackle it and will come up with a solution when you least expect it; that being relaxed helps the brain do its thing; that the best time to work on creative endeavors is in the early morning when your mind is half-asleep but more open to new ideas than when you’re fully awake.

How do you get inspired?