Note that is a distinct question to 'where DO you write', which has been asked before.
My prompt being, my mother has just called upstairs (I am living at home until I complete my degree, symptomatic of the writer) to say "Dinner's ready!"
And I have replied, in a moment of utter mental abstraction, "OK, bye."
Go figure!
The point being, does anyone else, like me, have a mental level they can slip into, anytime, anywhere? Or does it have to be in the tool shed with a cup of tea and a candle? I can write at work, in the car, in the bath, almost anywhere. But I wonder if some writers can't?
Fortunately, I don't miss the stop for home (end of the line).
I haven't yet missed the stop for work!
Reading and writing in the tube or commuter train is a productive way of using up time that is otherwise wasted. However, how many of you, like myself, have had to catch the train back to the station you should have got out at because you were so engrossed in what you were writing?
Although, when I think about it now, we didn't have mobile phones with alarm signals or any other device that jogged our thoughts back to the present at the right moment. On the one side that was heavenly. Very few young people nowadays knows what it is like to travel on a packed, but silent train. You were alone with your thoughts then and the mobile phone didn't exist.
Don't get the wrong impression, life was not all good then - I am just an older person comparing the changes in her life cycle.
Had to laugh at your example, Mark, but also have to agree.
When I'm writing, really writing and engrossed in what I'm doing, I'm oblivious to everything else. To others I may appear to be listening and even responding, but my mind is fully engrossed in my characters and story line.
On one occasion my hubby actually asked me had I agreed to let our 13 year old go to a rave with his 23 year old brother. Not only had I agreed, but I'd given him a month's pocket money and told him to enjoy himself. (In my defense I was working out a particularly complex plot at the time.)
I love being in the 'zone' - it's the best part of being a writer.