You want to know the definition of happiness?
(For a writer, at any rate.)
I stopped working for a couple of weeks—can I help it that there was a major holiday and everything came to a screeching halt and I couldn’t concentrate on writing anyhow?—and, as happens every time I stop, I find it hard as hell to start up again. Writing? A lot like exercise. You have to keep doing it, or you start finding excuses not to do it at all. Anyhow, I opened the piece I was working on prior to stopping for three or maybe four weeks and…
…it’s pretty good.
I was amused by what I wrote. It’s entertaining. Had someone else written it—and, presumably, written more than I have so far—I would have kept reading, and there is no higher compliment one can pay a writer, even when that writer is one’s self. If you know what I mean.
Of course, relief at discovering I am writing well and on an interesting project does not manage to make it easier to start up the daily writing gig. The gears grind, the oil of practice is needed.
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In a stunning upset victory for the Evil Empire over Snooty Elitism, I’ve found that I actually like to write at Starbucks. At least the Starbucks near my house. It’s big, there are plenty of tables, the staff is great, and, best of all, they’ve clearly designed the place with people like me—that is, people who come laptop-equipped—in mind: lots of power outlets scattered around the place.
(And now every Starbucks on the planet is installing T-Mobile Wireless, so I can goof off on the Internet here, too.)
I used to go to a little European place that’s nearby. Tiny, no power outlets, not comfortable. I used to read the paper there and then exit, stage left.
At Starbucks there are five or six of us regulars who show up, our computer briefcases or backpacks in hand, looking for one of our usual spots. We nod at one another, sometimes ask what the other’s working on. Every other person typing away is working on a screenplay, except for a woman who I know from Fia’s preschool—she’s working on a novel too. Oh, and there’s the law student who’s forever doing briefs or book reports on Brown’s. Once in a while someone uses Excel and pie charts start popping up; the rest of us glare until the newcomer gets the hint and fires up Final Draft.
The most annoying thing about working in Starbucks is the most annoying thing about being out in public anywhere these days: cell phones. I mean, when I say I’m treating Starbucks like my office I don’t actually mean my office, okay? But these people yak away at the top of their lungs and seem to have no idea that sound travels beyond the perimeter of their little tables.
I love the way that most of the kids—and they are kids, sob: they’re 21 year olds in bands—remember everyone’s name and their drink. It’s like a bar, except with no alcohol and tastier snacks. And once in a while the kids show their appreciation of their regular clientele by pushing a snack off the back of a truck.
Not, of course, that I’ve ever had that happen. It’s just a rumor.
Mo Pie, get off the hotline to Seattle right now.
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Our AirPort went toes up recently. At home I can only access the Internet while attached to a Big Ugly Cat-5 cable. It’s monstrous. I can’t sit anywhere I want to in the house and surf!
It’s like I took a time machine to the prehistoric days of 1998 or something.
I’ve never gotten into the thing of hanging out in coffeehouses to write, read, or do anything else. One reason is that I’ve always wondered, what do you do with your stuff when you go to the bathroom? I can’t imagine leaving a laptop, if I had one, and packing it all up to take into the head seems like more trouble than it’s worth. I’d just as soon stay home, I guess. Where I still use a dial-up connection. Pity me.
But then I’m not much into foofy coffee drinks anyway. If I was going to hang out anywhere it would be Stan’s Donuts where the donuts are hot and the coffee is plain.
I, too, feel guilty about it but find the local Starbucks the best place to write. I like to be able to listen in on other folk’s conversations and find that a good inspiration for those little writer’s blocks that crop up.
It’s interesting to go at the same time every week (I go for two hours, between nine and eleven on Saturdays when my youngest is at his art lessons) and tend to see a core group that’s there most times.
You mentioned the memorizing of coffee drinks – one fairly interesting thing about my local Starbucks is that they have a deaf barrista – she has to read the lips of the counter folks.
And I have to mention the greatest thing for rough-drafting on the road (though it isn’t worth squat for editing) – my Alphasmart. You can haul that baby to the bathroom no problem, and the batteries never run out.