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the vicious cycle, and I how I (knock on wood) am breaking it
Go ahead, hiss. Boo. Throw tomatoes and curses at the computer screen, but then tell me, after you've vented: do you have a small space someplace within reasonable driving distance of my home where I can work with a lot of background noise that's easily ignored? A place where I can get something to drink (mint tea; I don't drink coffee) and a cookie, if I'm feeling like it. A place that's well lit and where they let me plug in the computer. Most of all: a place where people know not to talk to me.
I've tried every cafe in town, and out here on the western coast of Washington, that's saying a lot. This is the land of coffee houses of every stripe. Drive-through coffee shacks (Java the Hut; Espresso a Go-Go; Mocha Madness, etc etc), and ten sit-down places, not counting four different Starbucks. I've tried them all and every one of them had problems that I couldn't overcome. Bad lighting. Too quiet. Too much background music. A no-laptop policy. Wobbly tables. People who don't get the please-don't-talk-to-me vibes I send out so strongly. Tables too close together; no table where I can work with my back to a wall. Because I can't work someplace where somebody might come up behind me and read what I'm writing. That is the stuff of nightmares.
Speaking of which, when things get really bad, sometimes this nightmare comes back that I first had when I was on the faculty at the University of Michigan. I'm walking through campus past the library when I see there's a preacher up on a box with a big crowd around him. Nothing unusual in that, except this particular preacher has my office trash bin in the crook of his arm and he's pulling pages out and reading random sentences to his audience. Sentences from early drafts; awful, horrible sentences that I have already excised from my memory, but now are recorded in the minds of all the people standing there. Who turn and look at me. Like hungry jackals.
So today I went to Starbucks, yes. I went to Starbucks, and I wrote for three hours straight, and I got not a lot down, but enough so that I have the sense that tomorrow I can do the same thing, and maybe even more. I'll go early and get the good corner table and plug in my laptop (because if the battery goes below 80% I start to obsess and get all anxious about that) and descend into the haze where the story bubbles, where I will wallow as long as I can, until I have to come up for air.
Scoff if you must, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
April 7, 2005 06:03 PM
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Comments
Sara,
Can I love you any more? Next time I'm in my Barnes & Noble Starbucks I'll think of you. Hemingway used to say he got his best work done in a cafe. Cloiserie de Lilas. He wrote also a scathing article about cafe crowds in cafes called the Dome and the Rotonde.(sp) It seems there were lots of literary poseurs there and NOT in the one he frequented. His he felt was more authentic. If you can write well in your nearest local Starbucks....imagine how you'd do in Paris France?
Cynthia in Florida
Posted by: Cynthia at April 8, 2005 06:37 AM
I'm LOL at this! I used to write at my local Starbucks but people kept talking to me. And being me, I kept chatting back. So I've hied myself off to another closer, cheaper, less populated coffeeshop lately.
I take my Alphasmart -- battery operated -- and snigger at people with laptops who have to plug in. ;-) Got almost 2 hours in today!
Posted by: Sela at April 8, 2005 02:29 PM
Does your subconscious supply the discarded sentences word for word or are they generic awful horrible sentences?
Posted by: Pam at April 8, 2005 04:55 PM
I like the foodcourt at Belconnen Mall - that's honestly where I go to get myself started again if I've got writer's block. Any other foodcourt will do in a pinch, but the mall is a golden place for me. Unfortuneatly, no laptop though - part of the ritual is to buy a 40 cent excercise book and an 80 cent pen from K-Mart instead.
Posted by: Meredith at April 9, 2005 12:49 AM
I've a long commute to work and must get up at 4 a.m. I get to the city where I work hours before the office opens so I write just about every morning at the Starbucks near my work place. It's my favorite place to go to write. I ignore the noise; I'm a common morning sight in the corner armchair and no one disturbs me. I love it. d:)
Posted by: Debra Young at April 9, 2005 08:53 PM