John Scalzi has a nice wrapup of the "Ten Things I Know about Writing" meme that's going around, and some of the responses touch upon something I've wanted to talk about: Writing in public.
I do it, and I've done it for years . I've written at Starbucks and indie coffee houses, I've written at cafes at both Borders and Barnes and Noble, and I've written at public libraries. Sometimes I do it with a notebook, sometimes I do it on my laptop. To make matters worse, I've usually got at least one piece of black clothing on, and I generally have both my iPod (the laptop does not have my iTunes master library) and my phone with me. I don't smoke, but I figure my bad complexion and surliness make up for that. I'm thirty-six, I'm ten years out of an MFA program, and my "about" paragraph is around three sentences long. I prove the point.
But, I also disprove the point. If there's one thing I'm NOT doing, it's caring about the image I present. Here are eleven reasons I write in public places. Note that they have nothing to do with Nietzsche, meeting women, or wearing a beret...
1. The Busytown Effect. Richard Scarry books are bizarre, yes...but they're also soothing to me. There's something about building-cutaway views of everyone having a purpose or a function that brings me a small degree of serenity. Dropping myself into Busytown eliminates the whole Who The Hell Do You Think You Are that often comes with writing. I'm a pig in lederhosen, typing on my laptop in the Tudor-style coffeeshop. (Interestingly, Scarry didn't feel the same way.)
2. Fewer distractions than home. I'm a chronic procrastinator. When I write at home, if I'm not in the zone? I'm fighting the temptation to do all kinds of crap that has been begging for my attention for weeks, months, and years.
3. Freedom from the Internet. My closest Starbucks and indie coffee shop both do not have wifi. I'm not kidding. My library requires users to use Internet Explorer, and like most sane people I hate Internet Explorer. If I fire up my T-Mobile wifi access at a bigbox bookstore, it will show up on my credit card bill and I will hate myself for it within a month's time. All of these are fairly effective deterrents to checking my Gmail.
4. Work/reward. Am I having a crap day? Write 10 pages/for 3 hours/fix something broken and I can go look at the New Releases table. Add a couple of pages of worldbuilding, and I can check out the magazine rack too.
5. Minimal interruption. The only person I've ever met who is very good about not interrupting me when I'm writing is my husband -- though he will interrupt if I'm doing pretty much anything else (like sleeping, as with last week's impromptu book discussion). This is part of the reason we are compatible. The only people who interrupt you at cafes are either people you haven't seen in a while who just want to say hi, or people who want you to plug in their laptops at the outlet you're sitting next to. Both of those types of interruptions are much easier to bounce back from than, say, playing Hangman with a five year old.
6. Caffeinated beverages. I like them. I like them in their hundreds of forms. Iced tea, lattes, coffee, granitas, sodas, you name it. When I want caffeine at home, I get up from my desk, and head into the kitchen for a No Attention Span Theater production. When I want caffeine at a cafe, I throw a couple dollars at the problem and it's instantly solved.
7. Food. See #6. I eat better in public anyway, because I'm a Fat Chick and we all know what we think when we see Fat Chicks eat death-by-chocolate brownies.
8. The Dilbert hole. I write about workplaces pretty often. Once I went to a Starbucks and thanks to everything on this list, was able to finish a story I'd been wrestling with for months. As I was sitting there being quite pleased with myself, I realized that the district manager and the store manager were having a conversation about marketing strategy, five feet away from my table. Up popped Word again. I also like listening to employees talk smack about their bosses and/or other employees.
9. Customer eavesdropping. I don't do it very often, but there have been a few times. Once I transcribed the conversation of a couple who'd stopped for some coffee after going to a funeral. I won't ever use it word-for-word in a story -- mostly because that's shady and it doesn't really read well for fiction, anyway. But rereading it definitely sets me in that mood, which in turn will probably help with something eventually.
10. Cute kids. This one requires some explanation. Writing is not the only reason I go to a cafe. My daughter loves to sit in them, too. She'll order a cocoa and an apple fritter, I'll get a coffee, we'll pick a table and hang out for forty minutes. Yes, I know it's unusual for a five year old to enjoy something like that -- chalk it up to genetics, I guess. When I'm on my own at a cafe, she's usually at school or her once a week afterschool hanging-at-her-old-daycare thing. I can't speak for all parents, but it is nigh impossible for me to turn off the antenna completely. Having other little kids around, well-behaved or not, keeps it from beeping too loudly.
11. It keeps me honest. I could play Solitaire for three hours in my office, come out and say I wrote, and I might be able to live with myself. But if I play Solitaire in a public place, where there are witnesses? Even ones who don't know me at all? And I say I wrote? That's just wrong, man.
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