Cartoon by Paul F Newman
I’ve been following Robert’s writers’ blog for a while and would heartily recommend it to those of us fatally addicted to attempting to communicate via the spoken word. This grumpy but funny post about not writing in coffee shops ( can you believe it? This man does not like coffee! ) gave me a good giggle. Do you recognise your writing habits here? Do tell!!
Given the impressive list of writers and artists who lingered (and jotted) in cafes, it really is a shocking revelation! 😉 I’m more likely to take journal and pen … helps balance all that tech/laptop time. And ya know … you can order tea (my neighborhood coffeehouses have always had an impressive tea selection as well). Just sayin’. 😉 xoxo thanks for sharing, Anne. Jamie
You re most welcome, Jamie! I was hoping this post, reblogged though it is, might produce some writerly revelations…thank you. It is a brave writer indeed who confesses to drinking tea whilst writing in cafes. However, I have occasionally been known to do just that myself…
I survive on strong, black French Roast, but have never written one word in a coffee shop. (Well, other than scribbling my signature on a debit card slip to pay for a plain croissant and the blood-pressure-rising fuel that lights my inner muse.) Nor do I know any serious novelist, poet, or academic writer who works in a coffee house. It would, however, provide excellent inspiration for a satirist.
As for my writing habits, they are much too disturbing for a coffee house: crumbling rejected pages into a ball and throwing at solid objects, kicking said inanimate object, and throwing arms up into the air while cursing profusely. Not only would I be kicked out of a coffee shop, I would probably be stuffed into a straightjacket and forcibly removed while pleading with them to please let me rewrite that last line!
By the way, I frequently enjoy a relaxing spot of Earl Grey when I get myself too worked-up. 😉
Leslie, I love this! Good to know that others are just as deranged at times as I can be myself…it is indeed frightful, the places into which writing addiction can lead one…
And – lo and behold – another confession re drinking tea and writing…
Thanks for sharing, Anne!
You are more than welcome, Robert! It’s a fun post…
Interesting post. During the years I studied the art of writing, I discovered the importance of the art of conversation and how the two connect…so I spent time in coffee/tea shops listening in on conversations. It’s the best way to capture/study dialogue and I still have the habit of “listening in” to this day!
When writing, I have a habit of reading aloud what I write…sometimes this leads to tears or laughter, depending on the mood of the work. In my previous house, my desk was located in front of a window overlooking the street where I sometimes unknowingly entertained passers-by with my facial expressions!
I confess to drinking tea while writing, or occasionally wine when I write late at night…the wine makes for interesting and sometimes surprising stories!!
Many thanks for this, Bev! I bet there is an interesting post to be written on writers’ writing habits, with or without the coffee shop connection! And yes, listening in is instructive and can be fun. On one occasion I became so fascinated by an on-bus conversation about what went on in a local fish and chip shop late at night that I missed my stop (late at night), and had to walk home through a fairly dodgy part of the city in which I was then resident. A rum lot, we writers are…