NTKOG #146: The kind of urban-artsy asshole who lugs her shiny MacBook from coffee house to coffee house, living off of lattes, second-hand smoke and smug productivity.
I am: high-strung enough. You don’t want to see this mess caffeinated.
I am not: good at productivity, deadlines, or any of the other requisites for success.
The Scene: Every friggin’ coffee house in the Harvard Square area. Last Wednesday, instead of dragging myself home from work and floomping straight into bed for a 30 Rock marathon, I hauled my dysfunctional workday brain (and the body that reluctantly houses it) to the Peet’s at Harvard Square and vowed to write ’til my laptop battery drained.
Fun fact: I loathe coffee shops of any ilk. For starters, I haven’t regularly drank caffeine since I was eighteen years old; add to that my noise-triggered migraines, antipathy for coffee culture, soul-crushing fear of becoming an accidental table-hog, and, yeah, this scene gets nasty.
Nonetheless, ten seconds after placing my first-ever non-social coffee shop order, I became that which I hate: there was one table left in the crowded store, and a cute young girl was beelining for it while her friend walked to the back of the line. Spun around and planted my iced tea on that beezy. Sorry, dude!
Opened ye olde MacBook, plugged in my headphones, and — dude, wrote. For three hours. No Twitter, no Snopes, no ex-stalking on da book. My hour-long internet grace period ran out, but I just grabbed another iced tea and an internet code, and plowed on through. Whatever, other Peet’s patrons. Right now it’s not a table. It’s my work desk.
When my computer finally powered down and I caught a bus home, I was everything for which I profess disdain: smug, over-caffeinated, corporate whore. I was also something else that I love and so rarely am: kind of almost a useful member of society. I mean, inasmuch as prolific blogging and occasional sonneting is “useful,” anyway.
And maybe it’s just a side effect of the caffeine, but another result of the hyper-productive cafe hop: totally addictive. Not only have I returned to cafe-write every weekday since, but I pulled eight-hour days both days of Easter weekend. Check out my friggin’ to-do list:
Not bad, considering my usual weekend activities consist of: catching up with Hulu, three-hour pep talk to clean apartment, fifteen minutes actually trying to clean apartment, depressing music, obsessive self-google-stalking, shame spiral, insomnia, brunch. Can't miss brunch.
So, I guess my body better get used to all the damn caffeine (and the other people at Peet’s better get used to my incessant in-chair dancing), ’cause this is going to be happening five days a week from now on.
The Verdict: God, I am so glad I tried this. I think the biggest difference in my cafe consumption now from the last time I tried is a few years ago is that I now use music to block out the offensive sound of other people existing. I never got why other writers were so into cafes, but now I see: taking yourself out of your usual environment helps underscore the fact that writing is your work; it’s important and it’s okay to take yourself seriously when you do it.
Lately, I realize, I’ve been treating my personal pursuit of excellence as a hobby. But frig that. It is both my responsibility and my privilege to spend every possible hour of every day sweating blood to make my dreams come true. I always tell myself, “You’ve got to write, dude, or you’ll die,” but maybe I had to change my physical surroundings before I could actually start taking that advice.
Other writerly dudes, what do you do to help push your process along?
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You’re in good company there; for example, JK Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in a cafe in Edinburgh, Scotland.
I am hoping you’ve heard about how the screenplay for the last harry potter movie was left in a bar or something like that, and someone actually returned it. I heard that on the news the other night and it made me laugh. A lot.
You mean HP7.5? (because the last book has seemingly been split into 2 films).
I love cafe-writing. Whenever I have a big project or paper due for school, I hole up in a coffee shop and write my fingers off. I’m so much more productive because if I take a break, it’s short and for my own self-preservation. But good for you. Also, you don’t have to order coffee — or order decaf. If I’m pulling an all-day marathon sesh I go with an iced decaf latte. Some of my favorite places to write are independent coffee houses — cause no one likes feeling like they’re contributing to corporate coffee culture. Support local business!
“It is both my responsibility and my privilege to spend every possible hour of every day sweating blood to make my dreams come true.”
For some reason, this is really resonating with me right now. Thanks for posting!
I used to do the all day coffee shop thing, but now that I’m older and more sensitive to caffeine I can’t handle that much coffee. I find that sitting at Starbucks, even if I order a bottled water or decaf coffee, the coffee fumes in the air carry enough caffeine to keep me up at night!
My favorite thing now is to hit an area that has a good library and a coffee shop close to eachother, so I can spend most of my time writing in the library, and then take a short “break” writing in the coffee shop. The Lexington and Cambridge libraries both have very writing-conducive spaces. My favorite work room in the cambridge library has dozens of outlets for computers on the tables, and individual lamps so you don’t have to fight someone for a good spot. They even let you have water with you.
Library! That’s so smart! Oh man, even thinking about the humidity in summer makes me sweat — library would be a great antidote to that, too.
I also have a habit of spending more than I can afford on books. And while I love supporting independent bookstores (ie: my imaginary boyfriend, the Brookline Booksmith), it’s probably a good idea to finally register with a library here to get my daily lit fix on.
This is just to let you know that I love your writing and that when you’ve spent enough time at coffee shops, I will be first in line to pre-order your book off of amazon. Am willing to supply compliments on hilarity/general awesomeness of your style of writing on a regular basis if it will speed up the process.
Here, here. My paper writing is done almost entirely at coffee shops (or on the train). Not only does it give me a new environment and the feeling that I am there for a purpose, but I feel like if i procrastinate too much the business man at the next table working on expense reports is gonna notice and (oh no!) judge. Plus 2 points in both the productivity and crazy person categories.
Also, the phrase “the offensive sound of other people existing” is a nugget of perfection.
I’m one of those annoying people who doesn’t like being in public alone – so I would be far more productive just staying at home!
oohhh man I could not agree more with this post. Yes. Amen. Yes, again. I became one of those darn regulars at my coffee shop in college. My trick was just getting there early enough on Saturday mornings BEFORE all the families started coming in, so that it was quiet when I started and then the noise built up gradually. By the time it got loud, I was already in the groove and basically immune to the noise.
I tend to write best when I am down in the dumps.
Also, I need that three hour pep talk to clean my apartment, and I also clean for about fifteen minutes and then something else comes up. I remember a few weeks ago I was cleaning, and I made my way to my dresser, which has two jewelry boxes on top, that I have clearly worn every piece inside, then tossed it next to it, instead of inside where it belongs. But the boxes weren’t empty, either. Filled with old mail and little artifacts from random adventures I’ve gone on in the past three years. I cleaned them about halfway, when I found an adderall from god only knows when. I thought, hey, this will help me clean, and I quickly popped it and waited for it to kick in. I decided to check my email and such, and apparently it started working, because I sat at my computer for six full hours writing and retagging and proof reading. SIX HOURS. After those hours were up I realized that I hadn’t cleaned at all. I hadn’t even finished the jewelry box project where I had found that magic little pill.
Oops.
Let’s sit in a coffee shop sometime and work on something together. I feel like nothing would get accomplished, but it’s worth a shot.
Dude, that’s the problem with Adderall: whatever you’re doing when it kicks in, that’s what you’re going to be doing. If it catches you at an off moment…
Also, I could be into the communal coffee-write. But no making fun of my dancing!
Of Adderall, I’ve always said I have to file the flight-plan and be sittin’ in the cockpit BEFORE the rockets engage.
(and, yes, I discovered your blog an hour ago when I was drawing up my to-do list for work and have made excellent progress at catching up on what you’ve been up to this past year. thanks.)
I love packing my stuff up and heading down to the library. Quiet corner, it rocks.
“…The offensive sound of other people existing” God,I wish I wrote that!
Good thing you don’t have a Toshiba- You’d have been out of there in about 75 minutes.
“It is both my responsibility and my privilege to spend every possible hour of every day sweating blood to make my dreams come true.”
Someone else above me brought attention to the poignancy here, so minus five for me for comment originality, but I couldn’t pass by this post without lauding this particular sentence.
For many years, I’ve known that I’ve wanted, more than anything else, to make a career for myself out of writing. But no matter how solid this ambition feels, it has almost always taken a backseat to everything else in my life — education, need for money, relationships. I know these can all coexist alongside my personal goals without any one of them stealing importance from the others, but I haven’t figured out how to manage that yet. I never want to be the sort of person who, rather than chasing happiness, settles with simply subsisting, but I can already see how easy it would be to just allow myself to become that. It scares me.
Anyway, sorry for the A.N.G.S.T. I just wanted to let you know that this really resonated with me, too.
LOL i enjoyed reading this.
because you blogged about having an aversion to coffee culture, i thought i would suggest this website:
http://www.coffeehousearrest.com
jill
Speaking of berets, did Mitch Hedberg die before he ever wore that beret?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8JMr_5ICVI
A sobering thought…
Nice–I keep saying, as you know from twitter, that I need to venture out to cafes. I do all my writing (does blogging count as writing–I think so!) in the safety of my home. Plus I think I’m too lazy to cart the laptop out of the house but yeah, thinking about it.
You should try Cafe Japonaise on the B-line, Packard’s Corner. I think there’s also one at St. Mary’s on the C-line. Not very crowded, has free wi-fi, and an orgasm-inducing azuki cream puff. Also, they have cafe breve, a latte using steamed Half-and-half, which I have rarely seen if you’re into that too.
Is Peet’s wifi free? I’m always looking for free wifi cafes to work in!
Oooh, sounds like a good suggestion! Thanks! I’ll check it out.
Also, yes, Peet’s wifi is free. Just ask for a code when you order. Slash if you hang out there all the time and they know you, sometimes you can get away with asking for a code without making an order…
I am an occasional (when the muse hits me, normally needing a 4×2 to do it with ;) ) poet. This has reminded me of a holiday in Dublin some years ago, and going into a pub on the bank of the Liffey for a Guinness and a sandwich, and promptly being inspired to write a poem about how a pub like that is an oasis of calm and relaxation in the bustle of the city, but some people were drinking coffee and talking work anyway!
Ok, so I totally know that this is a year old, but the majority of my MA in history was written at the Seattle’s Best inside the Border’s at Santana Row (which just closed, I am losing my mind on where to go now). New space, coffee, and books whenever I need a distraction. It was heaven.