Dumbo's Feather :: Writing even when your rituals fail you

If you know me at all, you've heard about my writing ritual and very likely discussed yours. And if you've been around this blog awhile you know that for the most part I think that writing rituals are a lot of malarky.

At the very least, they are only helpful until they become a crutch.  The only thing that matters should be getting the words going on the page. Nothing should help that process so much that it gets to a point where the writing stops if you're without it.
 

Of course if you've been around that much you also know that I am a coffee drinker with a writing problem. (Apologies to the ghost of Brendan Behan.)  It's an intrinsic part of my writing life. The first amazing sip that runs through my brain in the morning, turning the lights on and starting the machinery, the warmth of the ceramic cup in my hands (I hate cardboard cups), the heady aroma of Coffea Arabica wafting through my sinuses as I sit and contemplate the next sentence, the next index card, the next plot point...

Despite all my warnings, all my deep contemplations about the ways in which habit becomes ritual, becomes crutch, becomes problem, I've allowed coffee to slip under the radar.  I've even formed an attachment to the pauses occasioned by the need to go to the counter for a fresh cup or to the kitchen to make a fresh pot.

I've even been known to refer to it as "a cup of clever."
So what happens when I don't have that?

I'm about to find out.

Two weeks ago I had a conversation with a chalk drawing and at the end of the day was told that the medicines keeping the chalk drawings away didn't mix well with coffee. I'd sipped my last cup for at least four weeks.

At first I shrugged and said "oh well".  The headaches only lasted a day or two.  But before I knew it, two weeks had passed and I hadn't had a thought that I felt was clever enough to be worth writing down.

Now there is a blank page and a blinking cursor and the deep dread of having nothing to fill the space. Because I've had to give up my morning cup of clever and nothing I've come up with has yet been worth blemishing that perfect white space.

Frailty, thou art writer.

So all of you who have heard me rant at you about how you "can't write" until you've just the right moleskine, a special pen, a particular chair, a specific song, an old typewriter, a specific computer program, or whatever... now is your chance to gloat.  

Go ahead, I earned it.

But you only get to gloat until I sort out how to get focused and get the words on the page anyway. Because this is the world of "Writer heal thyself". There are only so many hours in the day and I refuse to spend any more of them feeling sorry for myself.

"Awake" is overrated anyway. 

Muses are annoying prima donnas.  You have to be able to write without them. And you have to be able to write without all the rest too. The comfy chairs, the ideal table in the perfect cafe, the pen that fits your hand just so... they will all slip in when we least expect them to. And when they fail, we have to keep writing anyway. 

Every day. Without fail. Do the work.

I know that, no matter what the mouse in my hat tells me, the feather's not magic.  I could darn well fly all along. These are the days when discipline and practice pay off.  My butt goes in the chair, my words go on the page. With a borrowed pen on the arm of a patient bystander if necessary.

Whatever you do, whatever happens to you... Just. Keep. Writing.

Please excuse me. I just thought of something to fill that blank page that's been mocking me from the other window.

Keeping Up Appearances :: The Perils of Writing In Public

This morning, my friend Dre talked on her blog about the public perception of those people who write in public.  At coffee shops.  This was apparently prompted by a clip from Family Guy, which I've helpfully appended at the end of this post.  Dre writes at a Starbucks from time to time and delves into this with gusto.  If you enjoy a bit of snark with your coffee, I commend her blog post to your attention.

This isn't really about Dre, it's about my own perception of the issue of perceptions and "performance writers" and other hipsterkind.

There's no end of people who are more interested in being seen to write than they are in writing.  Just as there are those who read Russian Literature not because they enjoy it but because they want to rub your nose in the fact that their taste is elevated above your plebeian romance novels.

But applying this label to anyone seen sitting in a cafe putting words in a row is intellectually lazy.

If you operate from the home position that anything and everything one does in public is performance art.   or if you're just offended by people being literate in your general vicinity.

There's a guy in the window of this very cafe where I am typing.  He's wearing an old grey sport jacket and green waistcoat and has a tweed cap on his head.  He has earbuds in his ears and, God help him, he has a laptop.  I think he's writing something snooty, something with lots and lots of polysyllabic words (like "polysyllabic" for instance) or maybe he's blogging about bands I've never heard of...  

On appearances alone, I'm sure to get a conviction in the court of public opinion; jury returns condemnation as "hipster jerk just waiting to disdain my latest Ke$ha song or Stephen King novel."

Gosh, all those people who write at coffee shops are such sanctimonious hipster putzes.  And those uptight bastards that actually read actual books in public?  How dare they be literate at me!  Obviously they're just showing off, the jerks.

Maybe he is.  Except that he's not.  Because he's me.  The old jacket is because it's cold outside and because it's darned comfy and the hat... well, I just like hats.  And though there's a bit of polysyllabism in the story I'm writing, there are also quite a few fart jokes.  And while I do read the Russians from time to time, I also enjoy a good properly-schlocky mystery or adventure story.  And the only reason I don't read  much Stephen King is because it gives me bad dreams.

It's hard to be snotty about something that gives you the willies.

In short -- appearances are often deceiving. And what's more, until I started reading Dre's blog this morning, I never gave much thought to what the people around me thought about having me here, pounding out a novel between appointments.

As anyone who has read this post (or just been around me for very long) I am well known for pulling out a pen and notepad or laptop at any rest break.  Any horizontal surface will do really, and I do write at home but mostly I write at a coffee shop because I like the bustle and energy of public spaces.  And because I need to be at work (across the street) in a couple of hours and I shoehorn my writing in wherever it fits.  If you want to write and maintain an otherwise hectic life, that's how you do it 

Not everything has to be performance art.  And I'd wager that most of the people around you -- whether they're writing, reading, or just staring out into space -- haven't given a whole lot of thought to what you're thinking about what they're doing.  They're just doing their thing.  And the ones that do care what you think?  Who cares, really?

Honestly, I think we'd all be happier if we'd just each do our own thing and let the chips fall where they may.

So if you see me, stop by my table and say hi!  I'll stop what I'm doing to share a cuppa with a friend or to meet someone new.  And I promise not to be literate at you as long as you're willing to wait just a sec while I finish one... more... paragraph...

The Wearing of Hats

I wanted to take a moment to point you over to a great local memoirist and blogger, Ev Maroon.  http://transplantportation.com/

And now that I have confessed my admiration for his verbal skills, I shall parry and riposte his latest blog post in which I, gentle reader, was categorized as... (deep breath) a hat guy.  Yes.  I was astonished too.  Well, not really, but let us pretend that it was me in that cafe he was describing and go with it because it's funnier that way.

That's me in the corner with the fedora, or on the sofa by the fireplace in the wool driving cap.  Scribbling madly in a notebook or frowning at the screen of my laptop, hat alternately perched atop my noggin or twirling in my hands as I contemplate the next scene of my novel.

Man do I hate the fact that those blasted Kennedy boys with their oh-so-perfect coifs made it de rigueur for American men to stop wearing hats.  It's not an affectation, damn it!  I want something on my head!  I want to cover my hair rather than spend all my time fussing with it, trying to meet the expectations of a society drunk on the fumes of Bryllcreme and blinded by the Brilliantine!

I don't do it to stand out, not really.  It's just that the time I spend glancing in the mirror before going out to get the fedora tilted just so, or the driving cap at just the right angle is less than the time I would spend trying to get the mop on my head to do anything other than whatever the hell it wants to do that day.  I know the hat makes me look like a dandy, but in sooth, it's the least vain option afforded me by this confounded society of ours.

And there's the safety aspect as well.  Yes, wearing a hat is safer, not only for me, gentle reader, but for you as well.  Some mornings that thickness of felt is all that keeps the mop in check, imprisons it against the day when it seizes control and rampages through the city. 

It's for your protection really.  A public service that I wear this hat in defiance of Kennedy and cafe archetype.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Cafe Grumpy offers a more expensive Joe

VIDEO - Oil for master's brain

I must admit that I'm torn between two reactions to this video: "I need to get me one of those" and "Oh my God, if they learn to unlock the power of the bean, it's all over for humanity!"

The first one is winning. And they shall disarm us with their cuteness...

1 (one) Generic Blog Post

I have a new work schedule, meaning I'll be writing at the coffee shop less and at home more and today's the first day of the new regimen. I'm looking forward to writing from home an extra day (access to source material is always a good thing) but this is going to take some getting used to. Anyone know where I can find an audio loop of random dish clatter and crowd noise? Incidentally, as a diehard "DIY Guy" I had to check my bookshelves this week when it came out that the Consumer Products Safety Commission had advised a recall of electrical wiring books published by Oxmoor House (publishers of do it yourself books for Sunset and Lowes). The titles date back to 1975 and according to CPSC records, no one has ever actually been harmed by the errors. Which I guess means that spouses who have been ducking home-improvement chores since the mid-seventies have been vindicated. Procrastination carries the day once again.

Mugshots

About a month ago, I started a ritual of posting a picture every morning of my morning coffee ritual. Similar to the "Project 365" meme, this is very specific. If you want to share a cup of coffee with me on any given morning, join me on Daily Booth and post your photo response. (Free membership required, instructions for posting on the site) I love the idea that the internet can join us all in a global kaffeeklatsch. There are very few problems that cannot be solved over a steaming mug of Joe. If nothing else, these little rituals help get a writer through his day... This morning's Mugshot (And PSA) Writing causes wrinkles. They never tell you that in school, so consider this my PSA. Beware the wrinkles of writers! Had a dear frind of mine who happens to be a photographer tell me once that it was "okay for guys to look craggy" in our publicity photos. Love it. (Good thing too.) In other news, the New York Times validated my lifelong approach to education: NYT - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health

365 Mugs

I am blessed with friends and family who now reside in all corners of the globe. It occurs to me that the only cup of coffee I can share with them on a daily basis is a virtual one. So I'm planning to do just that. Every morning for the next calendar year, I will be posting a picture of my "mug" over on Dailybooth.com (username: pages2type). I invite anyone who wishes to share a tasty beverage to join me in the exercise. You can even drink tea if you want. Or milk, or orange juice or some healthy wheatgrass smoothie thingy. We won't laugh at you. . . much. I'll try to be fresh and creative as ever, but I'll admit up front that these probably won't be the finest examples of photography ever seen. That's not really the point. Much like the internet, writing is a tool for bridging divides. Every novel serves this purpose from the pulpiest of pulp fiction to the highest of high-brow, because novels are ultimately about stepping outside ourselves to see what the world looks like through a different set of eyes. The Internet has a unique capacity to bring that experience out of the fictional realm. Family and friends are welcome, but so are strangers! In a world that grows more divided by the day, the least we can do is sit down for a moment to see one another as real people. The 'comment' function even allows us to carry on conversations. Good coffee and civilized conversation? Can the world survive such a thing? If you want to come have a cup with me, follow the link above. All are welcome at my table. The service is free to sign up and all it takes is a digital camera or webcam and a steaming cup of something. So sit with me for a moment each day and share a cup with me and my farflung friends.

The Fourth "W"

The first three, of course, are who, what and when.

I am often told that setting is the soul of a novel. But what of the setting of writing of the novel? How important is location for the author? There are writers whose writing studio, garage office, garret apartment or table at the cafe are as important to their work as the gardens of Giverny were to Monet.

This morning I had a business meeting in the cafe where I usually write. This is a smallish cafe near the school where I work. It's communal, convivial, funky and all the things a coffee shop should be. It's also a bustling local hangout, an intersection of writers, musicians, book groups, poets, priests and politicians all of us bonding over a cup of caffeine.

One of my colleagues looked around and said: "You write in here?"

I looked at her for a moment and then shouted "Sorry, what?"

I'd never noticed before how noisy the place was. But to be honest, I like it. The first question I ever asked my readers was "Where do you write?" As I said then, I like to have people around when I write. Rather than a distraction, the boisterous atmosphere of the cafe reminds me not to be a hermit, that the writers who have a breakout hit and then retreat to an isolated cabin to compose the Great American Novel are usually never heard from again. The people around me inform the narrative, pour their energy into the words.

Because it's been awhile and I have hopefully attracted some new readers since I first asked this back in February I thought I'd ask again and expand upon it a bit...  

If you're a writer: "Where do you write?" Does the boisterous energy of the masses distract you? Or does it help you? What makes the ideal place for you to partake in the written word? Does the setting have to fit the piece? Or is it a mixed bag: does the crowd around you help with scenes that bustle, but take you out of your groove if you're trying to write something lonesome?  

If you're not a writer: "Where do you read?" Does the setting help or hinder the narrative? One of the first things I did when I got to Seattle was read everything I could find that was set here. If I'm traveling somewhere and I know there's a book on my shelf that's iconic for my destination, I'll grab it and take it with me. When I was driving across the US, I read 'Lost Continent' by Bill Bryson in the hotel room every night before bed. I discovered Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels when I was in Los Angeles. Leave your thoughts in the comments section! I really want to know.  

Today's Quote of the Day:

"Walk into any bookstore or library, calculate how many lifetimes the average person would need to read all the fiction contained therein. To think that one has anything to contribute, to any genre or tradition, takes genuine hubris."

-Laura Lippman Read in the Washington Post Online

Find Me Here

Wordless Wednesday - Coffee In My Skull

See More Wordless Here

Good? That's a matter of opinion...

If the value of an experience outweighs the quality of what's in my cup, then I can definitely stand up and say that some of the best coffee I have ever had has also been some of the worst. The most memorable events in my life - ranging from the fine or merely the defining - have all been punctuated and underscored by mugs of some of the foulest venom ever squeezed from a diner's drip coffee maker. I'm talking about java that tastes like it has been filtered through an old sock and then left on the 'warmer' so long that all the water has boiled out of it, leaving it as dry as David Sedaris' wit and twice as acidic. Undeniably, it was all terrible coffee. Yet, if the persistence of memory and the affection of nostalgia are to be trusted, it was also some of the best I ever had simply because of the events it punctuated. I spent Easter Sunday, 1998 hunkered down in a tent in Rocky Mountain National park, waiting for a storm to pass. It was there that I sipped acrid coffee made using a French Press touted as 'unbreakable' by it's manufacturer which had a long crack running through it. It had been brewed from snow, melted boiled over an MSR Whisperlite stove in the wind shadow of my tent. If you are unfamiliar with single-burner camp stoves, the Whisperlite is the hind-end of a very small jet engine with two settings, 'off' and 'afterburner'. It has no finesse and certainly no temperature control. And if Coors ads have convinced you of the purity of Rocky Mountain snow, I feel sorry for you. Fine coffee is beyond your reach in a situation like that. And yet we all drank it. You might thing we drank it because we were afraid of freezing to death. Write off that horrible java as a survival necessity. But that wouldn't be true. Four well-equipped people in down sleeping bags and a decent tent a day's ski from a ranger station isn't cause for survivalist mentality. We had hot cocoa with us, powdered Tang and Gatorade, all of which could have warmed our innards. But we made coffee anyway. We made wonderfully terrible coffee in a defective press, because it was our minds we wanted to warm, not our stomachs. Perhaps I was cursed from the beginning. My first sip of coffee comes vividly to mind. It was brought to me by my sister and my cousin Julie. "It's tea" they told me. Being eight I hadn't yet read the Iliad, so I didn't know yet not to trust people bearing unmerited gifts. It wasn't tea, it was instant Sanka. It was gross. I spat it back into the cup as I recall. It would be another twelve years before someone could persuade me that coffee wasn't all like that. Since I was finally brought back into the caffeinated fold by my dear cousin Chris, I have sipped amazing coffee from some of the finest roasters in the United States. From Cedarburg Coffee Roastery in Wisconsin, where I learned for the first time about why some coffee was good and others were terrible to the back alley coffeehouses of Denver and Seattle where good coffee is a religion and Starbucks heathens are laughed out the door when they order a double-tall-half-caf-extra-dry-vanilla-nut-pumpkin-spice-why bother'. Oh, I can recall the coffee I drink in those fine establishments and even sometimes tell you who I was with. But I don't remember what day it was or what the weather was doing outside, or much else. How is it that the best coffees have the least hold on my memory? I remember every tortuous sip of the coffee I made in that tent in Colorado. I can clearly recall every word of the conversations I had with my tentmates during that blizzard. Horrid coffee, made with water from melted snow, from beans ground the day before and hurriedly prepared and decanted into our mugs before the water leaked out of the cracked press, giving it no time to fully steep. But I remember it and savor the memory more than other, much finer cups. It can be argued that the odd situation cements that memory more than the coffee. It would be a fair assertion, except that mountaintop brewing isn't the only fond memory accompanied by the pungent stench of a bad brew. At an Irish-themed pub in Dayton, Ohio I found - quite possibly - the world's most honest waiter. He came over to offer us a round of after-dinner coffees. "Is it any good?" I asked him. "Not really." came the response. How can you resist a sales pitch like that? I ordered the coffee anyway and found that he was right. I seem to remember saying "Anything that tastes that bad should have alcohol in it" and the second round did. The conversation at that table (punctuated by the terrible coffee and later by much better single-malt scotch) was later turned into the plot of a wonderful (and sadly unpublished) novel by my enterprising cousin Chris. While somewhat-lost in the middle of nowhere in Illinois I stopped at a diner to escape the sudden deluge that had managed to make my windshield all but opaque. There I sipped coffee that could well have been an attempt by the waitress to kill me. I later learned that the thunderstorm I was escaping had spawned several tornados across Iowa and Illinois. On a diner napkin I wrote the first lines that would one day become the novel The Paleographer. The coffee was terrible but I will always remember it fondly because of the novel on the napkin and because I was on a trip to visit the woman who would one day be my wife. It was Friday, 1 October 1999. I still have that napkin somewhere and there's a mug ring at the edge of it. Perhaps someday I'll have it tested to see if that swill really did begin its life as coffee. And there are many many more. I realize that there are several fronts in the war over what defines a fine cup of Coffee. I distill them into two major camps, effectively splitting the debate over the aesthetics of coffee into what side of a 70/30 split you are on between the quality of the coffee and the manner & environment of its service. Do we savor the experience first, the atmosphere, the circumstances that brought us to the coffeeshop ere we ever taste drop one of our beverage? Does that define the experience? Or do we wait, our minds a blank slate until written upon by that first sip of God's nectar, only then taking in our surroundings, paying heed to the babble of the crowd around us? I tend to come down on the experiential end of the continuum. For some reason I often find myself in memorable situations, far from any hope of decent coffee, and those are the memories writ large on the folders I have filed away in the drawer of my mind marked "Coffee".

Poking the Mermaid...

An Open Letter to Starbucks (Because they asked...)
Dear Starbucks,

When you purchased Clover, you acquired sole access to a truly spectacular and groundbreaking coffee brewing process that blends the best parts of French Press and Vacuum brewing in a new technology. A better cup, by brewing every cup. But if all you are going to do is grind the same beans you have today, all it’s going to do is give America a better cup of mediocrity.

Stop telling America that burnt coffee is good coffee.

Stop burning all the character out of your beans.

Your "Pike's Place Blend" is a hesitant shuffle in the wrong direction. And instant coffee won't save you. Starbucks needs to differentiate its coffee from that brewed now by your two greatest competitors: MacDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.

What does it say to you that the company that brought the idea of gourmet coffee to America is challenged by those two. Dunkin’ Donuts? McDonald's? Can’t you see that homogenizing your beans by roasting out the regional characteristics has made your coffee indistinguishable from the sludge that the donut shoppes pour?

You have become the Burger King of coffee, congratulations.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Starbucks has the market share and the unique position to teach America what gourmet coffee really is. By cornering the market on the Clover and restricting its sale to the Starbucks stores, you are even more in a position to give a better cup of better beans. By roasting single-origin coffees to a lighter roast you can teach America what gourmet coffee really is. You can differentiate from the fast-food franchises that challenge you. You can brew better good coffee rather than giving us a better cup of bad coffee.

Starbucks taught America that there was such a thing as gourmet coffee. Thank you. But you did so by creating an inoffensive product without differentiation from one cup to the next; scorching the regional characteristics out of it; serving it pre-ground and stale so that ultimately, we’re no better off than we were before you told us what was possible and then failed to deliver it. Failed to the point where we now cannot tell the difference between a five-dollar cup and a two-dollar cup at Mickey-D’s.

You can move the needle again, start innovating rather than maintaining the status-quo. Take those Clovers you’re hoarding and actually use them to their fullest advantage. Brew coffee roasted to highlight the regional varietals, teach us to differentiate between Ethiopian and Guatemalan beans, educate our palates to taste the subtleties of terroir. And let us enjoy an amazing cuppa while you turn your cafés back into cafés rather than the high-priced soft-drink stands they’ve become.

It pains me to say this because I know and adore a number of wonderful people that proudly wear the green apron, but Starbucks is the coffee of last resort. If there's nowhere else to buy a cup, I'll enter your establishment, but otherwise... no.  Your beans are charred beyond recognition.

I’m not alone in this feeling. You've turned coffee from something transcendent into a lowest-common-denominator softdrink. A better brewing process can't change that. Bad beans beget bad coffee no matter how you brew them. I maintain contact with beanheads across the country and we all say the same thing: until your coffee delivers on it’s promise… well, you could brew it in a golden chalice with water from the the fountain of youth and I wouldn’t accept it.

If you can't do this simple thing, then give the damn Clovers back. You don't deserve them.

This is your brain on coffee...

A barista and a neuroscientist walk into a coffeeshop... Sounds like the beginning of a really esoteric joke? Actually, it's the nub of a collaboration between two people at Cornell University: Neuroscientist Linda Nowak and award-winning barista Chris Ganger on what coffee is and how it does that voodoo that it does do so well. Light in the Winter The perfect blend of science and art.

Coffee Break

Before there were drip pots, percolators, French presses, and fluid bed roasters... there was the frying pan.

 The Burke Museum and the Seattle Times take us back to the Ethiopian roots of coffee as ritual and social lubricant.

 Very cool.

Coffee Break

Physics Central asks: "How long would you have to yell to heat a cup of coffee?"

Answer: Zero minutes, of course. One should never heat a cup of coffee. Once the coffee is brewed, it should be enjoyed at the temperature at which it was brewed on a declining scale as it cools and new flavors are made available to the palate.

Trick question, but some really neat math. ("Really neat math" now there are three words I never thought I'd say.) Though... come to think of it, yelling at my coffee is not, like, an unknown occurrence.

They're on to us!!!

Red Alert! Red Alert! Red Alert!!

Our spies at the New York Times are reporting that the jock-strap crowd is finally catching on to our secret weapon!

It's almost nice to see that someone is finally noticing something writers, academics & philosophers (you know... nerds) have known for centuries. Think the introduction of coffee corresponding with the advent of the enlightenment was a coincidence?

Oh, I forgot. The (thoroughly caffeinated) nerds are the ones assigned to keep track of that kind of thing. We can make you stronger, faster, better than ever before! We have the tools, we have the technology... we have the espresso machines. Steve Austin wasn't really bionic. We just patched him up, handed him a Starbucks Card and sent him on his way, pocketing a cool ten million (minus the cost of bandaids and Steve''s Latte addiction).

Who knows where this epiphany might lead? The International Olympic Committee needs to hurry up and ban this "newly-discovered" performance-enhancing drug before all of our star athletes are sitting around in cafes, drinking lattes, talking and generally trying to make actual, measurable contributions to society.

Daylight Wasting Time

On sleepless nights, by tempest tossed, 
I wait for the bleary day to start. 
My mug will catch the hours lost; 
Strong as death and as black as his heart. 


 - Scott