I write best when I’m surrounded by noise. The background hum of a coffee shop. An audiobook or podcast playing. Listening to music. I have been known to write, while curled up on the couch, with the Food Network on.
By best I mean that I actually get words on the screen. The noise drowns out the inner monologue telling me that I can’t write today because there are other, not at all important, tasks which must be done immediately. Procrastination is my default setting.
In The Art of Slow Writing, Louise DeSalvo recommends that her students write somewhere other than their homes. At least some of the time. From her own experience, writing in a coffee shop or in a library meant the writing “didn’t seem as scary as it did at home.”
I had a similar realisation last year. I dedicated one day a week to writing somewhere other than my kitchen table. The results of this were twofold; I wrote more in the space of a few weeks than I had in the previous two years combined, and I finally figured out what it was that I had been struggling to write during that time. My motto became; have plan, will write!
In giving myself a set time to write my unstructured collection of words, which were saved in multiple places, began to take shape. It wasn’t a memoir. They weren’t quite essays, though this is what they became. Slowly, but with more focus than before.
Ordering coffee, as I check whether my favourite table is available, marks the beginning of a writing session. The table is tucked away in the corner, so it’s perfect for people watching without the risk of overstepping people’s boundaries. It is also beside the plug sockets.
The words need to be written now because I won’t have time solely for writing until the next week. This self-imposed deadline gives me a reason to hold myself accountable. The hours pass, with life happening around me, and less procrastination options than I have at home.
Writing during lockdown has been as much about finding new rituals as it has been about racking up the word count. When I moved in with my parents-in-law back in March, because we were all cocooning and P’s job meant I couldn’t do so safely as home, I commandeered their kitchen table.
Writing in short bursts, more frequently, replaced once a week writing marathons. The urge to procrastinate remained, but because I couldn’t go further than the garden the possibilities for distraction were limited. The essays and stories still came together, just differently.
Since moving home, I’ve set up an office in the spare room. In the grand scheme of 2020, when so much has changed for so many people, it feels nice to find routine again.
Audiobooks and podcasts have replaced the sounds of the coffee shop. I am not quite at the stage of trying to recreate the coffee shop vibes at home. But I am also not not at this stage.
In her recent essay for Literary Hub, Emily Temple asks Is This the End of Writing in Cafés? and explores the impact of and romance surrounding writing in public on our literary history. There is an element of performance about writing in a café. Of being a capital W Writer, as distinct from being an aspiring writer. Until you realise that writing makes you a writer, with no aspiring necessary.
Much of my writing from the last few months has been about craving routine, bringing ritual into our day-to-day lives, and slowing down. Which, I think, makes it apt that I've had to build a new writing routine.