Today’s guest is Alison Heller. Alison was a finalist in our search for a humorist columnist. We loved her submission and are pleased to share it with you today. Alison’s first novel, THE LOVE WARS, was published just this month by Penguin (NAL). Her second novel, as of yet untitled, is scheduled for 2014.
I loved The Love Wars! Heller writes with the perfect balance of razor-sharp wit, intelligence, and empathy. This book had me hooked from its earliest pages — a briskly paced and thoroughly entertaining debut.
–Meg Donohue, Author of How to Eat a Cupcake
Alison says, “I guess that for me, writing is where the sublime (those wonderful, if rare, moments of flow) meets the ridiculous (just about everything else). One day I had a few hours and ran out of the house, so excited to sit down and write, but finding space was next to impossible. I went to about three places with no luck—no seats, larges loud groups, etc. etc. I realized that over the years I’d been on an extended vagabond’s journey, like some traveling laptop minstrel, and thus this post was born.”
Follow Alison on Twitter @lalisonheller or visit her Facebook page. Enjoy!
The Quest: One Writer’s Search for The Coffee Shop Office
It happens. First once. Then, again and again until I can’t ignore it.
Tiny voices. Mommy! My door creaks open. We find you! We play computer! They read aloud the names of half-formed characters. Who that?
I don’t know, I say, it’s only a draft, but they persist. When I return from fetching the water they demand, I have forgotten what I’m writing.
I have heard others—namely Bob, of the How To Publish Panel—refer to a place. My coffee shop office, he said with his gentle chuckle, where I am from nine until eleven five days a week. Like clock work.
My home is warm, yes, with steady wifi. It is what I know. But I must assemble provisions for a quest. I must find this coffee shop office.
Day One, Early
I start my quest near my house, the temple of a woman with flowing green hair, parted in the middle. She wears a crown and offers protein plates.
It’s crowded when I arrive but against the odds, I find a seat, outlet adjacent. At the table beside me, a woman in a long skirt holds her phone to her ear. Her voice is loud; her hand is at her forehead. I don’t know, she screams, I don’t know why the contracts didn’t go through. I press in my earbuds. Write. Reread what I have typed: I do not know why the contracts didn’t go through. The phrase is compelling but does not work in my scene.
Her phone rings again. I see she says. I see i see i see i see. Not at all. I see.
It goes on like this. When her phone rings for the fifth time, I know I must move on.
Day Two
A new establishment, one warm and cozy, filled with the aroma of baking bread and strong coffee. There is only one outlet but I have vanquished my competitors; it is mine. Mine alone! I type. 300 words. 500. Can it be this easy? Have I found the coffee shop office?
I have not. There is no bathroom, the counter man shrugs, maybe across the street.
Day Three
I scan the room: seats, coffee, drinks, bathroom.
I tap my foot. There is music here. Loud music. Loud enough that I feel like . . . dancing. But the others—they sit, they type, they remain somehow unmoved by the desperate query: won’t you take me to Funkytown? Over and over the voice asks. I would like to help it. But I am unsure. How close is Funkytown? And does it have bathrooms?
Day Four
I have returned to the home of the protein plate. A light streams through the window.
At the next table, where the long-skirted woman sat before, a family settles. They are from another land, speaking in hard syllables of another land. The mid-sized one, blond, spills a hot beverage over the table. A taller, tired one — his mother? — yells. I cannot understand but at the same time I do: she wants napkins. Napkins! I jump in response. Returning, I trip over my plug, which lies, powerless, near the pooling water on the floor.
I will not let them see me cry.
Later that night
I toss, I turn with memories: the spotty wifi; the draining batteries; the full bladder. I do not have what it takes.
A flash of light, an image, holographic, of Bob hovers by the window.
Bob? I whisper.
He nods, cookie crumbs from the Panel refreshments trembling in his beard.
Where? Where do I find it? Where is the coffee shop office?
It is every place and no place, he says. It is here and there and there. It’s a state of mind: the openness to observe, the itch to record, the fire to create, the yearning to perfect, the addiction to revise.
That’s nice, I say, but where? Where can I do that?
Anywhere, he grins, anywhere you damn can.
And I know I will start again tomorrow.
Beautifully said. My office is not a place, but a time–just before the others rise, even when I’m the guest.
Fabulous! Bravo! Encore! (Says the mom in search of a coffee shop office….) xo
So funny! Did you ever find a steady coffee shop office?
Haha! This definitely made me smile. It also, unfortunately, echoed my search for a coffee shop office. ;P
I recently read something about different working types – basically, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic – and how that affects what distracts you. Some people can work with noise all around them. Many of us can’t.
You might try a library. They often have quiet workspaces. In my town, anyone can walk into the college library without ID, and with three different levels, plenty of big tables, and those desks with walls on three sides, it shouldn’t be hard to find a quiet place to work. And it’s open longer hours than the public library.
But it might not inspire you to write such a lovely post. ;-)
I have a coffee shop office. It’s a fairly new place in town with rich wood floors and panelling, free Wifi, plenty of seating and not one but two bathrooms. Now, if I can only get there on a daily basis…
A relentless search it can be!
One writer in my town has managed to rent a room downtown but if not affordable other options could be a local coffee bar.
Luckily for me the children are now grown and I can, literally, write in a room of my own.
Like this post of office options!
It made me think, of how regular folks, are always looking for their own piece of heaven. As a writer, I just want a small plot for me and my keyboard. Ive learned it doesnt have to be a library. Just my basic needs met. Hydration, a place clean to empty my bladder and plenty of outlets. I have that struggle every once and a while. Take care.
Ah, the elusive coffee shop office search goes on until you by chance stumble on the comfortable spot complete with bathroom, only to find that the coffee is lousy.
Even a writer who lives alone sometimes needs to get away from the life tasks that stare you in the face when you try to write–the dirty dishes, the laundry, the dusty furniture, the un-mopped floor…
Echoing Kris above, I’m blessed to live less than a mile from a great branch library with plugs, clean facilities and a semi-decent coffee vending machine ;-)
Thanks for all these lovely comments!
Malena—thank you. I love that and it’s so true with writing—the need to carve out the moment as much as the place.
Kris and Kay, the college library is a wonderful idea—and Kay, I am planning my next vacation to your library . . . for the coffee vending machine alone.
Natasha—Jackpot! I definitely get the time issue though.
Kristan, Cricket, Andrea, and Patricia—thank you, my search comrades: you know how it goes—sometimes I hit all the marks (seat, plug, wifi, coffee, bathroom), but sometimes . . . not.
Tressa, I love that piece of heaven analogy
Ray, Ha! But silver lining: bad coffee means less need for bathroom?
I feel your pain *insert whimpering*, I finally found a place and my Muse decided to do a runner, she was last seen skipping and twirling happily on a boat headed to Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef.
Perhaps next time you could discuss the ‘How to’ of keeping Muses happy…. please.
Alison-
One word: Brooklyn. Move there. Your coffee bar problem is solved.
See? Simple.
Jacque—I’m so sorry to hear that—but I think we should ALL go back to the spot where she was lost, no? An extended stay in Green Island . . .
And Donald, alas—I do live in Brooklyn! I’ve trekked all around the city but this post was written after a stretch in Cobble Hill and Dumbo. Have you found the golden ticket elsewhere in County of Kings??
Alison-
You *live* in Brooklyn and cannot find decent coffee bars for writing–! You can’t be serious.
I’ll admit that Cobble Hill is short on them. DUMBO is pretty small. Can’t say I’ve ever found one there. But don’t despair. Do believe.
In Williamsburg we are swimming in coffee bars. There are too many to mention but for serious laptop time I recommend Atlas Cafe, Oslo Coffee and Gimmie Coffee. These are in a quieter corner of central Williamsburg away from the models, tourists and slumming Manhattan types.
In Greenpoint try the original (I think) Cafe Grumpy. There’s one in Park Slope, where I’ve also found several superb spots, including Gorilla Coffee. The Breukelen Coffee Bar in Prospect Heights is said to be great.
If all else fails get over to the West Village in Manhattan. Try Think Coffee, Mojo, Grounded or Cafe Minerva, where I wrote most of Writing 21st Century Fiction.
Get yourself an iPhone app called Coffee Spot, a coffee bar finder. Big help.
Now, if you want to talk the best spot for donuts, there’s a subject for debate. How about organic, vegan donuts in foodie flavors? There’s a spot in Bushwick I’ll tell you about but for goodness sake first find your writing home!
Research & inspiration I can find & DO anywhere. Poems I can write in churches, over bridges, under blue skies, on the fly. But that darned novel? Even something as simple as editing printed pages? I must go to the cave. I go where Stephen King’s “man in the basement” lurks. I can’t even allow that adorable cat in the room, the one who refuses NOT to sit on the keyboard or make me get dander & fur all over me, over and over. One distraction, one second, & its gone, poof, for a time. I hear “Go to the basement,” says Stephen, “go & shut the door. It must be a room where you can shut the door.” Quiet. Its now me, alone, with the man in the basement, the muse. The evasive one. The cruel one. The Miraculous One who grabs ideas from clouds & forces them into words & spreads them onto the page. In the basement. The Cave. Where I can close the door & teach cats, kids, fans, friends, lovers, lame excuses & must-dos that they will all lovingly return to my fold at the appointed hour. After 2000 words arrive & no sooner. Its the only thing that works for me. Wish I had learned about the “main in the basement” when I started my novel. Wish I would implement more regularly. For me, coffee is for coffee houses & people watching, that’s it. I can’t write there. EVER.
Alas, this is familiar.
If you’re near a college or university, try their libraries or study carrels. I’ve also had success in a mall’s food court and the public library when it first opens.
I wrote an entire manuscript in notebooks while commuting on a train for a year. I found it pleasantly isolated. Presently, that is not practica for my next story. I believe I will start looking for a coffeeshop of my own.
Oh how I related. Unfortunately?
I had long conversations with friendly patrons until I found out they had the answer to all the world’s problems.
I met an Italian family and they were speaking in Italian. I just happened to have finished a book about an Italian/American, and guess what? The son had just done a book report on the author.
But, get writing done. Rarely. You write with such humor. Loved it.