Writing and Cafes

When I started writing groups with people in Boston, and later Seattle, we almost always ended up meeting in cafes to critique each others’ work and share inspiration or the latest, coolest book to read. It’s part of cafe culture, and it goes back centuries.

Cafes are also my favorite to write. When I leave home and go to a cafe, I’m going to work. When the work is done, I put my laptop in my backpack, I drop my coffee cup in a bus tub, and I go on to the next part of my day. It’s a way for me to compartmentalize my writing time. When I’ve tried writing at home, I can close the laptop, but then it just pesters me, “C’mon, just one more page. You know where the scene is going. You know what the characters are gonna say. How about two more paragraphs, alright? Just two.” It’s not that I don’t want to keep writing. I’ve just learned that after a certain point, my concentration begins to fade and the quality of the writing diminishes greatly.

Cafe Algiers (now closed) in Harvard Square was a favorite place for our writing group to meet.

I’m OK With Loud Cafes

I’ve never minded the background noise of a cafe, no matter how loud it gets. In fact, it puts me at ease. The quiet of an empty room or a library, on the other hand, can be very distracting for me. Once I start writing in a cafe, the background din disappears as I drift into the dream of the story. I only hear what’s happening on the page as the scene unfolds. I might pause for a coffee refill, but my mind stays inside the dream. Two and a half or three hours later, sounds from the conversations around me or the harsh shriek of the espresso machine leak into my consciousness and break the creative spell. That’s it for today. It’s time to go.

My latest writing project was a novel, The Mahoneys of West Seattle, that began in the summer of 2014. My first order of business was to find nearby cafes where I’d be comfortable writing.

Grand Central Bakery in Burien

My Writing Cafes in Burien, WA

I was living in Burien, WA, at the time, and the routine I settled on had me writing in two local coffee shops. My morning spot was Grand Central Bakery. After a midday break, I’d visit Burien Press for my afternoon writing session. This was all pre-Covid, so it was cafe-life at its best. I knew what kind of coffee to get at each place, and I knew which pastries were fresh on certain days of the week. I even knew which wifi networks to avoid because they weren’t legit (I use a personal hotspot now.)

A lot of the writing in that first stretch was interspersed with online research because I had to develop an understanding of topics and places that were new to me, like soil sampling methods on the North Slope of Alaska or the process of thermokarsting. Because the story was a sequel, I thought that I could easily pick up where I left off with the characters from the first book. But there were almost thirteen years between the end of The Chieftains of South Boston and the beginning of this second one. I had to figure out everything of importance that happened in that time, and how the characters and various relationships had grown and changed. Two of the main characters would be Mahoney children born after the first novel, so they would have to be developed from the ground up, so to speak.

Java Cafe in Downtown Boise

By spring 2015, I had about a hundred and fifty pages of narrative that would still require reshaping, but I had run low on savings so it was time to go back to work. It wasn’t until the summer of 2018 when, after selling my house in the Seattle area, I moved to Boise, Idaho to focus full-time on finishing the first draft. As soon as I arrived, I began scoping out the local cafe scene.

Favorite Writing Cafes in Boise

I should mention that I’m generally fine with any Starbucks when proximity is critical or a preferred cafe happens to be closed for whatever reason. In Boise, I found three places that suited me well. The Java Cafe downtown was one of my favorites, along with the old Dawson Taylor coffee house on 8th St. You could always find a lot of work by local artists hanging on the walls there, and it had a good mix of people, from college students new in town to veteran locals who showed up every day to sit at the same table and discuss the latest news.

Later on, I started tending toward Hyde Perk as the place to do my daily writing. It’s probably the smallest of the three cafes, but it has a more neighborhoody feel because it’s right in the middle of the North End community. Even when the pandemic struck, I’d stop by their walk-up window to pick up a large drip and whatever pastry was calling to me from their display case.

Hyde Perk in the North End of Boise

I ended up finishing the first draft of the book in early March, 2020. At that point, I intended to move back to the Seattle area and return to copywriting for a while.

Adapting to the Pandemic

The pandemic blew up right before the move though. A work contract I had set up in Seattle was suddenly canceled, and it didn’t look like companies would be hiring contractor copywriters anytime soon. In fact, the place where I was going to work ended up laying off 25 percent of its marketing staff.

I still had enough to live on while working on the second draft, so I decided to stay in Boise. I spent this last year cutting scenes, adding new ones and incorporating the changes recommended by a handful of people who were generous enough to give me honest, insightful feedback on the early draft. That, along with some fine work by two copy editors shaped the final version of The Mahoneys of West Seattle.

I’ve already got an outline for the next book in the series. I can’t wait to begin writing it full-time. The first order of business, of course, will be to select a solid set of writing cafes in whatever town or city I end up living in.

Photo Credits

Feature photo by Burien Press

Cafe Algiers by Harvard Magazine

Grand Central Bakery by Peter Williams on Google Reviews

Jave Cafe by Java Idaho

Final photo by Hyde Perk