Writing in 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.

I love writing in cafes. When I leave home and go to one, I’m going to work. When the work is done, I put my laptop in my backpack, 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 when I’m writing in cafes, 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. Three or four 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. The message being: that’s it for today. It’s time to go.

My second novel, The Mahoneys of West Seattle, began in the summer of 2014. One of my first orders of business was to find nearby cafes where I’d be comfortable writing.

Grand Central Bakery in Burien

Writing in 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’d been hacked.

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 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 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, when writing in cafes was no longer an option, 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 that second novel 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 copywriting 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 a 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 novel.

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

Ipswich, Mon Amour

Update: In the summer of 2022, I left Boise, Idaho, and headed east. I knew enough about novel number three to make the move. Nora Mahoney, who is eight years old when The Mahoneys of West Seattle ends, is now 23. The story will be hers, more or less, and it will be centered in Ipswich, MA. My first novel began there, and I had no idea at the time that the third book would return to the same setting with a whole new lens.

I had some familiarity with the area because I grew up in Boston. Before moving to Seattle, I also spent a few years living on Cape Ann, first in Gloucester, then Hamilton, which is a town adjacent to Ipswich. Moving back there let me reacquaint myself with the community. It also allowed me to volunteer at a local farm.

I knew that farming would be a big part of the third book. And I quickly learned that agriculture out West was a whole different experience than farming in New England, so that was another big reason to make the move. I’ll save the related stories for the site I’m building for the novel, titled Ipswich Mon Amour.

Once I settled into a rental home on Cape Ann, I fell into my writing routine. Again, I went searching for good cafes, starting with independent places. I found one in Gloucester called Lone Gull Coffeehouse.

Lone Gull Coffeehouse on Main Street, Gloucester, MA

It’s tucked into an old brick building on Main Street downtown, and it’s full of local character. They close at 3:00 in the afternoon, and I usually liked to write until about 4:00, so I went there on days when I began writing early. As much as I liked the cafe, it’s on the smallish side and there were days when a lack of seating would send me up the hill to a local Starbucks. But if you’re in Gloucester, and you’re looking for well-crafted coffee, Lone Gull is the place.

My main cafes ended up being chains, Caffè Nero in Beverly and Starbucks in North Beverly, both good places to work. Most of the scenes in the book that are set in Paris and the South of France were written in those two cafes during the winter of 2022/2023.

Zumis Coffee in Ipswich, MA

Because the place I was renting in Gloucester didn’t have a washer and dryer, I’d haul my clothes every week to Ipswich Laundry on Center Street. While it was drying, I’d take my laptop over to either Zumis or the Sandpiper Bakery and do some writing. They both had great coffee, food and atmosphere. One became an inspiration for the place in Ipswich, Mon Amour where Nora Mahoney likes to hang out.

The Sandpiper Bakery in Ipswich, MA

In June, the lease on my rental home was up, and I returned to the West, specifically Sandpoint, Idaho, where I finished the manuscript. I’m sitting in the Schweitzer Crossing Starbucks as I type this, but most of my writing has been done at Evans Brothers in Sandpoint’s Granary Arts District. The cafe is a community hub and has a relaxed feel, with friendly baristas, comfortable seating and walls full of creative pieces local artists.

Evans Brothers Cafe in Sandpoint’s Granary Arts District

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

Next photo by Hyde Perk