Many of the writers I know or have read about talk about how part of the writing process isn’t spent actually typing but in thinking and just being. This thinking and just being takes place in the forms of walks and showers, and simply staring out the window.
Due to a lack of Internet at home, most of my actual writing takes place in a coffee shop where I compile all the outlines I’ve created in my head while riding the subway or grocery shopping, and occasionally from the scraps of paper with specific phrases and key points jotted down in horrid chicken-scratchings. The average post of 800 words takes me about two hours to sit down and flesh out as I tweak paragraph order and ponder what words to use followed by edits to sentence structure and clarity.
This weekend, I spent a few hours at Sit & Wonder, a fairly new coffee shop in Prospect Heights that friends had given rave reviews to. And I did just what the name inspired–I sat, and I wondered. Two hours later I had a near completed post for my new site–AMNESIA OF THE FUTURE –that requires a little more editing before completion. As I sat there wondering, I noticed that the majority of patrons were working on their laptops, a small few socializing. This was quite a difference compared to the nearby Glass Shop where there is a mix of laptops and magazine reading going on.
Sit & Wonder is one of the few coffee houses I’ve been to that hosts a collection of books for use by patrons. The very first I ever noticed was Muddy Waters in Burlington, Vermont. As a teenager, I spent a lot of my time in the Swiss Family Robinson inspired space where a few shelves had been built and customers would leave bookmarks among the pages before putting them back for later reading. I like the idea of community books that multiple people are reading at one time and where there is drawn out involvement in order to finish a book. Who knows how often people actually came back to finish what they started?
While I waited in line to order my coffee, I scanned the books and noticed a large quantity of Star Trek novels–something I’ve avoided so far in my StarTrekucation. No one in the time I sat there browsed the books or picked one up.
Reading in public places is nothing new. We see people on the subway and in parks with a novel in hand regularly. And sharing books is nothing new as friends borrow and people become members of their public library. But in most coffee houses the books seem to become dust collectors and decoration; living unfulfilled destinies.
Later that weekend, I noticed on Twitter that Ron Hogan, creator of Beatrice.com, was relaxing, book in hand, in the humidor room. It struck me that I would like to sit socially unsocial with a book–the possibility of getting some reading done or possibly striking up a conversation with someone about the book itself or the author or random literary chit-chat. People don’t often talk to others about their choice in reading material on the subway, but in a coffee house…who knows?
So next weekend, I will leave the computer at home as well as the thoughts on potential posts and instead see what’s what in one of those Star Trek novels that I cannot yet bring myself to reserve at the library. And most likely, being in such an aptly named space, I will continue to sit and wonder because reading and people watching are just as much a part of the writing process as the physical writing. And sometimes the writing, observing life around us, and conversing with strangers allows us to glean a little something new from what we read.
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