Loring, a Writing Life

19: My Trips to the Coffee House

As I got going writing short stories again, returning to my first love, I’d clear my head of editors and grants and contests and climb out of bed, dress, and head down the street to my neighborhood coffee house. I’d chat up my favorite baristas as I got myself a small dark roast, then plop myself down at “Steve’s table.” Every day! Religiously! What a life!

Except…

Except when I had a school residency. Or piles of papers to mark up. Or a class to plan. Or some writing or editing gig deadline to meet. A gig paying actual money.

Bursts. I write stories in bursts.

For years I’ve heard writing teachers preach that we have to write every day, no matter what. Find a quiet place. Set a time. Go there every day and only write. No emailing allowed. No phone calls. No decluttering your space. Only write. This is essential, they say, to any process. It’s good advice. As a writing teacher, I’ve given it myself, and I’ve tried to follow it.

The problem is that we all have different lives.

“What’s your process?” a young television executive asked me recently. It’s a question people like to ask, and it’s worth considering.

We were in line outside the men’s room at my granddaughter’s wedding. His wife is a successful writer for a popular television show. He said Andi (not her real name) writes snippets all day long as she goes through her day. She begins by sitting down for an hour or so and dips back into what she’s done as the day goes on. She takes what she has into the writer’s room later, where it is processed into the mix of what the other writers have brought in.

It obviously works for her.

My process was a little different from the advice I glibly handed out over the years—and maybe somewhat more like Andi’s. Most of us are busy. I still had schools to visit, Metro classes to teach, editing and writing gigs on the side, endless piles of papers to mark up. Like everybody else, my rent had to be paid, and short stories don’t pay the rent.

The stories written after the heart attack, after the India book, after meeting Sandy- the girl in the woods, evening on the plaza, a Maxfield Parrish sky, the sandwich shop, and many of the other stories posted on this Substack—were written in passing creative bursts. I wrote the more recent stories setting myself a 500-word quota for each day. Five hundred good words, so that every day I wrote some nonsense but crossed it out and kept what worked. At least 500 good words. My quota came from something I read in a biography of V. S. Naipaul. He set himself that quota, realizing that over time it mounts up, and of course his productivity bears this out.

So, having one of my bursts, I’d sit down and write to my quota and, if the words flowed, I’d come out with more. I’d sometimes run off in a tangent that had to be ditched. Other times I’d get stuck and sit there looking out into space before pushing on. More often than I expected, the ideas came faster than I could keep up with them, and I’d end the day with seven or eight hundred good words. In the afternoon, when I transferred handwriting to the laptop, I made changes that would be further changed as I revised and revised and revised. One funny thing I just had to learn to trust was that somehow or another I always seemed to know when the rough draft was finished. Bang! That’s it. Go read it to Sandy. After that, send it to the irascible Mark, my first reader, who always makes me revise it some more.

This is great. I love it.

It all begins when I have, say, five weeks clear. I’d been working hard doing those jobs that pay actual money, and now I’d come to a break and had time to write. Great. Every morning I’d traipse down the sidewalk to stand in line for my dark roast and butter croissant, then settle in with my notebook. I wrote longhand in the morning, typed in the afternoon, and then went to bed at night thinking just a little bit about my story, seeding my imagination but not pushing it.

What a life! I’d make fun of myself as the most famous obscure writer in my neighborhood. Everybody knows me. In the time I buy myself for these bursts, I may produce three, maybe four, new stories, and then I will be ready for another one. I still have time. I’ve figured out how to keep going, and by the end of the year I imagine I will have 25 new stories at this rate.

But there’s a problem.

It always happens.

I get a message from my brain. It’s relayed from that same place that tells me when the rough draft is finished, and it’s telling me now that my creative burst is over.

“Go do other stuff,” it tells me and it’s always right.

I have no new idea for a story. It’s time to re-charge, and it’s an awful feeling, because maybe I’ll never have another idea again. The well may have now dried up for good.

That’s my creative process. I have to take a rest. After awhile, I can get myself going again. I have ways of doing that, but not right away. It sounds a little artsy fartsy, but it has made me reasonable productive, and for that I am grateful.

Confirming my calling and knowing who I want next to me while I follow it, grounding me in love and work, has given me the clarity I need.

I can wait for the next burst.