E________, first draft: 33,300 words
Many years ago, now, my day job took me out to the West Coast. Work done, I found myself in LAX, Terminal Four, waiting for a flight home. While there, like so many travelers before me, I thought it would be a good idea to drop into Starbucks for a cup of coffee.
Turned out, the terminal had a problem with its water supply that day and the Starbucks was unable to serve anything that wasn’t bottled or chewable. Fear not, they said, this is LAX. There is another Starbucks in the terminal and their water supply is just fine.
I located the second Starbucks, swore under my breath, and decided then and there that I was done with it. The reason? The line for service was at least two city blocks long. There were hundreds of people hoping to get served. Clearly, there was a reason Terminal Four had two Starbucks. The sole survivor was simply overwhelmed.
No one in that unbelievably long line looked happy, but no one left. Or rather, they only left after a frantic glance at the watch told them they had run out of time. It was either coffee or the plane. Though I do sometimes wonder if some of them chose the coffee.
To be honest, the sight of a coffee line measured in the hundreds of yards was disturbing. It was, after all, proof positive that coffee is addictive. No one in their right mind should be standing in a two-blocks-long queue jonesing for a cup of Joe they were never going to get. Except for those people who really did have hours to kill, there was no way on God’s Earth they were ever going to get served, and yet there they were.
Fast forward to six a.m. last Saturday. The outside temperature in Pittsburgh was 17F/-8C and there were a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I planned to drive to my local coffee shop and work on E________ for a couple of hours. Problem was, for reasons I won’t bore you with, my car wouldn’t start.
I don’t have coffee in the house (don’t ask!) but what I do have is a ton of tea and a home office. A normal person would have called AAA, put the kettle on, and started writing. Instead, I trudged a mile and half to the coffee shop with a deep-frozen laptop on my back. I walked home, too. A three-mile round trip through the bitter cold and crunchy snow. And all the while I was thinking, Am I like those folks at LAX? Am I so pathetically addicted to coffee that I’ll crawl over broken icicles to get some?
Okay. That’s not completely true. I was also wondering how long I had until I got frostbite. But still.
Now, seated at a warm, comfortable writing desk and having thought about it, I don’t think I’m addicted to coffee. But I am addicted to writing in coffee shops – or anywhere that isn’t home. Hotel lobbies, airplanes, a doctor’s office, wherever. If I have time and a laptop, I start clicking away. I need the change of scenery. It makes me more creative – or maybe just happier – than if I write at home all the time. If I did that, I’d go mad. Or I wouldn’t write, which is pretty much the same thing. While there is some evidence that travel improves creativity, I don’t think the authors of those particular studies were talking about a short hop to the local barista’s. Nonetheless, and speaking just for myself, I find the act of going to a different place, sitting at a small, anonymous table, and cracking open a laptop immensely stimulating. Even if I have to slog across the urban tundra to make it happen.
Or maybe I like coffee a little too much.