I write better in a coffee shop.
| Owl and Otter Espresso Lake Placid, Florida  |
Mudslide Coffee Punta Gorda, Florida  |
Serenity Coffee Shop Okeechobee, Florida  |
Florida Farmhouse Coffee Arcadia, Fl |
I do have a dedicated office in my home, desktop computer, laptops, wide screens, nice keyboards, and yes, I can make French Press coffee if I want. The most obvious reason I write better in a coffee shop is that I have fewer distractions. My desktop has Facebook, X, Instagram, my Kindle, games and of course, the whole wide internet. All it takes is a slip of a finger on the keyboard and I am researching Belgium and the Flanders issue, watching Youtube videos or checking email.
I also have four cats. One of them, Dewey, has assigned himself to me.
One would think the activities in a coffee shop would be more distracting. People coming and going, conversations, the sounds of coffee grinding, chairs being pulled out from a table and espresso being made. However, for me, as well as many other writers, these things actually promote creative juices. For starters, I normally do not interact with the goings on in the shop. I am sitting at a table with my coffee and laptop writing. Eventually, all of the various sounds merged into one audio blur, sort of like white noise. I call it blue noise.
All I have is my laptop and coffee, so nothing to distract me from writing. While I have a few different laptops, some of them quite powerful, for writing I use my inexpensive Chromebook. I can load my files through a USB drive, access my Microsoft One Drive or Google Docs. When out, I always write in Google Docs. I’ve yet to find a coffee shop that doesn’t have free WiFi. But even if I don’t have WiFi or lose it for some reason, I can still write in Google Docs offline, and the minute I am back in range of a WiFi signal it will automatically update my online docs. My Chromebook doesn’t have a hundred other programs on it to distract me.
I also think there is some sort of social frequency that develops at a coffee shop. The sounds, the snippits of conversation I hear, the spiritual energy of people coming and going triggers my own creative juices.
Bridge Street Coffee & Tea
LaBelle, Florida
Plus, a good coffee shop has a creative artsy mood. The decor, the music they play, the entire atmosphere is conducive to creative activities.
Also, there is coffee. An essential fuel for developing characters and twisting plot lines.
– Dart