It occurred to me yesterday when I saw my sister getting out of her car in the restaurant parking lot at the same time I did, that I have a problem.  I resented that she was on time.

I figured I had maybe ten minutes to sit alone at a table inside with my tattered orange notebook that has become my best friend for the past eight months.

I don’t know when it first started, this urge to write in restaurants and coffee shops, all in long hand, but it did.  I guess it was a morning I was sitting outside Starbucks last fall and an idea came to me about my current manuscript.  At the time I only had with me a small notebook.  It had been in my purse for months, useful only for writing lists and phone numbers, but  I pulled it out and scribbled frantically the scene that was playing in my head.  Before long I had lost sight of the cars racing down the nearby street.  I was in a bedroom with a ghost making harsh demands in my heroine’s dreams.  I’d needed a beginning for that book and it wouldn’t come while sitting at my computer.  That morning it arrived full force at that coffee shop.  I came out of my stupor about the same time she emerged from her ghostly dream and the scene was written.  It was all in long hand, but there it was. Once I was back at my computer and had transcribed those pages, the next scene flowed right along.

The next time I was stuck for an idea on a scene and my computer keyboard kept staring back at me with nothing happening, I took my notebook and found another Starbucks.  This time it was tougher to get down what I wanted, but I didn’t force myself, and I made another discovery.  The coffee shop didn’t work for simply composing scenes, I was able to use it to sharpen my writing skills as well.  I thought about writing exercises, the kind you read about in books, but don’t do at the time.  How about trying something descriptive?  I found myself writing down what I observed in the coffee shop, the people, their mannerisms, their clothes, the interior.  And then I jazzed it up with what their reactions might be if an armed gunman came into the place.  (Okay, I got carried away)  Or if my heroine was in the coffee shop and realized someone across the shop, trying to look inconspicuous, had also been standing outside her apartment when she got home the previous evening.  Or what if she thought she was being followed, but she didn’t know which one of those patrons might be after her?  You get the message.  After writing all that down I went home and wrote a scene with my heroine on the run and the fear even a simple stop for a latte could bring her.

After that I was hooked and with a couple more coffee shop visits, my little notebook was filled up.  I had to trade it in for a fatter notebook, big enough to be useful, but small enough so that it was always there, inside my purse.  And I branched out from coffee shops, realizing a solitary breakfast or lunch could be useful as creative tools as well.  I had lunch with my heroine asking her all those questions that need to be answered in order to get to know her.  What would she order, what would she wear, where would she want to eat?  What would she talk about?  And what would she think if our hero walked in and sat down at the booth behind us?  How would he look?  I wrote it all down, and even if I didn’t use the words verbatim, I felt like I was getting to know her.  It all translated to the keyboard later.

I had another revelation later.  I’d read an article on listening to speech and sitting at a coffee shop, I found myself listening to all the conversations around me, instead of tuning everything out.  Before you think I’m a nutty eavesdropper, waiting to overhear good gossip, I want to say it wasn’t what the people around me were saying as much as how they were saying it.  Quick sentences.  Questions at the end of sentences.  Rushed comments, halting answers.  Dialogue.  The way people speak.  It was all a revelation that I was able to put into practice.  Before long, I was writing down the dialogue I wanted for my characters.

This week someone on one of my many loops said she was having trouble with her motivation.  I knew how she felt.  Sometimes when I’m faced with deadlines and  having to go back to re-edit or re-write something I’d put away months ago, I don’t feel like writing either.  Now when that happens I grab my purse and head for a coffee shop or go out to lunch by myself.  I know that trusty notebook will be with me, though I’m ready to move on to a newer model now.  It may not be the answer for everyone, but it certainly works well for me.  Go ahead, get a little notebook and visit a coffee shop.  You might become an addict too.