Yesterday, in order to get my thousand words written I had to go to a coffee shop. My housekeeper came and I didn’t want to be in her way. The two of us love to talk and that’s not an activity conducive to writing or to cleaning.
It was my first time to write in a public place, unless one considers the year I worked for a small town newspaper. Then, I was surrounded by other people involved in the same activity. My beat was society news and girls’ sports. I was much better at the second of those than the first.
But on Friday I carried my trusty Dell to the Starbucks on north Monroe and typed with abandon. I ran into a research snag, but thanks to Google and internet friends I got back on track fairly quickly. Fifteen hundred words flowed from my brain to the electronic page. Some of them might even be worth keeping.
As I was writing I recalled a conversation I had with Theodore Taylor, author of The Cay. We were both at a conference for English teachers. I was an attendee and Mr. Taylor was an invited guest. My seventh graders and I had just completed a unit on his novel, and I was delighted to find him at the event.
He told me how he’d written The Cay in a single weekend after encountering a group of black musicians in the lobby of a New Orleans hotel. Something about that experience sparked in him an idea for a book about a young, white boy and a black man who became dependent upon each other for survival.
Every now and then I wonder what it would take for me to write a complete novel in a forty-eight hour time frame. A visit with an alien species? A proposal from Jason Mamoa? It’d almost be like waving a magic wand. Abracadabra!
Peace, people!
Praying for Eyebrowz 
I keep trying to think of what could get me to write a novel in 24 hours. Unless it’s something I really want to be writing, I’m not sure I could honestly.
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I know. Me either. Of course, The Cay is a fairly short YA novel, but still.
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Well done. Don’t forget that J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book in a café.
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What a genius she is.
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He must have been in true creative mode x
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Must have. He said he’d had a germ of an idea in his mind, but meeting the musicians triggered an entire story.
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That’s awesome…the weekend thing, the typing at Starbucks, even the housekeeper. I want a housekeeper… 😉
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Rosa’s a treasure. She comes every other Friday and makes my house sparkle.
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You’re serious about this. 1500 words in a public place speaks of commitment. I’m prone to people watch, and there is always someone more interesting than that blank screen.
regards,
I.C. Folks
Typography, Tennesse
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I.C. Folks, too, most of the time, but yesterday my bubble held.
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I don’t think I could have tuned out enough to write in public like that. I think the only thing that stretched my writing out to a week was Hubby and the kids coming home every night and interrupting the flow. Getting hit with that level of inspiration is a wild experience.
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That is amazing! The first 10,000 words of the novel I’m working on came out in a gush. Then I realized I’d written myself into a corner. It took me a long time to find a way out of it.
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I love writing in public spaces. The busier the space, the more productive and creative I can be. You see, it’s in the snippets of conversation, the looks passed between people and the generally liveliness that my brain generates the most creative content! (just nobody talk to me, lol!). It’s excellent you managed 1500 words that day. And it’s amazing that Theodore Taylor wrote an entire novel based on one encounter. If you ever do encounter something that compels you to write a novel in a 48 hours timeframe, please do share it, I would be so interested to know what it was 😀
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You’re right about the energy. And for many minutes I was in my own world while people bustled around me. And if I ever get that bite of inspiration that allows me to write a novel in 48 hours, you’ll be the second person to know. 🤣
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