"Writing in a café"

I love writing in a café! I mean, I love going to a café with the intention to get some writing done. it doesn't mean that I'm especially productive once I'm there...

"Writing outdoors 2"

And here's another drawback of writing outdoors... The worse is not so much being wet: it's the splodges on your manuscript that turn the scene you've just written in a sodden mess of ink and rainwater!

"Writing outdoors 1"

As I wrote earlier this year, I love writing outdoors. But sometimes, the universe seems to decide that I should better write inside, at a desk, like any normal person, instead of sprawling in the grass... A gust of wind, and I'm running after the pages of my precious manuscript. But the next day, I'm outside again. Because I think that writing at a desk, like any normal person, is not fun at all!

Writing outdoors

 

 

I explained in a previous post why I liked to write in a café. But a café is not the only place that inspires me to write: I also like to write outdoors. And when I say “write outdoors” I mean write sitting on the grass, in a garden or in a meadow, surrounded by wildflowers, with the sun shining on a summer afternoon… An idyllic setting.

When I’m writing outdoors, my surroundings tend to work their way into my descriptions: I love describing the countryside, the seasons, the way they change, and what better way to describe them than having them before my eyes as I write? It’s a bit like the difference between painting a landscape in situ and in a studio; and to make a description is to paint with words.

I’ll see a bird, a gnarled tree shaped by the wind, darkening clouds, I’ll hear animals scuttling in the undergrowth, I’ll smell crushed leaves of wild mint and feel the fresh coarse grass, and all those elements will start a trail of thought, or give me new ideas. Ripples on the surface of a pond. A deer barking. Shadows lengthening at dusk. Raindrops on a cobweb. Golden sunlight after a storm.
 

If I’m stuck in front of a blank page, I only have to raise my eyes and gaze at the landscape, and soon I am writing again. I’m not very productive in terms of word count when I write outdoors: there is always something catching my attention, and distracting me, and I daydream, and I contemplate the landscape instead of writing. But those surroundings usually help me make my prose richer and more interesting.

I sometimes look at my surroundings and ask myself: how would [one of my characters] describe this? What would it evoke to them? What would their feelings be? And I can come up with interesting answers which even help me to define the personality of those characters better. Or I “discover” something about them I had not thought of before.

I like trying to see a landscape through the eyes of my characters, for the differences in their perception of it reveals a lot about them. Where one sees bleak, barren, inhospitable moorland, for instance, another sees the play of light and shadow, contrasting colours, beauty. And another, having spent all their life there, will not see anything at all, that landscape being so familiar, so much part of them, in a way, that they stop taking any notice of it. I find those contrasting perceptions interesting to work with in terms of character development. It is also a good stylistic exercise.
 

Is the moor barren or beautiful?

So I try to write outside as much as I can: usually in the summer, when I am in the country. I take my manuscript and my pen and sit down in the grass to write – until it starts to rain that is and I have to run back inside! Or until the wind scatters my precious draft and I have to run after the pages. The hazards of writing outdoors…

 

Writing in a café

A question for fellow writers (or would-be writers): where do you write? Do you have a special room in your house? Or a writer’s hut in the back-garden? Do you write on the kitchen table? Do you write at work during your lunch-break? I do not have a special place to write. I’ll write wherever there is room for me to sit down or wherever I feel inspired to. Actually, that is true only when I’m writing a first draft.

 

I like to handwrite my first drafts and I actually find pen and paper more portable than a computer, as well as being very freeing. You don’t have to worry about the battery being low. You don’t have the temptation to go on Facebook or surf on the internet. It is different when I write my second draft and edit my work as this is done on my computer

 

Though I have no special place dedicated to writing there are places I like to go to in order to write. I like writing in cafés for instance. One of the reasons is that because of the nature of my studies (research) I spend a lot of time working from home, so it’s nice to simply go outside and find another setting that will inspire me to be more creative and productive. And the good thing about living in Paris is that there is no shortage of cafés.

 

The one I sometimes go to is actually a bakery which doubles up as a café. It is small but cosy and pretty inside with lovely painted ceilings and bright pink walls. The delicious smell of freshly baked bread and brioche and the sight of rows of colourful, mouthwatering patisseries on the counter make it all the more attractive. It is hard to resist ordering one to go with my coffee! Strawberry tarts and éclairs, croissants and pains au chocolat, mille-feuilles and choux à la crème… But I have to admit I find the sight of them almost as satisfying as their taste.

 

The painted ceiling I was talking about...

 

Part of the time I spend in this café to write is actually spent looking at my surroundings. Pen in hand, a blank page before me, I look at the people coming and going, ordering a cappuccino and a croissant to take away and eat on their way to work. I look at the people behind the counters arranging the cakes and sandwiches, as snatches of conversations reach my ears. I look at the people rushing in the street outside. I look at this agitation of which I am not really part for the moment, detached as I am, hovering between real life and the fictional world I am trying to conjure up.

 

Though my surroundings distract me from the actual task of writing, I find that the atmosphere of the café spurs my imagination. Even if what I am writing has nothing to do with a 21st century Parisian bakery (the novels I am currently working on are set for the most part in the British countryside in the first half of the 19th century), I am inspired by the world around me. By the people I meet, by what they say, by how they act, by their relationships. And there is no dearth of people in a café, each individual carrying their own stories, living out a novel of which I get a fleeting glimpse, as they order at the counter an espresso and a pain aux raisins.

 

As I wonder about them, I begin thinking about the worlds of the stories I create and about the characters going in and out of them as clients go in and out of the café. And I pick up my pen and write. Maybe a hundred words, maybe a thousand. But whatever the count, I have found inspiration: in a way, writing in a café is my remedy to that ill every writer has experienced: the blank page syndrome.