Writing places. (Day 89, Year 2)

I have places where I like to write and they are not ever regular writing places, like desks. Most often, the places I love to write are in the middle of it all--at my dining room table, in a standing room only crowd waiting for a band to go on, on a train, on a plane, in a crowded Wawa, when I am supposed to be paying attention in church (or a meeting) and at Saxby's in Haddonfield. 

The last entry makes me laugh a little; because when I first declared myself a writer, way back in the late 20th century, I envisioned myself penning great works while sitting at a coffee shop like a character in a 1990s romcom. It's so clique--the writer at their coffee shop--but it is that way for good reason: I think the best writing happens because we live and we cannot live tied down to a desk. 

If you believe in the muses and I think I do, then you have to believe that being in the center of it all is a requirement for inspiration. One simply cannot write anything of value, if one does not live. But, you do need to be relatively still to write, so a coffee shop with its ins and outs and seating is just about the most perfect compromise. 

So back to my spot--Saxbys. There are lots of coffee shops that are closer to my house; but this one is across the street from my church. The church where my children were baptized and communed and one confirmed. The church were my three each attended Mother's Morning Out and two of them preschool. The church were I eulogized my brother. The church where my children practice singing on Wednesdays and sing on Sundays.  

The church is a home--it reminds me of going to my Nana's house as a kid. I know all the rooms, but I also know there are endless things to discover and there is always a revolving door of familiar, but still interesting people (a few of whom knew my Nana and Granddad. My Nana taught preschool there in the 1970s; and my parents were married there later on.). 

I can't really write at the church (except in my Pew on my bulletin with a crayon I found in my purse if the muse hits me mid-service); so Saxby's is the spot.

I've written so many words here--story pitches and cover letters, articles and blogs, email and ad copy and obituaries and eulogies. I've sat in the seat I am in right now and written endless words while my kids were in preschool or singing in the choir.  The staff knows me and my order and my tendency to suddenly write as if in a trance, in the middle of it, without a care what spills all over my face. 

And lots has spilled from my eyes and onto my keyboard or into my notebook. It may seem strange to you that I am comfortable sobbing in the middle of a coffee shop; but there is something so freeing to feel fully the things you feel in the moment, when you are in the middle of it all writing about it all. 

I missed this spot during the long days of the pandemic and I see all the others who missed it, too. But now we are back, in our spots, writing our words, spilling our hearts right in our writing place. 

 


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