Coffee Shop Writing in a Networked Age
2014; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 66; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1939-9006
Autores Tópico(s)ICT in Developing Communities
ResumoToday I drove roughly ninety miles to Caffetto, my favorite cafe in Minne- apolis, an establishment with wireless Internet, rich black coffee, tables with access to electrical outlets, and a ping-pong table in the basement. I sit alone, typing on my MacBook Air, sipping on coffee, and listening to the conversa- tions around me and to the rockabilly playing through Caffetto's speakers. The clientele today is mixed: a few people working alone on their laptops (some with headphones, some without), some reading books silently, and a few small groups chatting lively. I first discovered Caffetto a few months ago when I was driving to Minneapolis and tweeted at a friend who lives there, asking him if he knew any coffee shops that would be good writing environments. He re- sponded with a few suggestions as I arrived in the city; I looked up Caffetto on my iPhone, followed the vocalized directions from my phone, parked, checked in on Foursquare, bought coffee, and began working.I have long been a coffee shop writer. Although I had a quiet apartment in grad school with only one roommate (in the same program), and although I had a fellowship that provided an office away from the louder, cluttered graduate student cubicles, I still avoided campus for the actual writing of my dissertation, only trekking onto campus for teaching, office hours, meetings, and errands. My typical morning commute involved packing up my laptop, books, and printed drafts into my messenger bag, walking to a cafe, ordering coffee, and sitting down to write. Now, as an assistant professor, I find myself on campus a lot more, but the office is for office things (meeting with students or colleagues, catching up on email, doing paperwork, etc.), whereas my real workspace for extended writing is one of the two local cafes across the river from campus. These locations for writing offer something that the isolation of an office cannot: a lively, social atmosphere with ambient sounds, movements around me that serve not to distract but to help me focus, and my own ability to move. Additionally, writing in a coffee shop offers me a clean starting space, not cluttered like my office or apartment, but a place that I can shape and mold for the writing task at hand: Figure 1 gives one example of my workspace at a coffee shop. When a writing location becomes stale (when I get frustrated and need a change of scenery) or distracting, I can easily pack my bag, walk or drive to another cafe, and resituate myself for a new writing session. And sometimes, when I'm in a real slump and need to be rejuvenated to refocus, I drive to a nearby city that provides more options (a practice I relied on a few times when I was particularly frustrated with my dissertation). I have attempted to show an aspect of my mobility in Figure 2, which plots my Foursquare check-ins at coffee shops over the last four years.Absent in these images are my own body and the presence of others in these locations, who provide company by the presence of their bodies, move- ments, and sounds, making me feel less isolated writing in public. …
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