A Matter of Habit

by Eric D. Lehman

After an appearance on a talk radio station, my wife Amy and I stopped at a yellow-walled coffee shop in the tiny crossroads town of Durham, Connecticut. Sipping a latte, she composed poetry in her journal, her glasses down her nose. She glanced at me over them, but her blue-gray eyes were far away, thinking. One hand spread on the page, holding it flat, while the other pulsed and crabbed across it. Next to her in the wide, sunlit shop were two fictional characters. An Ernest Hemingway hunter complete with safari hat sat across from a Raymond Chandler femme fatale with white-blonde dye job, piercing blue eyes, and a terrifying burn scar on one thigh. Maybe they were on a break from a movie set or from the nearby Ivoryton Playhouse. Their conversation sounded unrehearsed, but surreal: he complained that the African villagers wanted him to kill elephants, which he did, but the U.S. government wouldn’t let him bring the heads back to Connecticut for his wall. She nodded and sipped a cola, running one hand through a tumbled mass of young-old hair. It was if early 20^th century literature were beginning to gather, to come to life all around us, even as we tried to write the early 21^st.

The joke about people writing in coffee shops is actually two jokes, or one joke split for two different audiences. First, that what these folks are doing is not important, that writing is a fool’s game at best, and a negative force at worst. That is the joke for non-writers. The second part of the joke is that coffee shop authors are not the ones doing the good writing, the real writing, that their need for “distraction” or “display” means that they are not serious writers at all. This is the joke made by and for other writers. But this is really the equivalent of making fun of someone painting en plein air instead of in a studio.

The ones who make fun of coffee shop writers, who are admittedly easy targets, simply have different habits. Mostly, Amy and I wrote at home. But we found pleasure in writing in other places, too, including breweries, parks, and yes, coffee shops. There were quite a few good coffee shops in Connecticut, and they were always closing. But new ones opened, and we continued to sit and write where we could. Along the way we might visit one of the small museums that dotted the state and stop later for a meal at a clam shack or coal-fired pizza joint. They became part of the pattern of our life.

There was no single shop that kept us loyal all those years, because each one had its pros and cons. Not one could get everything right. But even if one could, it would still be a matter of variety, of atmosphere in season and according to mood. Not just any shop will do, though, which is why so few writers use Dunkin’ Donuts, despite their popular coffee. You might need a table for a laptop, but comfortable chairs of some sort –leather-bound or plush fabric– go a long way to giving you the time necessary for a good stretch of writing. Gentle music or silence is best. And of course, there must be good coffee, that liquid fuel for the industrial revolution and a dozen smaller revolutions in art and politics. Thick white cream sinking slowly into a black glass of cold brew. Rich sludgy espresso topped with a cloud of froth. My own preference leans toward a mug of sweet but strong coffee, preferably Vietnamese style.

What is it about writing here, amidst the chatter of hipsters and students, that makes it conducive to story, to poetry, to thought? The conversations at the adjoining tables might find their way into our stories. The faces might inspire us, like they did for Tolstoy writing in the village square. Hemingway describes in A Moveable Feast why he wrote in the cafes of Paris: he was poor and cold, and the cafes were cheap and warm. Having experienced the cafes of Paris myself, however briefly, I felt there were other reasons to spend all day writing there. Those cafés served not just coffee, but wine and good food, and they let you sit as long as you want with just one cup or glass. Not to mention that for city dwellers, a small apartment can be a straitjacket for creating art. In Hail and Farewell, George Moore mentions how he and the other leaders of the Irish Renaissance at the turn of the 20^th century planned cafés for Dublin, in order to create a necessary breeding ground for ideas and literature.

The reason these coffee shops serve as a breeding ground is that hope is endemic there in a way it is not in pubs and diners. Perhaps it is the caffeine, perhaps it is the bright yellow walls, but an afternoon in a coffee shop is filled with a hope for culture, for humanity. We can spend a day on a hike through the forest and receive a kind of hope, but it is disconnected from people. Here we are participating in culture on the spot, and any pish-posh about our little doodles and their uncertain effects doesn’t matter. Because the others alongside us are engaged in the same practice, the same hope.

For a couple years in the mid-2010s we met Homebound Publications editor and author Connor Wolfe in New Haven at the Book Trader, a small bookstore and coffee shop across from the concrete monolith of the Yale School of Architecture. Sitting underneath the Memoir section, we traded stories of joining gangs, comas, and burying arrowheads around the world. They told us about reworking their latest manuscript and renewing a long-disused drivers’ license. They were in the process of moving to New Haven, which meant giving up the press’s first office space in Westerly and using the Book Trader to temporarily run the business.

So, now Connor had to run back and forth from New Haven to Mystic, a variation of a commute that would haunt them for the entire decade. It was an unsustainable life that they tried to simplify over and over again, but instead remained demanding, in new and complicated ways. They also traveled around the country to meet authors, attend book conferences, and sit on the boards of literary associations. Amy commented on this “intense” drive, and of the risks involved, saying “I admire the way you handle setbacks by plowing ahead.”

But that’s not coffee shop talk, and it isn’t what we were discussing that day. Amidst the clink of plates and whoosh of cappuccino makers Connor was talking about bringing new authors into the Homebound Publications fold, about “expanding the circle,” and about forming a board of directors for the press.

“I have been told by more than one person,” they said, chuckling rapidly. “That I am a little too solitary.”

“Well, writing is a solitary activity in some ways,” I chimed in.

“But running a press maybe doesn’t have to be.”

“Letting people in is good. We want to help you as much as we can,” I said. “Maybe I can help you with editing some of the manuscripts.”

“Thanks,” Connor said, sipping a drink. “But it’s something else, really. I can’t explain.”

We were all silent for a moment, listening to the murmur of conversation, and then Amy said, “It’s about realizing that you are not alone.”

Eric D. Lehman is the the author or editor of twenty books, including New England at 400, IBPA finalist Homegrown Terror, The Quotable New Englander, Connecticut Vanguards, A History of Connecticut Wine, Literary Connecticut, A History of Connecticut Food, The Insiders Guide to Connecticut, Pushcart-nominated Afoot in Connecticut, and Becoming Tom Thumb: Charles Stratton, P.T. Barnum, and the Dawn of American Celebrity, which was chosen as an ALA university press book of the year and won the Victorian Society of America award in 2014. His novella Shadows of Paris was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award, won the 2016 silver medal in romance from Foreword Review, and won novella of the year from the Next Generation Independent Book Awards. He is an associate professor at the University of Bridgeport and his fiction, travel stories, reviews, and essays have been published in a wide variety of journals and magazines, from the Wayfarer to Estuary. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, author Amy Nawrocki.