I am not a fan.

I am not a fan of people with their mac books (it has to be a mac book) WRITING in coffee shops. Why? Do they not have Katie Melua CDs of their own? Are they incapable of making coffee?

"Oh, I do it for the free wifi."

Really? REALLY?! You can afford a mac book but you can't afford wifi? And why do you need wifi? Buy a thesaurus in book form, lightweight!

Worst place in London for it - the Soho Theatre. It drips with Performance Writers tapping away on Final Draft, hoping Kathleen Kennedy will come in and say, "Hey, nice formatting. What's it about? GREAT idea!"

I've read quite a few writer interviews and writer biogs and do you know how many got discovered in coffee shops? ...yes you do.

Ok. JK Rowling wrote in a coffee shop. Because she had a cold flat. And she wrote in a note pad. I don't consider it Performance Writing to write in a note pad. I'd rather look like an obsessive diarist than a Performance Writer. And she's JK Rowling. She's nice.

So yeah, saying all that, if you have the bug to write, write. Doesn't matter where. If you have to stoop to Performance Writing, so be it.

And why have I considered this now?

Because of Goodreads. I used to watch TV on the bus to and from work - the number 63, Peckham to Clerkenwell, about an hour long, thanks for asking.
I'd watch a Star Trek DS9 or Cheers - no nudity or violence and I didn't care if I had to turn it off because the bus had hit a cyclist or a drunk decided to urinate into his beer can next to me.
Then I started doing review pools in Goodreads - You read mine, I'll read someone else's and review it, they'll read yours - you know the drill.

Then I realised the number 63 was perfect for writing.

Sure, it gets a bit bumpy around the Old Kent Road, but if you turn up your iPod (Miklos Rosza - Epic Cinema Greats - natch) you won't hear the 14 phone calls going on around you, or the couple hissing at each other about each other's parents or whatever. But I've found a way to ensure I write 2 hours a day - that doesn't involve getting up at 4am or writing naked in the kitchen at 2am drunk (These are the only other options open to me).

So yeah, I may have become a Performance Writer after all. But like them, I'm getting my work done. So if you write, do it where and when you can. That's my suggestion.

(Just don't do it on a mac book, you fool.)