Writer in residence series: habits and rituals

A rambling look at what works for writing - and some observations

Greetings to you from Caffe Nero on Nottingham’s Bridlesmith Gate, which is my usual Saturday morning haunt. The branch has recently had a refurb and the coffee machines are now surrounded by shiny white tiles with grey grouting and the dusty maroon paint has been replaced by a mid-blue tone which continues upstairs. For a couple of weeks, you could smell the paint as you went up the stairs. All the furniture has been replaced, with just a bank of laptop-usable tables on the banquette along the wall, and the armchairs are all those low bucket chairs and small round tables.

Even the toilets have had a paintjob, though the entry way to the toilets does reassuringly still smell of freshly baked almond croissants, as it’s close to the kitchen. The music in this branch is usually light jazz classics – you often find Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong playing here.

Bridlesmith Gate is known as the posh shopping street in Nottingham, despite it not really being that posh. It has some indie shops and branches of discreet but good chains, like Fat Face, Bird Blend tea, White Stuff, Waterstone’s and Fopp. It has recently had a facelift too, with some of the buildings given a street art makeover full of colour and joy. This discreet air perhaps passes on to the coffee shop too? There are not huge crowds of passers-by, the way we’ll see in other Nottingham branches.

I’m not the only Saturday regular here, and my other companion upstairs today is the older lady with frizzy red hair who comes in to read The Times with a large latte. I see her most weeks. Sometimes we are joined by a tall thin balding man who taps on his laptop and drinks a lot of tea, but he’s not here today. He isn’t weekly. There’s also a woman who sits upstairs watching something on her phone (with headphones in) and sometimes also another laptop man but he has a shock of greying floppy hair and sits for ages without topping up his drink. Obviously, I would never dream of talking to any of these people, but we do usually manage a greeting nod, in hopelessly British reserved fashion. Otherwise, we are joined by shoppers, families, couples, who come in briefly and then leave. It varies, the busy-ness, sometimes I feel I ought to buy something more to justify my table, but usually I don’t need to.

One morning I was typing in this exact same spot when a man, his wife and his dog sat at the next table. The man looked at me and said, “Hello, I know you, don’t I?” I had no idea who he was. It turned out that around fifteen years ago, we both went to the same yoga class. He remembered me for some reason. (This sort of thing worries me. What do people remember about me? In this case, was it the time I fell asleep on my mat during shavasana? Or because I was the person who removed a woodlouse from the studio when it ran across the floor and freaked out the instructor? Or was it because my technique was so unusual or bad that my downward dog stuck in his memory?) Anyway, he was very polite, we exclaimed at the passage of time and his wife was then terribly rude about him. “You’ll see he doesn’t do yoga anymore,” she said, running her eyes over his physique. And then they proceeded to have a conversation about family business which I tried hard not to eavesdrop on, but failed because obviously this is fascinating stuff. She was mean and snippy with him in that too.

I’ve been thinking through what my aims are as the unofficial writer in residence of Nottingham’s Caffe Nero branches* and I’m not totally sure. There’s a piece about observation, about capturing the essence of a place and the people in it and while I’m reluctant to talk to customers here as they go about their business, it’s quite nice to watch and note behaviours and mannerisms, all useful fodder. But I should have a task and it would help my own writing, if only as I feel in some ways I’ve dried up.

While I don’t subscribe to the ‘write every day’ crowd, simply as sometimes it’s just not possible if you’re working and trying to care for a family as well, it’s still vital to have good regular writing habits. Which is why I like coming here.

I started writing here when E used to go to dance school and the changing rooms at dancing were so unbearably loud I couldn’t stay there. Over time, the ritual of turning up every week has made it a guaranteed place to get something done, even if it’s only a short piece, a blog post or revamping. If I’ve not managed to wite much in the week, then I can rely on this time to be the creative space I need to get some words out. My habit is to write something to get myself warmed up, today it’s this, before deciding what I need to work on for the day. I need to leave by 1pm latest so there is a deadline to the time available which also helps focus the mind.

But this is just one day a week. It can be that I go most of the week by only thinking about things, or making a couple of notes but not focusing in the way I need to be truly creative. I also need to find this regularity on other days, in other ways, and instil it in my mind as a creative time, a creative ritual. So, the residency can be a time to make the most of whatever I’ve done during the week in what is likely to be smaller shorter bursts. It needs focus though and I think I’ve found it.

Browsing Substack one morning, I found a note by someone who said she’d started writing a story every day as a warm-up, just 15 minutes to bash out a beginning, middle and end, and how this had helped her ideas to flow. This terrifies me and is probably something I should try to do. I’m not great at full easy beginning, middle, end stories. Which is, of course, why I should do it. And I also see other people come up with all sorts of ideas and wonder at how they do it. It’s likely many of them have rituals like this.

The point is that these stories are a warm-up that go nowhere. There’s no pressure to do anything with them, unless you want to, but they will encourage ideas to flow if you stick with it. It’s the regularity of it that works well.

So that’s my task. I’m going to try 15-minute stories each morning. And on a Saturday, in my residency, reflect and see how I feel, and observe and then write some more. Prompts might be welcome until I feel I’ve got the flow going a little.

Wish me luck.

*Note, this is entirely unofficial and I am not being paid in coffee or anything else by Caffe Nero. I just like the coffee, the ambience and the staff and choose it for those reasons.