COFFEWRITING
By: Jenny Davidson
Tags: Coronavirus, Distraction, Writing, Procrastination, Community

COFFEEWRITING

I thought about what I could do this first summer of pandemic for one of the communities of which I am a member, which is to say the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and this is what I came up with.

Alas, it’s not an invitation to all of you who are reading it. It matters for this community that it should have its own group. But I have a little idea that it could seed itself elsewhere…..

The invitation (sent to graduate student and faculty lists in the department):

I’m proposing something funny for the summer that I hope some of you might want to join me for. I currently have the concentration of a gnat (I keep thinking of the Havel title The Increased Difficulty of Concentration) and am eager to make sure that I don’t lose the summer months to fruitless 24–7 #coronanews and #coronachat: aside from all the other considerations, it is bad for my mood.

Many of you know that my partner lives in Grand Cayman and that I usually spend the summer months there, with a clockwork schedule that involves showing up at Café del Sol on Lawrence Boulevard sometime between 8 and 8:15am and working for a couple hours before going to 10:30 hot yoga! But Cayman’s borders are closed till September at the earliest, and I’m not going to be working in a New York coffeeshop any time soon either. I thought I would combine my own personal desire for structure with any need along those lines that others may have too: others in this case meaning anybody who’s trying to write this summer, faculty and students alike.

So — COFFEEWRITING.

What it is: a recurring Zoom meeting M-F 10–11:30am, broken down into three thirty-minute chunks (twenty-five minutes silent writing time and five minutes chat break).

You can join for 30, 60 or 90 minutes each weekday.

You do NOT have to be writing something academic.

In fact if you really aren’t doing well but you’d like some structure and company, it is perfectly reasonable to think of using your 30-minute accountability chunk to do the dishes and take a shower….

We will NOT read each other’s drafts or report on what we’ve accomplished, unless in casual chat on a Friday. It’s not a writing group in that sense — we are totally content-neutral. It’s just a simple daily check-in, a way of setting aside time for making things out of words.

We’ll start the Tuesday after Memorial Day, May 26, and run a six-week initial session. We can reprise that for another six weeks starting on July 13 if there’s interest. I’m circulating the invitation only to folks within the Department of English and Comparative Literature, but if you have a friend in another department who you think would like to join us, you’re welcome to share with that person and they can write me to register.

It will be pleasing to me if I can create the feeling of working in a coffeeshop community at home, and I hope that the idea will appeal to some of you as well. To register, just send me an email at [redacted] with subject COFFEEWRITING. The Friday before Memorial Day, I’ll send round an email with the meeting link. The list will be private, though obviously once we’re meeting regularly, you’ll see people there on Zoom; once you sign up, you can attend or not as it suits you.

Hope to see some of you this summer!