trying patti smith's writing routine: lessons from "M Train" and "Devotion"
in other news, black coffee is actually kind of good
Alright, everyone, buckle up. We are going down a stream of consciousness rabbit hole, and I hope you’ll all stay with me.
“It’s not so easy writing about nothing.”
-Patti Smith, M Train
I guess I should start with my fascination with Patti Smith. I could be way off base, but I've gathered as I've delved deeper into the writing community that typically, Joan Didion is heralded as every thought daughter’s patron saint of prose. I love Joan. She's incredible. But something about her life does not quite grip me the way Patti’s does. Maybe it's that her New York sensibilities more closely mirror my dreams than the Los Angeles whims of Didion. Smith's affinity for her cats and for her niche interests like the life of a dead geologist really speak to something in me. I could read that woman's description of paint drying and be happy.
Which leads me to my current situation, drinking black coffee and sitting in a coffee shop that was not in my hometown before I turned 20, which is a strange feeling. I am surrounded inside by throw rugs and cushioned couches and classic tomes of literature on floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Gulliver's Travels and Anne of Green Gables and Jane Eyre. But then there's also a book called Best Dog Stories which I guess is just a shelf filler to make it look nice.
And it does look nice in here. For a long time, the only place to get coffee within 15 minutes of where I lived was at the Starbucks counter inside of Kroger. In high school, if my friends and I wanted a good cup of coffee, we had to drive half an hour to the next town over.
I've watched this town change so much over the years. I was never expecting to stay here to watch it change, but that's another story for another time.
I was hesitant to leave my cats to go on this coffee outing. My cat, Rory, was purring next to me while I had my laptop out planning the things I would do for this experiment. I was detailing the things I’ve learned about Patti’s writing routine while reading M Train, trying to list out all of the things I wanted to do during my day to fully immerse myself in Smith’s creative process.
I have three cats, the same as Patti when she was writing M Train. Rory has been the best lap cat and drafting partner these four years that I have had her. I love her so much it almost hurts to think about sometimes. I don't know how it is that Patti manages to leave her cats behind to go and write. Most days, though, she doesn't — she prefers to write in bed, which I feel is very sensible of her, because I also don't like to leave bed if I'm not being forced to.
Rory sleeps with me every night. If she isn't curled up into my side, she is on my chest or right next to my head, between my husband and me. I have two other cats, still kittens, who run around the house like crazy most days (as I wrote that, the youngest kitten actually leapt over my head and onto the back of the couch).
Finally willing myself to go, I gave my cat a kiss on the head and I left her behind. My local coffee shop doesn't offer the selection of food that Patti would normally get (brown toast and olive oil), and I'm not typically a black coffee drinker, but I'm pleasantly surprised by the drip coffee. It's a light roast, because I was afraid, but it's actually really nice. I think Patti would be pleased with this, coffee connoisseur that she is.
After I settle in, the words start flowing. This coffee shop roasts everything in-house, which means that I'm completely enveloped by the smell of it. Other's conversations and the sound of My Sweet Lord by George Harrison drown out the clacking of my keys.
This coffee tastes much less bitter than I was expecting. Typically when I come to this shop, I order the "Bee Nice", which is a fun little latte with lavender syrup and honey. It's perfect for spring. I also don't usually drink hot coffee this late in the day (past noon), or when it's so warm outside, but it's all for the experiment, so it's worthwhile.
More about Patti. Almost immediately after starting M Train, I longed for her life. I felt personally connected to the description of the old cowpoke in her dreams, in particular, and I wanted to see what stood out to me when it was just me and my words and a cup of coffee.
I could bring up my own dreams. Last night, I dreamt that a fox had come into our house to live with us. It was so sweet, I wanted to keep it, but I knew I needed to let it go be wild. It was small, probably a baby fox. I thought it was a dog at first, and I was disappointed when I woke up. Much like Patti, I have recurring dreams sometimes, but mine don't feature prominent characters in different settings. In most of them, I'm somewhere cold, far better to me than the oppressive Georgia heat that's started to settle its weight over me. I'm in the mountains, at a ski resort, but it's never a very nice one. It's more like one in North Carolina, with blown-in artificial snow that turns to ice every night since it’s never consistently below freezing. Nothing like Winter Park in Colorado, where I was during Christmas last year. That place was a dream come true. I spent two days in the mountains, fresh snow falling on my face and my cheeks and feeling more grounded than I ever have before in my life. I don't ski for the thrills. I do it for the views. I remember this one meandering slope, a green (naturally), that took me through the prettiest view of the Rockies. The world seemed so vast. Even when I fell, the snow was powdery and cushioned me in a chilly and immediate brush with my own humanity. I could move there, I remember thinking. I could live there instead of in Georgia where my view for writing is a cracked, hot asphalt parking lot and an overgrown drainage pit behind an O'Reilly's and what used to be a Golden Corral-style family buffet.
But that would take a lot of effort, unfortunately.
When Patti Smith isn’t writing, she’s reading things that inspire her. Whether it’s Murakami or Camus, so much of her inspiration comes from losing herself in the worlds of her favorite books. Naturally, this is my next order of business — to obtain more of her writing.
I make my way to the new and shiny Barnes and Noble in my town. Which is very exciting for me, by the way! There wasn’t a bookstore in my town growing up, so I was only ever able to buy books at the Scholastic book fair each year. Needless to say, I was elated to see the “coming soon” signs while it was being built. While I was in college, I got so used to living so close to bookstores where I could completely immerse myself in the work and the words of others. I didn't even fully realize that I wanted to be one of the writers featured on those shelves, at first. It wasn't ever something that I thought would happen for me, for several reasons. But now it's all I can think about.
A trip to Barnes and Noble and a conversation with my favorite bookseller later, I have a new copy of Just Kids and of Devotion. Devotion, in particular, is perfect for my current predicament — it promises insight into her creative process. Then I’ve got a trip up north ahead of me, to the lake and to see my husband’s family.
On the way into the mountains, I wanted very badly to stop for boiled peanuts. It’s one of the simpler pleasures of living in Georgia, stopping at a random person’s roadside trailer, the peanuts simmering in the oversized pots. I even thought about how I’d get to write all about how much nostalgia the taste of the salt brought me, how it’s one of the more special parts of Appalachian culture to me, but my plans for peanuts were thwarted when I realized the place where I’ve stopped several times before had moved locations.
At first, I thought the store was closed for good, and my grief was immediate. But they’d just moved one building over, which brought some relief. They weren’t selling peanuts anymore, though, so I had to settle for ones from the gas station.
They were so horrible. Lackluster, slimy. There were no nostalgic feelings or dreams of childhood to be had. This whole situation disturbed me so much that I ended up writing about it all on a napkin (in a very Patti Smith move), because I couldn’t help myself. I thought I’d use it here, but I’ll add a picture of the napkin instead, because it was mostly a lamentation that I felt I could do a great deal better job explaining once the initial shock had worn off.
At the lake, we ate barbecue and potato salad. We fished off the dock, and I caught two fish. I don’t typically go fishing. Maybe once per year, every so often. And I don’t ever catch the fish, so go figure that I did. Patti Smith has been on fishing trips. I don’t know how often she goes, but I admire her ability to pursue whatever whim, whatever niche interest she chooses. No fish were harmed in the making of this post.
I also found it ironic that I was catching fish, because I recently finished Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller, which I picked up on a whim at an indie bookstore one evening. The cover and the opening lines captivated me, as did the promise of a story of love, loss, and (maybe?) murder.
“Chaos is the only sure thing in this world. The master that rules us all.”
-Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist
That book shocked something in me. I don’t know what it is, and would have trouble articulating it to anyone, but it was just one of those stories that found me at just the right time. It also kicked off my recent penchant for exploring nonfiction, which led to reading creative nonfiction, which led to M Train.
I finished writing the last of this in bed, which felt very full-circle. If I was going to commit to writing like Patti Smith, there was no way to avoid this part. I’ve always heard that you’re never supposed to work in bed for sleep purposes, but there are so many ideas that come to me right when I’m about to fall into sleep’s clutches that I often have my best ideas.
Other times, though, they’re pretty terrible ideas, but I’m able to tell one from the other once I’m awake. But I digress.
Before I compiled all of the things I had written over the course of the day into one place, from the details about my failed stop for boiled peanuts that I’d scrawled onto a napkin to the spew of things I’d written at the coffee shop, bolstered by black coffee, I opened up Devotion by Smith. This is how Smith winds down — either with a book or with a detective procedural (my show of choice for this is currently Bones). I settled into my bed and got lost in the words, soaking up the way that Patti lets herself get fully immersed in the world around her, letting it all overflow into her writing. Becoming so inspired by the writing of her heroes that she can’t not write like her life depends on it.
And isn’t that what we are all trying to do? To write something so real, so in touch with the world around us that we lose ourselves in it.
Maybe somehow we find ourselves in it, too.
“Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
Because we cannot simply exist.”
-Patti Smith, Devotion