Why Coffee Remains the Lifeblood of Writers Everywhere
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Still Going Strong After 600 Years.
“Given enough coffee, I could rule the world.” — iconic slogan on many coffee mugs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc.
It may feel like wordsmiths and coffee have been best friends since early civilizations got the idea to write things down — whether for the purposes of record-keeping or cultural fiction — but their modern union wasn’t always a sure thing. A quick search across the internet-engines reveals the plant started being harvest circa 500–600 years ago but the modern coffeehouse didn’t start until the Enlightenment Era in Europe allowed for the drink — and conversation — to flourish among wealthy socialites.
If you’re conjuring stereotypes of men in powered wigs sipping at their cups and raising their brows in dismay at whatever new political pamphlets are making waves in social circles, then this link on the Historical UK website will kindly reinforce those expectations.
Even though the ways in which we consume coffee have changed, the practical purposes for which we drink it have remained very much the same. In fact, if you go to any 21st-Century coffeehouse, you can see Post-Enlightenment in action; people of all stripes and incomes — not just the literate wealthy — can be seen reading books, magazines, online articles, or writing away at some document.
So what is that about coffee that compels us to write?
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It’s Not Just the Caffeine, It’s the Extended Stimulation.
“Coffee is a way of stealing time which should by rights belong to your older self.” — Terry Pratchet, novelist.
Maybe you don’t get up and write first thing in the morning. Maybe you have a traditional job where rush-hour traffic bookends your working hours. Maybe you work afternoons and evenings and use the morning to do freelance-writing or jot your thoughts down. Maybe you work fifty to seventy hours a week and writing in those precious few cracks of free-time allows you to find yourself. Maybe you write your goals for the day. Maybe you only write emails at work.
But at the same time, there’s something energizing isn’t there? To wake up with grogginess and disorientation in the morning — seemingly always present regardless of how many hours you spent sleeping — and then feel an adrenaline rush in liquid form. This rush will last for the next few hours — hours that may require you to drive to work, write your thoughts on a sheet of paper, or begin the workday slog at the office.
If you don’t have to be at work in the morning immediately, the extra stimulation welcomes thought.
And thought welcomes something to think about.
Something that possibly needs to get done.
And if you don’t need to get anything physical done?
Then you write.
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The Taste Makes Us Feel Like We Already Accomplished Something.
“Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical.” — Jonathan Swift, novelist and essayist.
We need to be honest about one simple fact:
Coffee tastes gross.
I can hear the collective screeching from here. I can hear the hordes of angry coffee-loyalists stampeding on the keyboards, crafting ‘evidence’ that will brand me a liar and an infidel. You simply don’t know the one true way of the bean, they say. If you take the Cinnamon-Pumpkin-Scone flavor and combine it with Gingerbread Creamer, then it’s really good! Many will follow their ilk and try and convince me otherwise: Take this flavor…no take this one! This is the one true flavor that will open your mind to universal understanding!
One morning, long after this article is published, a faint buzzing from outside my apartment will wake me up instead of my alarm. The noise growing more pronounced by the second, I will open the sliding-door to the balcony and find a drone carrying a French-Press machine. The machine will be delivered courtesy a modern-day coffee-prophet, who is on a mission to save those who would disgrace the holy name of coffee; (‘WHY, EVEN TO SPEAK UPON THE NAME OF MIDNIGHT-EVENING ROAST WILL BE AN ACT PUNISHABLE BY DEATH’).[1]
True flavor is not discovered but earned young grasshopper. Your journey towards a better coffee experience begins is what the prophet will print on a letter attached to the side of the Press. I throw the letter — and the French Press — away. The drone zooms back into the morning sky and I never see it again.
If we run with the common acceptance that coffee flavor is not a desirable flavor, then chugging a good 16–20oz of it makes us feel like we just ran a marathon with our tongue. You did that? You drank that? Our brain screams at us as the grogginess dissipates. If you withstood that, you can withstand anything. You can take on the world!
And for a split second, we allow ourselves to believe it.
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It Acts as a Companion for Complex Thinking.
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” — T.S. Elliot, playwright, essayist.
Some have found evidence that caffeine limits creative thinking. Others think that it allows for creative thinking. Regardless of which commentary you want to believe — both scientists and journalists can agree that it gets the juices flowing. In a society that demands an almost rapid-fire approach to life, most of us don’t have time to wait for last night’s sleep to dissolve. We have places to go, people to see, things to do…
…and things to write.
And if you find yourself in a coffeehouse, with a cup of java on one end and a laptop — or paper — on the other, then the added stimulation will come in waves. What may have once been an insurmountable draft now seems to come together one word at a time. The fiction-writer benefits, as does the non-fiction-writer. When ideas are free to flow but concentration is still necessary, the dark liquid of doom is here to help craft whatever you need help with.
Will those words and sentences be of any quality?
Unfortunately, they don’t have a brew for that yet.
[1] Replace “Midnight-Evening Roast” with ‘Leonidas’ and you have a quote taken wildly out of context from the movie 300 (2006).
