Mad Atoms

I know what you’re thinking when you see me writing in a coffee shop.  

I know you think I’m some hack wannabe tooling away on a screenplay that probably sucks. I know you think I desperately hope to be seen writing in public and “discovered” like some off-the-bus starlet at Schwab’s. I know you think I embody everything you hate about L.A. To that, I say: Fuck you.  

Just because I write in coffee shops does not make me a douchebag. There happens to be many upsides to working in such an establishment. Number one: coffee. If I want some, I stand up, walk ten feet and somebody hands me a cup. No beans, no grinds, no filters, no spills all over my countertop. Just a perfectly made cup of coffee with the least amount of effort possible. 

But writing in coffee shops isn’t just about coffee. It’s about getting the hell out of my apartment so my cat isn’t the only living creature I have contact with all day. Seriously, who’s more of a douchebag? The reclusive writer who sits around in his boxers all day on an ergonomic chair, alternating between work and a virtual social life on the internet?

Or the writer who actually gets off his ass, puts on both a shirt and pants and enters society like a normal human being?

Being somewhere besides the same room I spend 80% of my life in is not just good for my own sanity, but also good for whatever I’m writing. I tend to be inspired by whatever’s going on around me and I’m confident none of you want to watch a TV pilot about the vacation pictures hung on my wall. Or a movie about my alarm clock and my desk lamp taking a road trip to my bookshelf. Or anything at all involving my cat and the various places she naps. (If you do, please contact my agent – let’s make this happen!) 

The biggest part of the coffee shop experience for me is people. They come in and out all day and they come in all different shapes and sizes and colors and sometimes smells. There’s the fat guy in sweatpants who got whipped cream on both his mocha latte and his brownie. There’s the 40-something actress trying to make up for her fading looks with uneven fake tits. There’s the uptight suit-wearing jerk who just snapped at the waitress because they’re out of 1% milk. And there’s the scruffy hipster on his iPhone, looking at me judgmentally as I type this. What a douchebag. That’s right Los Angeles, I’m judging you too. And I get to make my judgments on the Internet.