Hearts and kisses in a brewery

I love that my Romance Writers’ Chapter does business out of an Ale House.

Writers are more commonly associated with coffee shops, or maybe chi-chi wine bars (although those are usually people talking about being writers, and are not necessarily writers that write). Brew pubs, with foamy lagers and crisp chips, do not scream Writers Convention! to me.

During NaNoWriMo (did I mention we had Chris Baty as a speaker today? Yay!), I do a large amount of my writing out of bars. Mostly because that’s where I can get my friends motivated to meet me for a writing date. They bring their cute little artistic moleskin journals, and I shamelessly plop my ancient mac on the sticky table and light up my corner of the place.

I was surprised to find that bars make the best places to write. The right bars, anyway; I’m not recommending you run down to a FiDi bar during happy hour and ask for an outlet. But a quiet, dark dive, with wacky characters around you and a dry cocktail in front of you…. The words fly out.

The novel that I’m revising (really, that’s what I’m doing right now. Stop looking at me. I can’t work while you’re looking at me) was finished in a bar. And now, I’m circling back. Today’s program on revisions, held in an upstairs room of a nice East Bay Brewery, was pretty ridiculously awesome (and the fact that one of the presenters shared my last name and the other was Chris Freakin’ Baty does not color my opinion at all).

I’m off to fine-tune my synopsis and scribble on post-its. I’ll be back at last call.

Oops. It’s Saturday. Bar-writing is better saved for quiet weekdays, unless you’re actually eager to get rum in your keyboard. I’m just going to pour myself some bubbly water and write on my couch while my dog snores and rabbit-kicks my thigh. Which pretty much negates all of my earlier party-hearty, write-in-bars airs. Oh well. The truth will always come out.