I’ve adopted a new routine in the last few months. It’s how I finished my NaNo novels, and so far it’s been the best habit I’ve ever picked up for my writing. It’s propelled me through more words in the last five months than in the previous five years.

Okay, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. how about, it’s propelled me through more keep-able words?

On Saturday mornings, and sometimes Sundays depending on life, I go out before most of the world is awake (6 or 7). I take my notebook, or sometimes printed pages of my current WIP, and I go to this friendly little place to sit and brainstorm and drink coffee.

It took me a few tries to find the right place, but the one I finally landed on is close to home and has something none of the others had – quiet clientele and staff. The people who work Saturdays know me, and they’re friendly but not chatty. Chatty is okay, except when I’m trying to write.

So they bring me my coffee and I hole up and just brain storm for an hour or two. I get so much on paper. I have a general idea when I get there of what I want to sketch out, and I dive into those chapters. Except this week I’ve been editing my story instead. I have a printed version of it so I can make notes but not changes, and I’m poring through it.

There was a different manager working this weekend. A chatty one. On Saturday she said “Getting a lot of studying done?” And I was flattered because I assumed that meant she thought I was a college student. That must mean it’s because I’m so youthful, right? It has nothing to do with the fact that the place is almost right across the street from the community college and they get people in there all the time – of all ages – studying.

And then the next day she said again “Still studying, huh?”

And I had to correct her. “Actually, I’m editing a novel.”

And she said “Oh. How fun.”

Long awkward pause.

She said “Your novel?”

“Yes.”

Longer, more awkard pause, where I thought ‘do you expect me to tell you about it? Please don’t make me tell you about it. Because then you’ll have to pretend it sounds interesting even though it won’t be and we’ll both feel kind of not-right afterwards’

And she was probably thinking ‘Am I supposed to ask you about it now? Because I really don’t want to know, and then I’ll have to pretend it sounds interesting even though it probably won’t’.

Fortunately then she said “Well, good luck, let us know if you need anything.”

And I didn’t see her the rest of the hour.

I’d like to think if I had anything more interesting to tell her, like ‘it’s the second in a trilogy, here’s a bookmark for the first’ that I would have, but odds on that are only 50/50.

So, I hear all these stories about people who say “I don’t tell people I write because then they want to know what I write.”

And I think “Really?”

Last real job, I told a room full of my new coworkers that I was a writer in my spare time. The only response I got was “you don’t write about vampires, do you?”

To which I laughed and said “No” and didn’t mention that the most recent short story I’d had published was a vampire story.

I’ve told the people here and they say “Oh, that’s cool.”

I told one person once, and he said “What do you write?”

But all these other people asking “what’s your story about?” I don’t meet those people.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad…

Do people ask you what your story is about?