Where to go? Finding my writing
home-away-from-home wasn’t easy. My writing group meets in the café at Elliott
Bay Book Company. That’s a welcoming location and our relationship with the
booksellers has led to three members having readings there. It’s not close
enough for my regular writing excursions, though.
I live in Seattle, where the world’s first
Starbucks still operates in a rustic storefront in the Pike Place Market. Now
Starbucks are everywhere–nothing could be more convenient. Since it became
corporate though, Starbucks isn’t always popular in its hometown. Independent
coffee shops have signs that say, “Friends don’t let friends go to Starbucks.”
I tried. I really tried all the nearby
independents, but something was bothering me. I finally realized that the clientele
was too homogenous. Everyone, including me, seemed to be white, middle class and
well educated. It didn’t fit because my zip code is 98118. We are rumored to be
the most diverse neighborhood in the country. People here speak 59 different
languages and they speak them all in my neighborhood Starbucks. It is a
cornucopia of different nationalities. I know a man from Eretria whose family
fled during the 1999 war with Ethiopia. His elderly father told him that
Starbucks is his favorite thing about the United States. He meets friends,
drinks coffee and feels at home there. His favorite thing about our entire
country–that is a high recommendation.
I’m in Starbuck’s now. Here’s what I see: the
young woman next to me studies a Hebrew text, a Pilipino man who from the bank
across the street orders his “regular” drink at the counter, a group of Somali
men sit at a table by the window, an African American couple meets with a white
woman about urban planning. That just scratches the surface of the world that
will pass through in the next hour while I settle into my writing. I promise
this is not a paid advertisement, but I’ve found my writing home and it feels
like the whole world is here with me.
Do you have a favorite place to write when
you need a change of scenery?
Bio
Martha Crites’ first mystery novel is Grave Disturbance, to be released this
fall by Rat City Publishing. She has worked in community and inpatient mental
health for twenty years. She has also taught at the Quileute Tribal School on
the Washington coast. She lives with her husband in Seattle. When she isn’t
working or writing, you will find her walking or volunteering along the Camino
de Santiago, the medieval pilgrimage route in Spain. Please visit her at
marthacrites.com
Advance praise: “Beautifully written, Grave Disturbance evokes the fragile
beauty of the Cascades foothills and the precarious balance of the human mind
in the grip of fear. The story feels so real you can smell the dirt from the
plundered graves.”
Jeanne Matthews
Where the Bones Are Buried, a Dinah Pelerin mystery
