@jamesscottbell
For most writers through the centuries, it’s been the coffee bean, the seed of the genus coffea. Nothing like a good cup of joe in the morning to get the mind rolling, the fingers pounding and the mind coming up with stuff to happen in the scene you’re working on.
Perhaps the greatest exponent of the jamoke treatment was Honoré de Balzac. He believed its properties were magical, and proved his devotion by writing over 100 novels, novellas and stories on what was, essentially, speed.
His practice was to wake up around midnight and have his servants cook up the thickest coffee imaginable. Think tar with a little sugar. He’d down brew after brew, for up to fifteen hours, letting the stimulant feed his imagination.
He died of caffeine poisoning at the age of 51.
In more moderate quantities, coffee has proved to be universal in its appeal since its discovery in the fifteenth century. According to the definitive treatise All About Coffee (William H. Ukers, 1922):
All nations do it homage. It has become recognized as a human necessity. It is no longer a luxury or an indulgence; it is a corollary of human energy and human efficiency. People love coffee because of its two-fold effect—the pleasurable sensation and the increased efficiency it produces.
Coffee has an important place in the rational diet of all the civilized peoples of earth. It is a democratic beverage. Not only is it the drink of fashionable society, but it is also a favorite beverage of the men and women who do the world's work, whether they toil with brain or brawn. It has been acclaimed "the most grateful lubricant known to the human machine," and "the most delightful taste in all nature."
Personally, I have found coffee to be as Kipling found a good cigar: Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes.
And a companion for every novel I’ve ever written.
So do you have any coffee rituals, favorite blends, or go-to coffee joints?
So do you have any coffee rituals, favorite blends, or go-to coffee joints?
And if the coffee bean is not your thing, what is your drink of choice for doing time at the keyboard?
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