“Writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” — Mary Heaton Vorse

But which chair?

There are so many coffeehouses in Los Angeles (1,019 by one Yahoo search) it’s hardly believable that they could each garner enough customers to stay in business. Until you figure in the equally astonishing numbers of screenwriters in Los Angeles. Put those two phenomena together, you get a pride (or is it a minyan?) of writers in every Starbucks from Santa Monica to South Pas.

And while many of those laptop-toters may be screenwriters in the way the barristas serving them are actors, a surprising number are making a living at it, are even household names, at least in the households where screenwriters have names. Some of them even have offices of their own. So why seek out the noise and disruption and human population that’s found in a café?

“There’s an awkwardness to it that I actually kind of like,” says Ryan Rowe, whose credits include Charlie’s Angels and the 1995 teleplay of The Love Bug. “I have an office I go to, but I don’t like dead silence, and the background noise at a coffeehouse works for me.” Rowe used to divide work between office and home, but kids put the kibosh on the latter.

Ed Solomon has been writing in coffee shops since before the café era. “Chris [Matheson] and I wrote Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure almost entirely in coffee shops. Our primary one was Ships, in Westwood. There was Norms in Santa Monica. Dolores’, we got kicked out of there.” Good times. Now he often leaves his office on Montana Avenue to write at Café Dana around the corner. “But I especially like to go down to Koreatown and sit somewhere where there’s no English spoken or written anywhere. I feel like being in a different place gives me a clearer perspective.”

Photo by Jilly Wendell Writing partners David Gilbreth (left) and Dan Wilson feed off the caffeinated energy they find in such coffeehouses as Stir Crazy.

“A lot of people ask me how I can write in coffee shops, it’s so noisy, there are people working,” says Wilson. “But in a way, especially when you’re working on something solo, there’s a lot of energy involved in coffee shops. It excites me. It makes me want to work too.”

Most of the writers questioned, in a random and deeply unscientific sampling, found that the distractions at a café didn’t compare to those lurking at home: the Internet, the phone, the television, the dishes, the sudden urge to clean the bathroom or rearrange the sock drawer by color.

Naked Lunch

“I don’t like to stare at a blank wall in my underwear, which is what I’m going to be doing at home,” says Greg Lee. “The coffee shop’s a good place to get out, hear dialogue, get characters going in your head.”

After a number of writers mentioned distressingly similar underwear scenarios, a café might also serve as one of the few things standing between them and complete social and/or hygiene breakdown. “It’s a good reason to jump in the shower, put on some lipstick, get on the street,” says Laurie Parres, who frequents the Coral Tree Café in Brentwood. 

Parres often makes writers’ dates to work with a friend. “It’s like having a personal trainer: You have to be there at eight. And it’s also good for the diversion because you can chat, bounce ideas around, and then get back to what you’re doing. It’s kind of like being in college.”

For Sean Diviny, the many, many writers at Insomnia café provide a kind of silent camaraderie. “You can look over the top of your laptop and know that they’re there doing the same thing,” said Diviny, who goes at least six days a week. “You have a support group even if you might not say anything to each other for a long time.”

Lee finds inspiration seeing famous writers doing the same thing he’s doing in the same place he’s doing it—in this case, a Westside Starbucks: “[A famous writer still] brings his little notebook, no laptop, sits there, and sort of stares somewhat angrily at the wall for about a half hour, then gets up and leaves. I think, So it’s still tough, huh. It’s good; it gives you hope.”

And after all, writers can work anywhere, which in L.A. includes sun-dappled terraces. Cafés offer a myriad of options—indoors, outdoors, old-school, new-age, sleek, dilapidated, free WiFi or WiFi-free—to suit everyone’s needs.

Social Graces

For Greg Widen, a longtime café denizen, the main requirement of the place is that it be outside and pet-friendly. (“The dog and I can go to work together.”) He hits places like Toast in the late morning, before the lunch rush. “That way the waitresses still like me because I’m drinking coffee for two hours.”

Which brings us to the matter of café etiquette. As barrista Jonathan of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Beverly Boulevard wants on the record: “They better tip.”

There’s a code of conduct among writers. Always buy something, be good to the staff, and tip generously. Wilson adds, “If there’s a shift change, tip the next shift as well, even if it’s for the coffee from before.” And, don’t stay at a table during a rush.

Although Lee doesn’t necessarily care about strengthening the Starbucks bottom line, when frequenting locally owned establishments like his new favorite, Infuzion on Fourth Street in Santa Monica, he always orders food as well. And he’s disgusted with writers who take advantage of the kindnesses offered them. “Some guys will go as far as having the external mouse and the keyboard, and they’ll have two chairs around them set up with their stuff,” he says. “I saw somebody with his own powerstrip and five input devices. It’s totally inconsiderate.”

Etiquette works the other way as well. Writers soon learn the places that welcome them, those that tolerate them, and the ones to avoid. Insomnia is so beloved among writers who seem to buy little and sit long, sucking the juice out of the powerstrips, that it’s a bit of a mystery the place is still in business. But other cafés that seem like naturals, with pictures of great writers lining the walls, are less tolerant, insisting on two-hour limits despite a room of empty tables.

Lee knows his cafés and their missteps. “Anastasia’s Asylum is a really cool place on Wilshire and 10th,” he says. “For a short time, they tried to run the writers out by saying you can’t plug in here because electricity costs are too high.” After realizing that half their clientele left, they revised their policy and welcomed writers back.

There’s also the matter of etiquette among writers. You might be shocked to learn that some writers like to procrastinate, and one method is by talking to other writers about how much the business sucks. If left unabated, the vortex of bitterness can swirl on forever, only to be combined with the subsequent remorse of not having worked that day.

Then there are the overeager networkers. “Changing coffeehouses is a thing we’ve had to do a few times,” Wilson says, “because people will sometimes start leeching on to you.”

“And demand that you read their scripts,” Gilbreth adds. “But most people get it.” (They then ask if it would be too much to ask that the name of their latest spot be left out of the article.)

“Occasionally, I feel like standing up and saying, ‘I actually do this for a living,’ to everyone in the café,” Rowe says. But the few times in the past decade when he let that slip in conversation, he regretted it. “I had to move coffee shops after that. People would come up and want to talk, or ask me to read their stuff, and it just became a drag. So it’s better just to pose as a poseur.”

Diviny claims he used to be one of those pestering types, so now he feels compelled to say yes to all who approach. “I was somebody who wasn’t that great a writer starting out, and I feel like it’s my duty to be a mentor even to the anonymous person who might walk in and see me.” In addition to Insomnia, he can also be found working at the Guild members’ lounge.

Corner Table

Writing teams can sometimes have a hard time working in a public space. Lee and Calof used to get into loud arguments, so now they work in different places and fight via e-mail. Gilbreth and Wilson occasionally find themselves yelling at each other. “But we hope people will stay for the resolve and see that it ends up with a good scene,” says Wilson. But he does get uncomfortable when people sit too close. “You feel like someone else is listening, so you start editing what you’re thinking, and that can be really bad.” At those times, or when the work gets into deeper, more emotional territory, he prefers working at home. 

Sometimes the real human interaction has side benefits. Diviny credits Insomnia’s owner, Lucia Yi, with introducing him to people who have subsequently secured him agents and interviews for shows. “She knows who everybody is,” Diviny said of Yi. “She’s sort of the Swifty Lazar of the coffee world.”

Not everyone is convinced of the advantages of café writing. “I guess when I first moved to L.A., the whole ‘writers in coffee houses’ thing seemed sort of pretentious and cliché to me,” says Maisha Closson. “And now, I still think that. I have a lot of friends who swear by it, but I don’t like the notion of flipping open a laptop and announcing to the world, ‘I’m a screenwriter! You’re one too, let’s drink our lattes!’”

Possibly to placate just such naysayers, a few places have arisen that try to combine office and café. The Writers Guild lounge on the first floor of the WGA building is for members only, offers free coffee and WiFi, and the pleasures of a nearby library with a wonderful staff. (Diviny affectionately calls head librarian Karen Pedersen the Human Google.) The Office, a space on 26th Street in Santa Monica, offers free coffee, WiFi, Bose headphones, and a reference library in a quiet, ergonomically correct atmosphere—for a fee.

The latest entry is Creative City Café, which opened on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and caters specifically to writers. Owner Doug Stoutenberg questioned more than 200 writers about what they wanted in a café, and as a result the small, unassuming place features plenty of powerstrips, cheap coffee, free WiFi, the beginnings of a reference library, and special workshops. Having just opened on October 15, it’s too soon to tell how well it will connect with writers.

For those who harbor doubts about their café writing lifestyle, Parres’ words from the writers’ room at Love, Inc. should help. “Oh my God, it’s killing me,” she says of her situation. “We’re hermetically sealed in this windowless room. It’s like Vegas—no clocks, no windows, no sense of time.” She can’t wait to get sent out with a script: “That’s my chance to go to the coffeehouse, have sunlight, fresh air.”

Pick a chair, any chair.