Mise en Place is Holding my Writing Hostage

I’m trending French.

I’ve had a strange sort of déjà vu this week about the concept of mise en place. Multiple people have mentioned it, I’ve read it in a few articles. It seems time I consider it.

I’ve had 400 stories cross my path the last few weeks. My lens is honing itself to the story more than ever. (Later, you’ll read about Steve the Welder who we met at our bar). Yet, I have been paralyzed by place.

I only write in certain ways. I like a computer better than a notebook. I use notebooks to grab notes or exact quotes, but with my computer, my fingers flow, my words blossom, my synapses are wonderfully aligned in one big rope of purpose from my brain to my fingertips to the keys. My vocabulary is better because I so love the feeling of striking the keys and making things happen. With a pen, my handwriting is so horrible, my fingers so slow that I give up on the words and begin to only scribble. I have no patience for the page: I, like the good millennial I am not, prefer the screen.

I’ve not ever admitted that out loud. I still read paper and digital books in equal measure. I have trended toward more digital than paper news, but I can still fold that damn thing and access the jump page or the crossword. All is not lost.

But this inability to fill my notebook traps me to spaces where I can see my screen (the sunny deck in my backyard works only for certain hours on the sundial) or plug into the juice that keeps my battery icon from flashing.

This means, I have curated a few — just a few — perfect spots to write.

They are primarily coffee shops (and one bar) who offer free Wi-Fi because it’s not just an open document screen that invites the ideas. Of course, the penalty for logging in to do this work is the gauntlet of options I must navigate to achieve focus. The run through Facebook, the search for writing contests, the inevitable spiral down into someone’s great blog post or a short story revealed in my hunt for submission options. I build in extra time for these distractions that have now become the necessary warm up to putting words on my page.

This is where mise en place enters. Defined as the exactitude a chef uses to organize and prepare ingredients for the seamless artistry of creating the perfect meal, the “everything in its place” philosophy is starting to manifest for me as a writer.

I first heard it applied this way at work. An incredibly established account planner and strategist guest starred at a learning event at my ad agency. She was inspiring the perfect creative brief and the writing chops it takes to develop it. A brief in our business must not only deliver the necessary facts of who the audience is and what we hope they’ll feel, but its tone, its prompts must inspire the most creative in our clan to dream up the most amazing, fitting work for the challenge.

She listed essential steps in getting start and mise en place was her first. Find your right spot, your right vibe. Have your tools ready (and charged). Get inspired by scenes, things, facts that help you inspire others.

And suddenly my work life and my other work life collided. I’ve been working on mise en place all along when in November, the month of NaNoWrMo, I have a perfect routine of racing suburbanites to my favorite coffee shop far from town (its sister shop is a block from my house, but it just won’t do). I have two or three places in the shop where my fingers and power cord and coffee order and swirling ideas all perfectly step into line to get the job done.

I have been known to drive the distance to this special location, enter to find my spaces all taken, and leave. I won’t even try the table by the back corner. I give no consideration to the centered tables in the middle of the crowd.

Mise en place for me also has to do with food and drink and the routine that leads to a session. I like coffee or beer, but only water won’t do. I don’t electrify words when I’m on water.

I don’t ever just jump from my chair at home, grab my laptop and leave, either. I never know how long I’ll be, but I always treat the excursion as an end-of-the-world, who-knows-when-I’ll-be-back adventure. I think if you’re a writer and don’t ever see that first opening of the keyboard, that first crack of your knuckles as a potentially boundless adventure, then something’s wrong.

So, to get out the door and get this business started, there are routines with the dogs, essentials like leaving the kitchen tidy before I go, showering and finding the right shoes. I never pack snacks, as someone truly prepared for an apocalypse may, but I always go somewhere with snacks, so I feel satisfied I can make it through 10,000 or 200 words on my journey.

Now, all of this is to say, I’m worried.

Like a patient with vague symptoms ambling along, when the real diagnosis comes in, there’s momentary relief. We can name it. It’s not cancer, but it is something. There remains a problem, despite it moving from the unnamed to the named. As Derrida would remind us, words bring things meaning and now I can explain part of the tediousness of my writing. Part of the delay. Part of the fear that I’ll move so slowly that the world will never see it all in its finished forms.

I have a case of mise en place.

And such a need for scene means that the times I can write are limited. My inability to pull out a notebook and jot 500 words at a bus stop means that my words come in massive chunks and decisions about which story or piece to invest them in is actually a Sophie’s Choice of sorts.

I could just “man up” and force myself to write in uncomfortable places with bad vibes and no snacks. I could just “man up” and start slowing down my handwriting and turning my notebook into a happy place. But I’m a woman. I live on organizing the elements of life. I’m impromptu about drinks with friends or places for lunch. I’m not impromptu about the business of life, the bills, the cleaning, the errands or the mise en place I need to do my work. I write status reports and agendas and track our teams’ hours in a spreadsheet. I don’t scratch this week’s successes on a post-it and deliver it to my boss.

Has my success as a corporate writer, an advertiser, a white-collar worker in an office with a standing desk affected the romance of my writing? Or has it infused me with a need for more romance in my writing? Is the reason I’m such a stutter-start on projects, such a miser about scene because it’s the only way that I can view my writing work as mine, as real, as authentic?

All the authors tell you write every day. Write more. Write anywhere. Place, booze, sunshine, color of ink, rule of line on the paper do not matter. What you have to say does. But perhaps I’m performative. My 10,000 hours of Gladwellian perfection is going to reach its peak when I’m 100 because my fingers, mind, story and vehicle all had to be in perfect union each time. My writing is a performance, not just a collection of words. I’m going to be here awhile.

Is there a support group for that? The diagnosis is mise en place. It’s still a problem, but with treatment I can live with it?

The only story you hear is about production. Writers must write and be writing every day all the time, a rigor of words. I’m embarrassed to admit, that’s not me. I binge and purge based on place. I do write every day, but not all words that contribute to my project. Hi, I’m Julie, and I’m a tortured performance writer who needs just the right place. Just the right coffee. It doesn’t devalue what I have to say. What stories I’ve lived. What value my sharing delivers.

It just means it takes me longer.

And, I spend a lot supporting my coffee shop. I think they’ll have to be in the acknowledgments when this damn book is done.