What I learned at Starbucks this week is that I can deliver the goods when absolutely forced. When all internet and possibility of internet is brutally cut off, I have no choice but to work. Oh, I stared at the screen plenty. I shifted my poor butt on the rock-hard cafe chair when it began to ache. I drank coffee. I listened to my iPod. And I wrote 6 pages in 3 hours!

What forced this crisis, you ask? I am one who doesn't like to leave home, toting the computer, to go to a cafe and work. It's a pain. I'm sure I won't actually get much done. I wonder what all the other people with laptops are doing. Does that slightly spacy guy over there think he's the next Faulkner? Are there really this many people who want to write novels, or are they surfing? Why here?

But, I had no choice except to endure the cafe experience. For some reason that is still not apparent, our power went out on Wednesday evening and stayed out for nearly 24 hours. That meant the cable went too, and it stayed out even longer.

So, Thursday morning, I was forced to get dressed (thank God the water was still hot) and head for Starbucks if I wanted coffee and food. I set up my laptop, complete with the new security cable I bought, and tried, oh yes I did, to connect to the T-Mobile HotSpot. I refuse to pay $10 for a day pass. But, lo, for T-Mobile voice customers such as moi, one can get UNLIMITED access for only $19.99 a month. Oh, sign me up!

Except that apparently the offer isn't good in Hawaii. WTF? Or at least it wasn't good for me, because no dice, I couldn't sign up. Which totally forced me to close out all IE windows and stare at my WIP.

Oh the torture! The pain! The agony! And then the first trickle of an idea began, then another, and another, and before I knew it I was certain about what was going on in this scene, this chapter. Lots of staring, deleting, and typing, but I got six good pages out of it.

So now I believe I am going to be forced to consider the Starbucks experience more frequently. I need to see if I can do it again, or if it was merely an anomaly. On the other hand, I got far less done today because guess what–I had to catch up on all those emails I'd missed yesterday, take care of the business newsletter I edit, and do some RWA business. Now the weekend is here and I'll get next to nothing done with a man around the house. Not to mention it's 33 days until he retires and we've got movers coming in about three weeks and we still need to go through stuff. Yikes.

Where do you work best? Home? Starbucks? The local microbrewery (I once watched a woman making airline reservations at the next table over during Happy Hour. I hope she really wanted to go and wasn't making a drunken decision, ha!)? What's your routine like?