Tonight is the last Write-In at the Borderlands Cafe.  Please come join me, if you’d like to have a couple hours of peace to yourself or if you have something to get out of your system or if, by any chance, you are finishing your Nanowrimo novel.  All are welcome, as long as you’re willing to put your head down and bang out some words. If you like, I will give you a gold star just for showing up.

Last year, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, only two of us showed up to write.  That was okay:  we got some work done and felt virtuous.

It would be more fun with more people. I’m just saying.

The details: Borderlands Cafe, 870 Valencia Street, San Francisco from 6-8 PM.  Parking was really easy last year.

In the meantime, here’s a photo of me at the write-in I did on Wednesday afternoon.  Paul’s Hat Works (6128 Geary Boulevard) has invited Nanowrimo writers to come sit in their front windows and work this month. I meant to go a week ago, before I got stranded at home with a sick kid.  I managed to get over there Wednesday because her grandfather took her to a movie. I am so glad I did.

Paul’s is almost 100 years old.  I wish I’d taken more photos inside the shop, which is full of old wooden hat forms and sewing machines and ribbons, hat boxes and lots of wonderful hats.  These aren’t your cheap felt hipster hats; these hats are made to measure, one at a time, specifically to fit individual heads.  I got to pet a rabbit top hat and a beaver hat. They had the loveliest straw boaters I have ever seen, with complex swirling patterns to their weaves. They even had a pirate hat.

The women who run the shop were the perfect hosts.  They offered me tea or coffee.  I could write in either of the two front windows or in the backyard.  They even had a beautiful old (and very heavy) typewriter — and a stack of paper — if I chose.  They saw me settled, then they went about their business, welcoming people into the shop and discussing the finer points of hat making, while I hacked away at my book.

It was completely enchanting.

If you’re more of a daytime writer, they are offering writing shifts today and tomorrow starting at noon.  Give them a call at 415.221.5332 and see if you can come by.

Whether you have finished your Nano novel (in which case, start the editing process) or you have a long way to go (any work you get done is better than no work at all), give yourself a quiet hour or two and do the work.  You deserve it.