Medical Marijuana and "Closing the door"

Today was interesting.

I took my laptop to the coffee shop to finish up on a flash piece I'm entering in a contest and then work on the novel revision.

As I started getting settled in, I noticed that the lady at the table next to me had a sign stating "Medical Marijuana Petition."

I walked over and asked her, "Pro or con?"

She quickly responded, "Oh, I'm in support of it," and then started rattling off her list of reasons.

I kindly interrupted her and told her I was on board.  My only objection is how difficult it is to spell the "marijuana" part of medical marijuana.  Things got interesting as I was signing the petition.

Now, allow me to take a side note and mention that I understand the complexity of this issue and know that people from all walks of life can fall on both sides of it.  There's no agenda in this post other than to share a writing experience I had in a coffee shop.

Anyhow, while I'm standing there in front of the lady signing her petition, a table behind me starts heckling her.  She starts yelling back and I'm stuck in the middle, dumbstruck while she's reading statistics off to a lady who is shouting over her saying, "I don't want to live in a state where they sell that crap to our kids."

Sigh.  I snuck away to my laptop and started working.  It died down pretty quickly and wasn't a real big deal, but still kind of awkward.  A little later, a couple of "undecideds" sat down next to her and had what seemed like a pretty level-headed discussion about the topic.

During that discussion, I caught myself pausing my music so that I could here what they were saying.  But then I remembered a couple of things.  For one, eavesdropping (OMG I spelled that right on the first try!) is rude.  Another thing I remembered was Stephen King saying to "close the door" when you write.  He's right, of course.  Only in this case I didn't have a door; I had my headphones.  So I turned them way up.

When you write, you've got to keep the outside world outside.  I went to the coffee shop with two firm goals and neither one of them involved discussing medicinal marijuana with the other patrons.

Turning those headphones up and pushing out what was out there in the coffee shop was the right thing to do.  I go my story submitted and got my pages read for the novel revision.

So what did I learn?  If you can manage to shut out the distractions of your surroundings when you write ("close the door" as Stephen King says), you'll hit the goals you set.

That, and I'm pretty sure I'm disqualified from running for public office now.