The First Crack
On Daily Writing Practice & The Art of Roasting Coffee Beans
My mother is obsessed with roasting her own coffee beans.
This is a relatively new, retirement-fueled fascination for her. She’s always been an avid coffee drinker, but for most of her life, was perfectly content drinking Starbucks and Maxwell’s House.
Back in April of last year, she visited a friend in Wisconsin. At some point during her trip, he made her a cup of coffee with beans he roasted himself. She was understandably impressed, so he took it upon himself to spread the good word to a willing disciple. They talked for hours about how great coffee can taste when you source, roast, and age the beans yourself. He showed her his rig, provided some pointers—you know, the whole nine yards! She left Wisconsin with a bag of beans and a new-found passion for roasting.
Reader, she was hooked.
After her trip, she spent every waking moment mastering her new hobby. From her humble beach home in North Carolina, she called me every so often to provide updates about her progress. Back in August, she went to a Roasting Fest and talked to thirty different coffee connoisseurs about where to source her beans, which machine to get, and how to make the best damn cup of coffee this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
While home for the holidays, she invited me to watch her at work. As we stood in the backyard, roasting coffee beans together, she walked me through the entire step-by-step process. Everything was so particular. The roasting machine had to be carried in the right manner. The beans had to be measured out using a food scale and marked just so. She twisted the temperature knob on her machine ever so-slightly, well-attuned to her beans and how far they needed to go.
We watched as the Colombian coffee beans lifted high into the tube and turned a stunning range of colors—the initial, raw grayish-green, a warm, ochre yellow, and finally, a rich, chocolate brown.
She told me to listen intently for the sound of the first crack. This is when the beans start to release their natural oils, flavors, and aromas. The moisture inside the beans turns into steam, causing them to expand and crack open. You have to watch and listen in order to catch it. The timing has to be right for the beans to reach the desired roast level. If you miss this crucial moment, the whole batch could go sour or taste like a shitty cup of Airport Starbucks coffee you inexplicably end up paying $7 for.
As we packaged the beans to age for a few days, she told me which sources, suppliers, and tastes she preferred. We laughed over the absurdity of snobby coffee culture. I showed her the Conan O’Brien coffee sketches with his obnoxious, espresso-obsessed producer, Jordan Schlansky. She giggled and said, “Yes, the guys I met are exactly like that.”
It was refreshing to meet her on a level where she could teach me something again. She shared this new hobby in a way that actually brought tears to my eyes. Watching her explain her process and all the methods she has learned through trial and error was nothing short of inspirational. Each step is significant, meaningful, and intentional. Along with time, it all adds up to craft a truly great cup of coffee.
Before last week, I knew absolutely nothing about roasting coffee beans. Even now, I still don’t know enough to replicate the process effectively. (Coffee bros of Substack, please don’t crucify me in the comments. I don’t even pretend to be a novice. I’m less than that.) I am still perfectly happy to buy my beans pre-roasted and groggily grind them in my espresso machine every morning before work. It’s convenient, mostly delicious, and gets the job done well enough.
Crafting the perfect cup of coffee isn’t really my thing, but crafting the perfect sentence is.
I’ve tried for many years to start a daily writing practice. At the beginning of every year, I buy a new journal and start off strong, writing morning or evening pages every single day for about a week. I feel good about myself and vow to make a real effort to write more consistently. Even if it’s just a single journal page to rid my brain of the day’s intrusions and worries, I promise myself I will give my writing an honest chance.
Inevitably, I neglect the poor journal and let it join the rest of its comrades on a graveyard shelf in my craft closet. I forget to write or chose not to and always feel sorrier and sorrier for my lack of results. Journals stay in the stack, books are left unread, and I remain stuck in the same old creative rut. It’s an awful, vicious cycle.
Last January, I tried something new. Instead of buying a journal or forcing myself to get up and write those daily morning pages, I joined a writing workshop. I faced one of my biggest fears and brought my work to be critiqued, discussed, and considered by complete strangers.
Initally, I was terrified. I was late to the first meeting because I’d paced in front of the host’s apartment for too long, debating if I should go in or leave. It was a bitterly cold evening in the second week of January. I trekked deep into to Brooklyn. I lived an hour away and dreaded the long subway ride home. I didn’t know those people and didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself. I came up with every conceivable excuse not to walk in the door.
I walked in anyway.
After several awkward, jump-start meetings, conversation and writing flowed more easily. Now, every two weeks, I meet up with the same writers in neighboring restaurants, bars, and hotel lobbies. We spend an hour-and-a-half responding to previously agreed-upon prompts, reading our words out loud, and discussing it all in detail. We go to artist talks, readings, and folk festivals together. We post our favorite group poems on Instagram and offer truly helpful and constructive feedback. We laugh, we cry, and, most importantly, we write.
We don’t speak of the before times—when caffeine-fueled mornings kept everyone running, running, running towards something we never found. We don’t speak of the life-long addiction, at least, not publicly. But I’ve heard about it. My grandfather told me about all the secret recipes: all built around something called espresso—something roasted and made of water and beans. He told me in hushed whispers about the shops where it was sold and served in paper cups. People ran in and out at all hours of the day, drinking it in combination with milks and sugars of every kind. He told me about the riots too—when The Chancellor came to power and banned all of it, citing the substance’s danger: it will kill you. It will harm your children. It will contort and twist your body into spasms of ecstasy, followed by severe, often debilitating come downs and then…crashes.
He also spoke of the substance’s power, of its energy. He spoke of its taste: rich, dark, bitter, in some ways. He spoke of its connectedness, how it brought people like him together.
-An excerpt from a story I wrote for the writing workshop, ironically about coffee!
This was the kindest challenge I could think to give myself after a lifetime spent convinced my writing wasn’t good enough to show anyone. It was easier for me to believe I was just plain bad than to believe I might be good, if only I let myself be. If only I could put in the effort to get better. If only I could get motivated to write every single day and produce every single thing I wanted to make.
I just—couldn’t. It’s still an insecurity I can’t fully speak to, without risk of crying and losing the words completely.
Yet, a full year later, I’ve published my work across several platforms, all things I never would have shown to anyone five years ago. I’ve written essays, poetry, and multi-chapter works. I wrote an entire novella in four months. I’ve pushed my writing and creativity to their thresholds and still have eons to go.
I know the saying that “creativity is a muscle” is cliche, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Before 2024, my creative output was minimal, stilted, and underwhelming. Anytime I’d go to a reading or see a concert, I could feel the energy flow reach the tip of my tongue. I could see the words forming in my mind. Something always held me back from seizing the inspiration. When I tried to write about whatever had inspired me, it got stuck somewhere between my stomach and throat. The words wouldn’t form. The metaphors wouldn’t meld. The syllables wouldn’t rhyme.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I felt the dam break free—the first crack.
While scrolling on Tumblr one afternoon, I came across this Bruce Springsteen quote from his autobiography, Born To Run.
“I wanted to kill what loved me because I couldn't stand being loved. It infuriated and outraged me, someone having the temerity to love me—nobody does that … and I'll show you why.”
―Bruce Springsteen, Born To Run
I was reminded of a character from a TV show I loved. A rush of ideas for a multi-chapter work about this character bubbled up to the surface of my mind. I made a playlist. I wrote an outline and compiled drafts of the first three chapters. This single Bruce Springsteen quote sparked a real, honest-to-God story. Finally, inspiration struck in the most unlikely of moments. It felt right. I couldn’t believe the amount of writing I was doing.
Honestly, it was good. I felt good about it. I couldn’t wait to share it with the world.
Only—when I did, it was met with a not-so-warm welcome. Not that I expected overwhelming praise, but the familiar thoughts of doubt crossed my mind more than a few times. Am I any good at this? Did my moment of spark leave just as quickly as it came?
In spite of my fears, I forged on and finished the damn thing. I wrote, edited, and then wrote some more. I swapped out phrases and words many times over just to craft sentences I loved to read out loud to myself. I wrote daily, adding and subtracting passages as needed to fit what was shaping up to be a real manifestation of—dare I say—my artistic vision.
Most stunningly, other people’s opinions of my work meant less and less the more I wrote. For once, I was writing something for me. It was good because it was mine. It was working for me because I was working for it.
Sure, I can never make money from that piece or share it widely, but the experience was a good lesson in writing for creativity’s sake. The writing process I spent years refining finally works. I feel sure it will change. It will go through phases and grow in ways I can’t even imagine. For now, I’m proud to say—it kinda works :)
The aroma is fragrant, and the taste, bittersweet.