Descartes insulated himself to write his Meditations. The outcome: an untold number of thinkers arguing that he neglected our basic interactions with the world. Were Descartes to have written in an Amsterdam tavern, his conclusions would have been different. Of course, it is hard to blame him: it is easier to focus in a calm environment than in a chaotic one. Nevertheless, what makes a quiet space ideal is also what makes a cacophonous, busy location a great place to write.

Let's take an F subway train, with its arrhythmic palpitation and its abrupt stops; with its mariachi musicians and the loud albeit futile attempt of three teenagers to pick up a girl. Writing on that train, the challenge is not just forging an idea, but committing it to paper. Not that this is an exercise in concentration: the objective is not detaching yourself from the external world. Rather, the importance of loud and uncomfortable spaces is that they create an environment through which the writing must emerge.

Sure, writers are a common view in coffee-shops. They percolate their writing, shielded by laptops and earphones. Yet a coffee-shop is an inviting location; the subway train, the busy bar and the crowded street, on the other hand, want you to go write somewhere else. Nevertheless, their amorphous noises disclose what is shapeless in the writing. The rhythm and composition of the words that emerge from their inharmonious nature has to be strong enough to structure all the stimuli that overwhelm your mind. Besides, if to write is to write somewhere, isn’t it impolite to forbid the words from enjoying their original ecosystem?