While the Sumatra coffees were what I sought out in the beginning of my coffee journey, it has since taken the backseat to the Brazilian coffee I ordered. I’ve recently concluded that the Brazil SerraNegra is my favorite coffee. To my palate, the Brazil is extremely smooth, with little to no acidity. In the finish, I find that it has some smokey cherry chocolate notes. The beans themselves are nutty and smell just like what I imagine coffee beans would smell like. It’s something I can drink day in and day out, hot or warm or even cool.

I still have to take a closer look at the Burundi Bwayi beans that I have. I find that the African beans are a little too flat for me, while not being quite as smooth as the Brazil. I feel that I’ve experimented with enough single origin coffees for now. I’ll of course return to them, but in the mean time I am going to focus on the roast of the bean. I’ll probably end up trying an Italian roast from Starbucks, considering that I have easy access to such beans and won’t have to wait for it in the mail. I hear that the Italian roast yields a very sweet cup of coffee.As usual, I couple my coffee with writing. I have finally finished three (very short) chapters, clocking in at close to 7,000 words. It isn’t much, but I’m making progress and getting into the meat of the story. The truth of the matter is that most of the story has been outlined in my screenplay. The real difficulty lies in fleshing it out. For a writer, a novel is a far more precise endeavor than is a screenplay. Writing an entire novel is a whole ‘nother beast compared to the anemic screenplay. My screenplay, had I completed it, would’ve probably been close to 20,000 words, and that’s including all of the markup, not just the content. My goal for the novel is 74,000 words or so, more than three times the writing.Why 74,000 words you ask? Catcher in the Rye was around 74,000 words. That means I haven’t even covered a tenth of my novel. Of course 74,000 is more or less arbitrary: I am not going to stretch my novel any longer than it needs to be, and if it is shorter, so be it. I’m wondering if I need to make my chapters a little longer. It seems contrived to write my novel around chapter lengths though. But really, I should worry about that sort of thing after my entire first draft is complete.

I wonder how many cups of coffee I will have consumed by the time I finish my novel.