A New Project

I’m back at the Bean this morning. This is no small feat today; it’s almost -50 with the windchill and the walk from my car to the coffee shop was treacherous—by the time I made it inside, my eyeballs were frozen like grapes in their sockets and I’d completely forgotten what it was like to feel warmth or comfort or joy. Victoria was standing behind the counter and I stared at her for a moment, trying to catch my breath. 

“It’s cold out there!” I said at last. 

Because I am a writer, a wordsmith, a capital C Creative. 

I wonder how many times this past week and today and this coming week Victoria has had and will have this exact sentence spoken to her in exactly this way. It makes me sad to realize I am so derivative, so pedestrian, so lacking in pizazz or originality.

But I am cold, okay, my brain is frozen, the synapses are not firing; I am like a car who needs someone with a bigger, more durable winter brain to come along and hook me up to jumper cables.

In lieu of that, I am writing here, on this blog, trying to jump start my brain by myself. 

I’m working on a new project. 

I Think We’ve Been Here Before comes out next September, which means that I have eight months ahead of marketing and promotion and meetings and publicity. In some ways, this is my least favourite part of publishing. I hate—have always hated—talking about my books. (I thought this shyness would go away with time but it hasn’t.) But there are also things that happen in this period of time that I like a lot and am so excited for. Reaching out to my favourite book bloggers to send ARCs, taking fun little pictures for social media, brainstorming ways to make connections with booksellers and libraries and readers, holding the finished copies in my hands and reading early reviews. It sounds like such a contradiction to say I hate promoting my book but also I love promoting my book and I don’t know what to tell you: I contain multitudes. 

But I have found that the very best use of this time is to work on The Next Thing, so that’s what I’m doing, and I’m having a very nice time. It’s quite weird and I’m at the stage where it’s new and shiny and I’m just watching the words appear on the screen like someone else is writing through my fingers, just daydreaming and letting the story be as strange as it wants to be without having to consider whether an editor at a publishing house will be able to win over an acquisitions board with it. In some ways, this is my favourite part of publishing. I love—have always loved—being surprised by an idea as it forms, daydreaming about where it could go and where it will land. But there is also a very uncomfortable aspect to this stage, if I’m being honest, an impatience to get the whole thing out and send it off to my agent, to see if has any merit or if I’m just being silly. It sounds like such a contradiction to say I love the beginning part of writing a book but also that I hate it and I don’t know what to tell you. 

Okay. I think my brain battery has been sufficiently jump-started, so I’m going to get back at it. May we all survive this ridiculous polar vortex.

The Nude Cafe

I’m at The Naked Bean this morning, working on my book. If you’ve been around here for a while, you know about the Bean, about how I used to always forget what its actual name was and refer to it as The Nude Cafe instead, which makes it sound like a very different business than it is, and about how I used to come here every single Wednesday morning at 6:30 AM to write. 

Sully was a baby when I started doing this. He was a baby who didn’t sleep unless you were holding him, and he didn’t much like being awake unless you were holding him either. So, like, I got a lot of snuggles in that era, but typing? Words? On a laptop? 

No. 

At some point in that hazy season, a friend invited me out for a 6:30 AM coffee date before she went to work one day, and when I got to the coffee shop and saw that it was quiet and dimly lit and, most importantly, that my sweet loud baby was not there, I saw that it could be a good place to clear my head and get some words down. My father-in-law started coming for breakfast on Wednesday mornings; he held Sully and visited with Barclay and I began to faithfully sneak out of my house to write at the Bean. I’d listen to The Zolas in my Skull Candy earbuds and eat my ProBar and drink my small medium roast coffee. There was a couple, who I affectionately referred to as the Loud Talkers, who consistently showed up at the same time as I did and sat at the table directly beside me (somehow I never found them distracting; they were the brand of outrageous that I found to be a constant source of inspiration). I became a Regular, something I had never been before. The barista knew what I was going to order before I ordered it, even though she didn’t know my name. It was all perfect.

I wrote pretty much all of Valencia and Valentine in that season. I remember sitting down on that first morning and opening my laptop, not a baby in sight, and looking out the window in front of me. There was an empty lot across the street, just a plain old square of grass and dirt. It felt significant and magical and meaningful that as I opened the document and began my story, they broke ground across the street and began a building. 

I started writing from scratch, because if you don’t start a book from scratch it’s plagiarism and I don’t do that, and they started building from scratch too, and so it was that I watched my book go up at the same time as the building went up. They put up the framework, I put up the framework. They added bricks, I added adjectives. They put windows in the holes where windows were meant to go and I put plot in the holes where things didn’t add up yet. We put our finishing touches on our respective projects at the same time and my book was published around the time the first few businesses set up shop in that building. 

Cute, right?

And then, because we had such a good thing going, I wrote most of my second book there too. Sully grew up a bit but then Scarlett joined the family and Wednesday mornings at the Bean went from a necessity to a luxury and back to a necessity again. More businesses moved into the building across the street and the coffee shop got busier, but nothing else really changed.

When the pandemic hit and things shut down, the Naked Bean was one of the places I missed the most. I missed the barista who poured the coffee, I missed the Loud Talkers, I missed the building across the street, which now felt weirdly connected to my writing process. It all felt connected to my writing process, actually. And then it was just gone, very suddenly, closed to the public for our own good. I had to write in my bedroom with the door closed, and for some reason the sound of my kids fighting in the kitchen was not conducive to creativity in quite the same way that the Loud Talkers at the next table had always been.

(I remember one day early on in the pandemic, probably April 2020, driving down Albert Street and seeing the Loud Talkers standing at a bus stop. He was wearing that green fleece jacket that had become so familiar to me and her hair was in her usual low ponytail. They were smoking and I felt surprised, because I had never seen them smoke before—and then I was like, Suzy, you don’t know these people from a hole in the ground, you only ever see them in a coffee shop, of course you have never seen them smoke. But it was weird! It was like seeing long-lost relatives and I felt like I should at the very least roll down my window and call out to them (I didn’t). I was like, how and when did THEY become important to me? I would like, please, a scientific study on the invisible ties created between people who are in regular proximity to one another but who never officially meet. I think this would be interesting. But I digress.)

I don’t even know where I was. 

Right: everything shut down. What a strange, surreal thing that was, hey? To just suddenly, on such a grand scale, lose a whole bunch of places and people that you had always thought of as kind of peripheral and realize that, nope, they were important and special. 

But I guess—I guess it’s not so strange. It’s a normal life thing, losing things and then realizing what those things meant to you. It’s such a normal thing that Joni Mitchell wrote a song about it years before COVID was ever a thing. 

I guess the actual strange, surreal thing is that we were lucky enough to get some of those things back. 

I know—not everything came back. Some things aren't back yet, some aren't coming back period. And a lot of the things came back different than they had been before. But I’m revelling, right now, in this one thing. 

I have my small medium roast coffee and my ProBar. I turned on my Spotify Liked playlist and, of all the possible songs to come on first, Ancient Mars by the Zolas was the one that came on first today. Victoria poured my coffee and the only thing that’s different about that is that we know each other’s names now, which is a Better Different. The Loud Talkers aren’t here right now, but there is a different Loud Talker sitting behind me talking about—not lying—butt cheeks, and this is an acceptable substitute for today. (I have seen the Loud Talkers recently, smoking on Albert Street, so I have no doubt I’ll see them another day.)

What’s the point of all this? If you’ve been here long enough to know about the Naked Bean, you know that I never really blog with a point in mind. But if I had to think of one, maybe it would be that if you lost something in the past few years but then you got it back, now might be a good time to notice it and be happy about it. 

That’s all. :)

The Bean Has Power

The power has been going out a lot lately in my city. It's been missing us mostly, but this week we've lost ours twice, both around the same time in the early morning.

Sask Power has commented on the outages, saying that it has something to do with wildlife. Squirrels and large birds 'interacting with the equipment at a substation'. Everyone's like, "Oh, okay, that makes sense," but I want to know what's up with the squirrels and large birds in this city that they suddenly seem to be attempting suicide en masse at 6:30 AM every morning. Like, is this a city-wide animal morale problem? Also, is there a pile of fried squirrels somewhere?

The power went out this morning again, 6:30 AM, right on schedule (RIP little buddy, whoever and whatever you were). I was about to walk out the door to hit up the Bean (it's Wednesday! Bean Day!) for my precious coffee and writing hours, when there was a sound like someone moving heavy furniture across the roof of our house and everything went dark. My first thought was, "Again?" and my second thought was "THE GARAGE DOOR OPENER IS NOT GOING TO WORK, I'M PRETTY SURE."

I was trapped. I could not go to the Naked Bean for coffee and writing time.

THE WORST. Capital letters THE WORST.

I can live without the microwave. I can sit in a darkened room. I can even go for a whole entire day without charging my phone. But I look forward to Wednesday mornings the way that a little kid looks forward to Christmas. Imagine a five year-old waking up on December 25 only to find that the presents have all been returned and the tree is in flames in the front yard and his dad is standing in front of it hoisting a can of gasoline over his head, laughing maniacally and yelling, "CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED! FOREVERRRRRRR!!!"

That's kind of how I felt this morning at 6:30 when the power went out.

I pouted.

I checked Twitter, today's premium source for timely, accurate news, to see if the power was out across half the city as it had been on Monday or if it was just my unlucky neighbourhood this time. Some guy was tweeting angrily at Sask Power about how he felt like he was living in a third world country. The power had been out for exactly three minutes.

I stopped pouting. I did not want to grow up to be the kind of person who felt so entitled to the privileges of modern convenience that I said things like that publicly. Plus, come on, Guy, innocent squirrels are frying all around you and all you care about is your breakfast and morning coffee? Grow some empathy.

Barclay came into the kitchen then, summoned by my heartbrokenness which he can sense from a mile away. It turned him into a kind, doting version of the hulk and he broke into the garage through the old, padlocked side door (a thing we have not attempted yet in the two years that we've lived here) and opened the garage door manually, effectively saving the day. I was so happy. He warned me that the Naked Bean, as it is in sort of the same neighbourhood as us, might not have power either and I said I'd let him know, and then I grabbed my laptop and jumped into my car and drove off into the sunrise. I felt so liberated.

I sent him two texts when I got to the Bean and found that the power was on. I said, "Thanks for setting me free," and, "The Bean has power."

And I had to laugh when I reread them a minute later, because don't they make me sound like I've joined some kind of wonky religion or something? Or maybe I'm just in that kind of mood where you're so relieved about something that everything is funny? Either way, I'm sitting by myself in a coffee shop grinning like an idiot.

Happy Wednesday, everybody. Let's keep the little squirrel families in our thoughts as we go about our days today.

Back at the Bean

I'm back in my place at the Naked Bean. It's 6:40, and I'm the only one here. 

(In the interest of full disclosure, a police officer and an old lady walked in right after I typed that.) 

I still haven't gotten up the nerve to ask the barista her name. I did say, "Oh, look at that! A blue mug today." And she said, "For real. Enjoy." It's very suspenseful, isn't it?

Next week, on The Naked Bean: Will Suzy get over her crippling fear of introductions? Will her and the barista become life-long friends? Who is the sketchy-looking man sitting in the shadows in the corner of the shop and why is he wearing a police officer's uniform? Does that woman over there take her coffee black? It's non-stop drama and scandal in Canada's favourite coffee shop soap.

Seriously though, I'm running on about four, maybe but probably not five hours of sleep (I gave up counting after the third time Sullivan woke me up last night). It was the kind of night where I couldn't fall asleep to begin with, even though I was seriously tired, kept looking at the clock, finally dozed off around 12:30, woke to the little guy with the big lungs at 1. Slept another two hours, up again. Slept an hour and a bit, up again. I was tempted to sleep in this morning and skip the Bean, but I've done that before and been really sad about it. 

Sometimes you need sleep, sometimes you need to just suck it up and do something. Sometimes sleep just makes tiredness worse. 

Anyway, I should get back at it. I'll talk at you later.

The Naked Bean

It's Wednesday morning, so I'm in my spot at the Naked Bean drinking coffee in gulps and "working" (I should feel okay about dropping that unnecessary punctuation, but I just can't yet. I use quotation marks like a shield; they protect me from anyone thinking I take myself too seriously. Just like when I call myself an "adult" or say that I "work out" or "play music" or whatever else I am or do that I feel massively insecure about).

(Here's a thing: that last sip of coffee tasted exactly like mashed potatoes. So strange.)

I come here every Wednesday morning, at six thirty-something am (Barclay has his dad over for breakfast and Sullivan hangs out with them for a couple hours. It's the best arrangement). I have $3 in my back pocket, divided up exactly into coffee money and tip change. I still don't know the name of the girl behind the cash register, despite my regularity here, and I'm starting to feel weird about it. Every week on the way over I think to myself, "Today, I'm going to introduce myself and ask what her name is. 'I'm Suzy, by the way. It feels strange to see you every week and not know your name.'" But every week, as I pass her the coffee money and drop the tip change into the mug by the register, all that comes out is, "Hi, can I have a small medium roast?"

Sometimes I throw in a, "Beautiful day out there, eh?" I don't want her to think I'm rude, but I don't want her to think I'm weird. Like, as though we have a beautiful friendship in our future and I could ruin it by introducing myself.

Meeting new people is hard, even when you've met them ten thousand times before.

Anyway. Here I am. There's construction going on across the street. There are enough people in the coffee shop right now that their collective voices are a steady, medium-loud hum, and the music is just perceptible enough that I can follow it without paying much attention to it. MGMT, I think. I have four windows open besides this one - a thesaurus, a dictionary, Gmail, and my online typewriter (my absolute favourite writing tool). When I get stuck in one place, I just click away and continue in another.

As you can probably tell, I've hit a few walls in my, you know, "work" this morning. That's why I'm here, telling you about this coffee shop and the girl and my questionable "work ethic". But that's the nice thing about hitting walls: if you have enough coffee in you, you don't have to crumple against them and fall to the floor; you can just bounce off in another direction.

Now, if you'll excuse me (or even if you won't) I'm going to get back at it.

PS: If you're looking for some good music this morning, you should listen to the entire Walter Mitty soundtrack, all the way through. I found it on YouTube, and it is amazing.