August Is Weird
Isn’t it?
In case you didn’t know, there are several very beautiful, swimmable beaches in Toronto. My partner David and I try to visit them all at least once a summer. One set of beaches are about an hour by transit from where we live. When we went last week, we ended up on a bus full of screaming children who were part of some sort of day camp. I’m talking screaming. Pure chaos. Kids whipping their water bottles around, wheeling and dealing transit transfers like playing cards, laughing so hard they cried.
When we got to the beach, it wasn’t busy being a weekday with a fifty percent chance of thunderstorm. The weather held and we swam with delight in the swamp-weather-warmed lake. There were more waves than usual and eventually a couple of kids showed up on the beach, maybe ten years old, stood at the water’s edge, masks around their chins, and just screamed every time a wave broke. Screamed.
Finally, we walked along the boardwalk to have onion rings at Beaches n’ Cream, and a little girl was coming at us fast on a pink scooter in full Elsa regalia scream-singing “Let It Go.”
“The kids have lost it,” I said to David.
“They have August fever,” he agreed.
So do I. I get it every year. August always feels to me like a whole month of Sundays, scaries included. I’m consumed by the push-pull between wanting to make the most of the summer, to chill still, even as the tension (and pleasure!) of returning structure, routine, responsibility and cold weather looms.
We don’t have children, but David is a high school teacher and I’m an admin for a graduate science program. Always, but especially this year, David is wildly planning lessons while I’m fielding anxious emails from new students about tuition, login ID’s, where to even go. We tried hard to chill at the beach that day, maybe even succeeded some, but I have to tell you I vibed with those kids, too. Screaming at the glorious, sunlit water as it crashed against the shore; with joy, with fear, with some sort of unhinged rage. It made sense to me with regard to August. And, you know, lots of things.
Writing:
On May 24th of this year, I started a very preliminary, very short first draft of a new novel. On August 2nd, I finished it. Draft is maybe too grand of a word, it’s a glorified outline really. It’s very short! But still!
For those who don’t know me, a précis: I published my first book at the age of 24. It went great! Then I spent almost all of the years between then and now working on the second book, a memoir. I’m forty-three now, I worked on the book alongside a revolving door of administrative and service jobs for at least fifteen years solid. I finally finished it last May, and…drumroll…turns out it’s probably not ethical to publish it. Jury’s still sort of out. That’s a story for another day, but I will say it’s been a weird year and a bit. The word “reeling” is often on my mind.
Anyway, I wrote that first book super-fast with the help of a graduate program and a thesis advisor, so in need of a new project to tether me to the ground, I hired someone to help me do that again. This time it was writer and novel coach Heidi Reimer, who is really lovely and has created a structured yet relaxed and vibey program for building first drafts that she offers through the Sarah Selecky School. (Not “affiliate links” fyi!)
As I discovered the hard way, relaxed and vibey is the only way I can get anything started. But Heidi’s program also gave me deadlines which is the only way I can get anything done. A bonus feature is that she forced me to write an actual plot and let me make fun of the idea of plot every time we talked.
I’ll admit this program cost a pretty penny, and the price has since (understandably) gone up. Maybe “hire a coach!” isn’t a very accessible “writing tip.” But I’m sharing because hiring someone to help me write is something I would’ve been ashamed of a few years back. It would have struck me as amateurish, like I wasn’t doing it for real. These days, doing so feels like accommodating my ADHD-diagnosed brain and playing to my strengths for once. Heidi’s daily lessons are very thorough, easy to follow, there are parts involving tarot cards, and she made a very nice container for My Feelings (see “making fun of plot”; see “reeling”) during our one-on-one Zooms each week.
One of the things that made the program most worth it was affirming that though my second book likely “failed,” the work I put in equipped with me with tools that actually work. A lot of knowledge that Heidi espoused was similar to stuff I’d picked up in the last almost-twenty years of toil, but wasn’t sure I could fully trust. I’m still not sure, but closer. This month I’m just transcribing the wild and wooly first draft I wrote by hand into my computer, slowly, gently, without too much thought, just as Heidi advised during our last session. I’ll print and actually read this baby monster next month.
Reading:
During the first half of August, I had the pleasure of having my mind absolutely blasted open and reformed by the Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin. I’m not as big a fantasy-head as I probably should be, but my new project requires inspo in that vein, and my god. MY GOD! I just kept thinking the whole time I read, “I can’t believe she did this! She just went ahead and went all the way for it.” I read three 400 page books in two weeks — a record since the pandemic smote my reading brain — and I’ve come away inspired literarily, politically, aesthetically — it was so fucking addictive, a sensory extravaganza, just stone cold weird. Plus my “after-reading” yielded this very generous account of Jemisin’s drafting process. Though she emphasizes it’s not prescriptive, these days I’m very much after models I might steal.
Now I’m re-reading John Irving’s The World According to Garp to make sure my newsletter’s namesake isn’t fully egregious. So far it’s very seventies and a bit boring; the narrator earnestly calls sex workers “whores,” but seems to be on their side? There are some charming set pieces, like when Garp bites a chunk of his lover’s dog’s ear off (??) and over all I’m kind of into Irving’s lack of rush. I’m about three thousand pages in and Garp has finally started learning to cook. We’ll see how it all goes.
When I can no longer stay awake reading Garp, I’ve been dipping into Rachel Cusk’s Transit. She is, of course, Mother of the House of Indirect Dialogue, I love her, I love it, but I do find myself predictably, basic-bitchily demanding of the extremely passive narrator, “What about you though, what the fuck do you feel?” And when that happens, I go back to Garp.
Eating:
The other set of beautiful Toronto beaches are on the south coast of my favourite place in the world, Toronto Island — a fifteen-minute ferry ride from the city and its own idyllic world. David and I went earlier this month. I was looking forward to going to The Island Cafe and eating what I consider to be the best veggie-veggie burger in town, by which I mean the type of burger that is not pretending to be meat; a chunky, grainy, legumey thing. But! They took it off the menu! But! They have a “Vegan Wrap” now. Which typically are words I absolutely dread. Wrap culture has long left me cold, with the exception, of course, of a proper burrito. But rules are made to be broken, and this wrap is gooooood. It’s got pickles and these very large barley fritters (??) that to me tasted like cheese, which makes me think the chefs at the Island Cafe are hip to nutritional yeast. Respect. If you’re in Toronto in the summer or early fall, go there. It’s the loveliest most chaotic lil place on earth festooned with beautiful flowers and kale everywhere and a view of the lake and even the skyline if you stand up.
I’ve also eaten many tomato tarts and at least 1000 of these oyster mushroom tomato sandwiches:
Lastly:
Thank you for reading or skimming or just opening this email. It means a lot to me. Let me know who you are and why you’re here in the comments if you’re so inclined, or click the “like” button to wave hello if you want, or don’t do any of those things, ily. ✌️
The Broken Earth books blew my mind. Led me to a whole other world of sci-fi and fantasy, far away from my ancient origins of like, Bradbury and LeGuin.