Grab hold of the interstices!
Decemuary 2023/4
Welcome if you’re new here! During and shortly after my Cookie Week romp, my number of subscribers nearly tripled, and some of you even paid! Unreal. Thank you so much to all of you for your cookie enthusiasm, it really meant the world to me. And! Brought about a total existential crisis about my newsletter and I am now stalked by the fear that you all signed up under fraudulent pretence; that I’ve overpromised and will absolutely under-deliver; that you will all up and leave when my typical monthly updates trickle out, to the point that I didn’t even do my typical monthly update for December, and now I’m doing a random one mid-month and feeling in part VERY STRESSED ABOUT IT and in part totally fine because, like, I’m in therapy obviously.
To be honest, I thought I’d long been on the other side of this classic “fear of success” type shit that so many perfectionists have to fight their way through alongside their fears of failure. I thought I could now nimbly handle triumphs large and small with grace and aplomb; simply stride into the next project with confidence come what may. I was actually proud of my dear old internal monologue who chattered at me all holiday long, “You can’t write pressurized, bombastic, hagiographic cookie how-to’s every damn day, people understand that, nobody cares, you can just go back to your staid little monthly posts and that’ll be fine.”
But whenever I sat down to write about December, I completely seized up. I didn’t want to do it. I thought instead of writing this dumb, boring thing, I’d better take a break from posting altogether. Recalibrate! Make a whole new plan. Find another stunt to do. Make it better, bolder, longer! Don’t you dare show your face here again until you’re ready to give the people what they want!
And wow, that suddenly hit me as familiar. This fear of disappointing people, of letting them down? A well-worn track. After I published my first novel in 2003 to some moderate local acclaim, I literally published nothing again until 2015 even though I was writing that whole time! I mean.
One of the reasons I started this newsletter was to hone my bravery a bit, and what is bravery if not…continuing to honk away on the internet in spite of my fears? Listen, I know this is not exactly death-defying stuff. But sometimes it’s scary to me. Honking away on the internet in a prolonged manner like I did during Cookie Week also really tires me out and leaves me feeling entirely overexposed, like I flayed off my skin and you can all see the raw, shiny inside parts even if I was only honking about cookies. After a big honk, I inevitably need to cocoon for a bit before I’m ready to rip my skin off again. It seems to just be a fact, though I’m forever willing it to be less true. But Jesus, I turned 45 at the end of December, and it’s time to just own it I guess. Honk! Disappear! Honk again! It’s just how it’s gonna be sometimes.
Anyway, without further ado I shall now beat my chest, scream thunderously into the void, and tell you all about, uh. What I wrote, read, and ate in December and some of January? Hahahaha! Scary shit. Happy new year everybody, let’s go!
Writing
Basically in December I wrote my Cookie Week posts and that’s it. At first I was trying to keep my novel going, too, but come December 8th I announced to myself in my journal that I deserved a break and that’s when baking myself into oblivion got truly unhinged and fun.
I started working on the novel again exactly one month later, on January 8th, and I’m thrilled to report it’s been a total joy. It’s always so nerve wracking to say such a thing about writing, knowing as one does that the feeling is fleeting, but I’ve really loved digging back into my fantastical marine creatures and the me-adjacent human creature, and just noodling away. I had hoped to be slightly further along by the end of 2023 than I ended up getting, I’m still in my rickety boat navigating through the vast, wild sea of Act Two (of three), but for the first time in my novel-writing life I feel confident enough in both my intuition and acquired understanding of how stories typically operate to believe I’ll get her done if I just put in the weird work.
Last January I declared the novel Top Priority of the Summer and she remains so at least for the first half of 2024. It felt good to declare it, to sink back into the rocking ocean of uncertainty, to pull out my paddles and go.
Reading
The typically excellent Toronto Public Library system has been largely offline for months due to a security breach, so I can’t order whatever books I want to my home branch and it’s made my already ailing reading practice even worse. If I’m honest, I think I only read one complete novel in the fourth quarter of 2023 (good old Heartburn by Nora Ephron, which was great, but also dated and racist and weird). But just last week I remembered I work at a university! I can access their stacks! So I had a nice shop around their holdings and procured for myself Night Wherever We Go by Tracey Rose Peyton. I chose it on the basis of its being blurbed by Kiese Laymon, whose memoir Heavy is in my top ten forever. And it’s so good. It’s about a group of enslaved women in Texas, so of course it makes me actually sick to my stomach at times; certain that I’m experiencing psychosis; that such things couldn't have really taken place, carried out by members of my species. Then I head over to Instagram, and there’s a long scroll of reminders that, oh yes, we are entirely capable of evil, all the time, every second, and I feel cold sweat and nausea all over again. But I also keep reading this book. Not just because of the topic but because the writing is propulsive, beautiful, unique. I don’t always buy the “novels cultivate empathy” thing, but I don’t think it’s the worst thing to be viscerally reminded of the evil one is capable of from time to time, and to commune with characters in possession of the endless courage and tenacity it takes to defy it.
Speaking of communing, I’m thrilled that Megan Boyle’s still writing her LiveBlog. This iteration of LiveBlog was — alongside Jen Beagin’s books — the literary highlight of 2023 for me. Initially Boyle had said she’d stop in September, so I was steeling myself for that. But she’s just kept going. I wrote extensively last year about my long-time appreciation for her work, I won’t go on here, just wanted to mention my gratitude for its ongoingness. As always the reading pleasure remains in watching the steady accrual of an entire life and in the beauty and hilarity and self-conscious unguardedness (is that a thing?) of the writing post to post. As always, I don’t want her to keep going if it’s making her life worse. But as long as it’s doing something okay for her, I’m so grateful for this place to go when I want to scroll that isn’t evil or algorithmic, that will always make me laugh or think or both.
Lately Boyle has been pushing herself to write more about her spiritual life, and like everybody else I got on the Elizabeth Gilbert reclamation train these past months (sure, I’m subsequently considering shaving my head) and last week I had a wonderful string of days when my day job was so repetitive and dull that I could listen to podcasts alongside, so I listened to this interview with Boyle’s husband Blake Butler wherein he talks beautifully about his complex late wife he’s written a memoir about, and then I listened to this old interview with Elizabeth Gilbert and the We Can Do Hard Things gals wherein she talks about her very complex late wife and also two-way prayers and twelve-step and the whole time Boyle was blogging vulnerably about prayer and also sometimes twelve-step, and my brain was just doing this very pleasurable connection forging thing that feels like popcorn popping, like “Oh wow, man, everyone is so fucking the same and squishy and scared and sad and courageous for still attempting to love, and anyone who digs into the nuances of those things is so cool in my book, whether your lineage is literary or Momastery, I don’t fucking care!” and over dinner one night I was trying to get all this out and made David laugh so hard with my imitation of the yoga ladies with their “Oh my gawd, I love you’s” just vocal fried to hell, and all of it felt much more special in my brain than any of that, and there are maybe mean and cynical ways to think about the juxtaposition of alt-lit and Glennon Doyle, but that’s not what my brain was doing, it was doing something generous and full to bursting and I’m sure I have a decent essay about this coiled inside me but NO TIME to untangle into coherence so you get this oblique mess instead. Humans, man. Sometimes I love em.
Eating
After our cat Jeph died, I found myself ranting to my therapist, and then later to David about how fucked and full of pain life is, and that you really have to grab hold of the interstices, you really need to make them fucking count, and if you don’t do that intentionally, the whole thing will pass you by while you tap your foot and wait for the grief train to stop. You know? And so we booked a little trip to New Orleans for my birthday! Hedonism, baby!
Hedonism for me means reading about every single vegan option available in a city and planning my entire trip around food. So we booked an apartment in Bayou Saint John because of its being walking distance to Sweet Soulfood, a fully vegan restaurant serving everything from gumbo to Mac and cheese to jambalaya. I was so stoked, but alas the proprietors of Sweet Soulfood chose to grab hold of the interstices, too, and closed between Christmas and New Year’s. So I'll simply have to go back.
Luckily both Lamara Coffee & Kitchen and the Pagoda Cafe were right around the corner for our breakfast needs — the former a West Coast style place, pretty bougie but very delicious; the latter scrappy and lovely, with yummy vegan breakfast tacos. We also had amazing vegan paella at Lola, a Spanish restaurant in Bayou Saint John that also served some of the best Brussels sprouts I’ve ever had. I will dream of them till I die.
Our first day in town, we hit a farmer’s market and learned about Leo’s Bread whose brick and mortar shop was also in our neighbourhood. So we gorged ourselves on their yummy sourdough sandwich loaf, focaccia, and lemon cake all week.
We went to the Bywater neighbourhood the next day and spent a glorious afternoon at The Country Club, a bar famous for both its drag brunch and its backyard pool. Apparently it gets super busy in good weather, but on this rather frosty day we were one of only two groups enjoying the facilities, and it was truly so chill. I didn’t expect much from the food, but the cauliflower bites were totally great. For dinner we hit Bar Brine, which is called the Sneaky Pickle by day. Their menu is fermentation forward with loads of cool vegan options. Our meals were so salty and briny and good, such a decadent way to slake my bottomless post-swimming hunger. The appetizer had a Brazil nut based yogurt which was rad, and my cocktail had a “garnish adventure” — an assortment of pickled things and herbs in its own little glass of ice. Naturally, I used every single garnish available to me, including the ice, and I was not ashamed.
We got a feast of vegan soul food from Meals From the Heart in the French Quarter, and while the French Quarter was largely not our vibe, this meal was! I have attempted etoufee and red beans and rice at home in the past, but it was so great to taste these things made by professionals to see how close I was getting. I’m excited to keep practicing, and obviously had to wait extra-long in airport security while the guards rooted through the herbs and spices I brought back.
The last day we spent walking through City Park to Lake Ponchartrain and back. It was nineteen degrees, sunny, we vibed with the bayou and so many trees, and ate Beyond burgers at a golf course in the middle of the park?? Weird! But great!
Bonus content for Toronto readers: New Orleans’ City Park is bizarro Toronto Island! Quadracylces! Swan boats! Magnificent ancient trees! In recovery from a flood!
At the farmer’s market I had also bought locally grown kumquats and could not shut up about them, they were so thrillingly good. David wasn’t such a fan, and I can only eat so many before I get heartburn — forty-five, baby! — so I smuggled some back home in my suitcase and made a kumquat cheong. I used the syrup to make delicious little daiquiris the first week we were back, which kept the New Orleans spirit going a little longer.
I’m paranoid people will judge me for not doing anything about history while we were in New Orleans except reading plaques as we encountered them and watching When the Levees Broke in our bed at night and crying. But we really needed it man; those four days charged me up. I’m very grateful for them, and to have felt the sun.
Last thing! I’m currently being very January, enjoying my diligent noveling and dorky checklist of good habits and pantry full of non-alc drinks. In case you’re in the same zone, here’s my fave non-alc drink these days: half a can of Sparkling Botanicals Elderberry Macqui tea (Canadians, get it here!) mixed with a generous glug of decent non-alcoholic red wine like this one. Sometimes I add ice, sometimes I don’t. So help me, it tastes like Lambrusco, especially if you serve it in a nice glass. Okay, bye!
Quick note: if you’re a paid subscriber and you’ve not yet received a copy of my first novel, you should receive one soon. There was a bit of confusion at the post office about getting my books to the States, but I think it’s resolved now.
And if you want a copy of my first novel, my 50% off subscription sale continues, and includes the book and shipping for $15 CAD in North America. Just send me your address once you’ve subscribed.
Another great read, Julia! The way you write about your insecurities stemming from the favourable response to your last post is just so relatable! And I feel very weird about this, but I was also highly entertained! :->
Your trip to New Orleans sounds wonderful - glad you took the opportunity to recharge and restore after the passing of your beloved Jeph (so sorry about this!!! you know I can relate!). Glad to hear your work on your novel is going well.
Loving this content but loving you more!
Cindy