I’m in Panera on this rainy Nor’easter morning, along with about a thousand other people. So much conversation – one man pitching his plumbing supplies company to another; a woman trying to get a man to buy ad space in her magazine. Two other men talking about their health issues, a broken wrist and rehab for one, and a tonsillectomy for a perpetually swollen uvula (!) for the other. A table of six older ladies with their mugs, laughing about something, and ten feet away, a corresponding table full of older guys in windbreakers and sweatshirts. (I wonder if the women and men notice each other, an echo of long-ago middle school.)
Still others, like me, alone with their laptops. They laptoppers look intent, focused on work, maybe writing, but it could be that they’re just FB-ing or e-mailing. And yet work does get done in places like this; I know a woman who wrote her entire dissertation at Starbucks. Maybe it’s just me, distracted by all the activity – milk steamers shrieking, pagers buzzing, bread racks banging onto counters, cell phones chirping – and all this talking.
I had planned to write another scene for my novel draft, and to take some notes and start a new story, but so far I’m not doing that. Think I’ll just listen and look for a while.
Lovely looking-back essay in the American Scholar from William Zinsser, who’s in his mid-80s now. I don’t usually read American Scholar (it’s sent to Phi Beta Kappa members, and I was not one of those), but this week the website is running five new short stories from some stellar writers.