That minty fresh secret pal feeling

My Secret Pal saved my life today. Well, not really, but she saved my day and that counts for a lot too. I woke with acute Art Angst. Mmm hmmm. That Doubt thing. A bad case of it. You know, that thing where I wake up on a Tuesday feeling really good about my novel and where it’s going, then somehow wake up on Wednesday with the sneaking suspicion that it’s a horrid little piece of crap, or, perhaps worse, utterly ordinary.

Enter mailman. The large parcel deliveryperson is Alvin. I know Alvin well, as he delivers many soft, strangely light packages on a frequent basis. (One of these days I’ll tell him it’s yarn. All yarn…. Man, I should have snapped a pic of Alvin today once I realized what he was delivering. Ah well.) So there I was staring at the screen and bemoaning my horrible little novel when Alvin rings the doorbell and we have a quick little chat about how, no I’m not from Australia, I just have a friend there (wasn’t going to get into the whole Secret Pal thing right then: “Why yes, Alvin, you’re handing me a package from someone across the planet whom I’ve never met but I promise it’s not a bomb.”).

Okay…on with it. Gah. Anyway, so it’s my third package from my lovely Secret Pal, who is no longer secret. Her name is Alison and we have much in common in terms of taste etc and couldn’t have been matched up better, really. Go see her and say hi and then come back here to see what she sent me.

Back? Okay, now look:

A beautiful tea canister and infuser ball with a dragonfly on it (did she see my tattoos on Rachael’s tattoo page or was that just luck?), yummy smelling rooibos tea that I’ll be trying this evening, and soft cotton yarn in lovely colors… I adore this woman.

The package made me feel that even if I was writing a horrid little novel, at least there were still nice people in the world to send me nice stuff. After opening the package I talked to Ernesto. Okay, confession. I blubbered to him and he let me blubber and then he told me to get past it and sit down and write. (We love Ernesto. Now go buy one of his books. Kidding. No…actually, only half kidding.) I sat down and wrote a bit and did start to feel better.

Then I went off to a meeting with a professor to discuss the horrid little novel that I was starting to think of as maybe kind of okay. Jenny Offill is my revisions tutor this semester and she doesn’t think it’s horrid or ordinary. The Mighty MC was also there and he doesn’t think it’s horrid or ordinary. Yes, on the good days I can see this clearly for myself and have a probably obnoxious level of confidence about this book and my writing. On the bad days, I’m so glad to have these three to fall back on. They’ve been there, done it, are still doing it. They’ve each let me know that it doesn’t get better, or easier, not really. Michael’s won the Pulitzer and still gets hit with doubt. In some ways it’s comforting to know that doubt is a natural part of the process, and that I’m not to take it as a sign that I should just give up. On the other hand, there’s the knowledge that I’m always going to have days like this. If I’m lucky, that is.

So now twelve hours after waking up under the cloud of literary doom, I’m mostly back to feeling excited and positive about the book. It was a short little spell, luckily. Hopefully I’ll be able to bang out a few pages tonight.

Oh…and the baby sweater. I’ve finished the back and one front, and am halfway done with the second front. It’s a mind-numbing 4×4 rib on 8’s, sized for a one-year-old, so as long as I remember to buy a zipper tomorrow it should definitely be done in time for the party on Sunday. I took a photo but the rib is all pulled in on itself and I didn’t want to take the time to pin it out… It looked terrible all scrunched up, so you’ll just have to wait until I feel like photographing it properly. Sorry!

Okay. Here I go, back to the page. Fingers crossed, hmm? Go hug a writer and feed him or her chocolate. And if you are a writer, go find someone to hug you, and then eat chocolate. The good kind. (Rach, my love, this means you. Chocolate. Lots of it. Pop a square of it into your mouth as you turn those new keys in the lock!)