Joy

I take politics far too seriously. I think I've learned my lesson. My detachment from all social media is complete. I will only fight now, post-covid, for senior fairness and bringing the many of us living in Canada to the official poverty line. I know. Small potatoes but essential for survival here where many elders make $5,000 per annum below it.

So now. I can't get over myself. I am experiencing gallons of joy for the last four days and I hope I'm not jinxing this. I am reading a marvelous book called H is for Hawk by Helen Mac Donald

The rating isn't that great on Goodreads but I get why it wouldn't be to everyone's taste. It is a memoir by a woman whose father has just died and she gets into the business of training a groshawk, one of the most challenging of all falconry enterprises. I am learning so much from it, another underbelly of life unexplored. There are so many.

I have 21,000 words written on the new novel and it is taking me to extraordinary places. I am living and breathing it every day. I am also busy on the blanket I designed and have about 1/3 complete.

You will note the completed lighthouse, the partially finished house and of course the familiar diamonds of vines and cables of Irish knitting. On the left you will see a cream and black cord (it will wind up a marble-like frame for the work) which I knit away at as it is mindless when I attend Zoom meetings. The main body requires concentration due to its complexity.

You're the first in the whole world to see it as I'm not posting it elsewhere.

It brings me enormous joy. Plus I keep a notepad by me and jot notes for the book as they occur to me.

I think it's the first time in my life I feel undistracted as I write with no other responsibilities apart from feeding myself and basic maintenance.

Hence joy.

Self Doubt

What do you do when self-doubt overwhelms you? Please tell me.

I received one of those letters yesterday. So far I only shared the contents with a friend over dinner. A friend going through her own troubles. Who couldn't offer me anything as she is riddled with SD herself.

I spent a week in September putting all the paperwork together for a grant application, excerpts, letters of reference, past successes. Wads of paper. These Grant Givers don't believe in the interwebz. I was fairly confident I'd get it. It wasn't very much, enough to tide me through final novel completion, editing, first readership feedback, etc.

I didn't expect to be demolished IF they turned me down. Note the big IF. I didn't believe that big IF for a second.

But they did. By letter (quaint, right?). Yesterday. Blah. Blah. I know the drill of these letters.

And yesterday and today I lose the faith and tell myself you are one shitty writer living in fecking fantasy land.

I am way too old to be a starving artist living in a garret reusing my teabag 99 times and fighting the dog for bits of kibble once a day.

Check In

OK. So there's a first reader delay of this novel to the end of the month. October 31st it will be ready. Today went well. Some days haven't. Noise. Diggers to be specific. Land that has lain fallow beside my property is being clear cut and shovelled away. Huge tunnels are being burrowed all the way to China. Ready for a monster home and monster shed. I grieved the trees. Hundreds of them massacred. There's no land use legislation out here on the edge of the Atlantic. You can do what you want. Changes need to be made. Obviously. And I will make them. Or, you know, die trying.

And the noise level? My dears. Some days were worse than others up there in the Tigeen. But today, I keep focussing on today, it was a very good day. I flayed the prior challenges, got ruthless with excess, trimmed the dialogue, expanded other sections. Cried. I cry at the sad parts. Always. And croon along with Ella to the happies.

Now I'm reviewing all the notes, all the workshop scribbles, all the annotations I made on the public readings I did of the chapters. This is the dog work. And the little envelopes and index cards with quick jottings made on planes and trains and boats and in cafes? Use. Discard. It is chaotic, this final stage.

And I do hope the noise will abate next door. It is not conducive to scholarly and intense perusal. Ha!

Thanks for hanging in there with me. Especially to my first readers.

I think to myself: If I didn't write I'd go mental.

Seriously.

My alternate universe keeps me sane.