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The end of the work-week seems to be when I finally getting around to sewing the next thing I had in mind. This week’s project was a roll-up pencil case for holding my drawing pens, water-brushes, and pencils. I found a set of directions online for making one of these for kids to put their crayons in.

Do you see the problem here? How did I not?

Crayons are much smaller than pens, brushes, and pencils. Ah well. It’s still more useful than the cardboard box they were all rolling around loose in.

The ribbons in the original design were clearly not going to hold this all together, so I went for the big guns and added a piece of Velcro, thereby further lowering its aesthetic value, but raising the chances that I’d actually use it. Not sure I should take it on any airplanes, though, given its resemblance to cartoon dynamite.

I recently got a new fountain pen. (Yeah, I know: new typewriter, new fountain pen”¦ We’ll get to that in a moment.) I always carry my pen in my pocket, and while I liked the nib of the one I had, a Tombow Object, I found it heavy, and its innards clattered around while I was writing. Plus I love small things — ultimate portability seems to be an ideal of mine — so when I saw the Kaweco Lilliput, I really wanted it.

(I’m ashamed of wanting things. When they’re named “Object” it’s even worse.)

The Lilliput had good reviews online and sounded like the perfect pen for my tiny handwriting and need for precision when I write shorthand. When it arrived and I started using it, though, I found it scratchy, and it dried out if I paused for even a short time. Uh-oh.

So yesterday after work, I plucked out the nibs from both pens and”¦ whaddyaknow? They were exactly the same size, so I swapped them.

The nib that came with the Kaweco is much nicer-looking, with etched scrollwork that adds to the feeling that this pen dropped out of time in the Forties and somehow reappeared here, but”¦ scratchy and dry is just bad.

I used this new Frankenpen to write today’s morning pages, and it was just a perfect writing experience. Once again, DIY has allowed me to customise some small piece of the world to work exactly the way I want it to.

“¦Which brings me around to something that came up in the morning pages:

I am very good at setting up the perfect conditions for doing creative work. But I have become more accustomed to doing this than to actually doing creative work. I like my systems, and they are rewarding but it’s a trap to hide them them and not do the work. I have created the very best in security blankets. My systems are excellent: I have the best pen, typewriter, notebooks, programs, schedule, packages, delivery channels”¦ Now it’s time to put them to use. I’m not knocking what I’ve created — I’m proud of these achievements and I know my attention to them will help me become a better teacher to others. But, you know”¦ Again, I’m not making myself wrong here. But I’m all packed, and now there’s another adventure ahead.

I got a new typewriter in the post today.

I wrote a little story on it just now, after finishing an exhausting transcript for work and culling out the teensy bits that were actually usable as testimonials.

But I did it! I wrote something! I even let down my guard and allowed myself to go with a science fictiony idea that popped into my head this morning. (Which, please note, is a complete fiction; no trouble here in paradise.)

The Olympia is noisy as all holy hell and the typeface is strange, but the keys sure are snappy! And the text it lays down is deep and crisp and even (as the song says). The character recognition function of my scanning program even managed to snag every word perfectly (barring the typos, which were my fault).

So the old Empire-Corona is up on eBay. Much as I liked its simplicity and classic “typewriter”-looking output, I just couldn’t imagine getting a whole novel on it, nor that its fumbling lines of letters would scan reliably. It wasn’t quite the carnival strength-test of some of the machines I’ve used, but it was more kitschy-cool than a practical work machine.

And I do want to get to work soon. The other work.

A reader e-mailed me, saying some really nice stuff about my first novel. In my reply, I managed to articulate something that’s been at the back of my head for a while:

What an amazing thing, that we can create imaginary worlds, events, and people, then have others share them with us!

I remember the day I finished doubleZero in a cruddy back-alley shambles of a café-in-a-warehouse in Toronto. I was there with my friend Bert, typing away on my Newton, when I entered the final words and realised I was finished. I started crying, realising that I wasn’t going to get to be with those people anymore. They had become quite real to me.

I’ve had other relationships since — with characters like Hugh, Simon, Stefan, Peter, Jeremy, Victor, and Despendra — because our first love is seldom our last. The whole process is still pretty magical to me, and I’ve been away from it long enough that, to be honest, I’m scared by it. Which is silly, especially when I’ve got so much proof that I can do it consistently and even have a process for doing it that I’ve taught other people.

I guess it’s the measurement thing: because none of my books made a big splash (in that way we imagine outside forces are somehow going to take responsibility and make such a thing happen), it’s like going back into dating after being repeatedly heartbroken.

When I was dating, I got this feeling like there was soot accumulating in my heart with every rejection or disappointment, and that this dark stuff would eventually be the end of me. What a beautiful surprise, then, to meet the person who’d become my spouse, and find all of that accreted stuff blown away from every last corner. I had a fresh start.

I guess this is how it is for writers, too. As much as I hate celebrity culture and honestly do not want to become famous, there’s a certain validation in hearing someone say that they let their imagination participate in one of my stories and loved being in that place. It completes the circle of the creative act. I imagine the effect is exactly the same whether it’s one person or a million.

I was taught in theatre school never to ask “So what did you think?” because it’s unfair to put others in that position, and because they might actually tell you what they thought. If their reaction is bad, even though you know that their reaction is completely personal and subjective, you still have to go on with the show, and that’s difficult to do with harsh words in your head about the thing you’re doing.

Today I encounter the world with the great benefit of having someone behind me, shielding my spotless heart. Is this what we need as creatives? Not unquestioning ‘yes-man’ sycophants, but, well, fans?

Perhaps this is part of the process, and I need to go back and create a swatch-file of that sort of correspondence I’ve received, because for whatever reason, the mind doesn’t ever seem to hold onto the good stuff. It’s back to Square One every time in the land of conditioned mind, where we’re taught that we’re unacceptable by nature and have to earn our way into virtue. But as Zen teacher Cheri Huber says, “If self-improvement worked, it would have by now.”

I insist that everyone has the right to create, but there’s another jump to make from that place to the place where we have the courage to notice, value, and make use of the ideas that come to us. And perhaps there’s nothing wrong in needing help with that.

This weekend, my beloved turned 40. To show his true age, he hired a bouncy castle for his party

Pictures here (for now).

I’m typing this because I made an agreement with myself to keep the computer off today. Yesterday I kind of fell apart — which I’m allowed to do from time to time, but I don’t want to make a habit of it.

Craig is away for a couple of days, and I’m not used to being in this house by myself. I get the irony, given that I go to work in Canada for weeks at a stretch and leave him here.

The first night, I didn’t want to sleep in our bed. I don’t know why, it just didn’t seem like the thing to do. And having the place to myself sort of feels like a big stretch of play-time, so sleeping in the living room was kind of like sleeping in a fort. Except I’m a grown-up, and our couch is too short for me to stretch out on, so I slept on the floor. Not comfortable.

So I was already at a disadvantage when I woke up yesterday, red-eyed and a bit headachy. I ended up watching movies and playing a video game for hours and hours — which really doesn’t make one’s head feel any better.

Oh yeah, I also made a “DIY Book Press”, painted the shading into an instruction book to go with it, photographed it, posted it to my webshop, then added a bunch of stuff that I sell to my Etsy shop. I also spoke with my folks and my brother and sister-in-law on Skype. To the inner critic, though, all of this was for nothing because I also wasted time. Like I’m not allowed to have any down-time. (We’ve had words, the critic and I, and have come to an agreement about that.)

Last night, I slept in our bed and really enjoyed it. Not so much determined but wanting today to be different, I got up, got dressed in proper clothes (not the ‘day pyjamas’ I wear around the house), and went for breakfast at the pub. I finished making all the little cards for this year’s projects, then left when they turned up the volume on the enormous tellies throughout the place for some stupid sport or another.

The idea with these cards goes like this: there are domains, which are the major categories of my activities — air (systems and structures), earth (foundations, travel), water (connections, relationships, health), fire (results, products, promotion, celebration), and wood (arts, tying everything else together).

Underneath these are specific kind of activity, general categories like writing, making, art, money, and so on. Then, in each of these, are projects — a project being something that can be completed. (I have to remind myself of this one, and not set myself up with projects like “Figure everything out”.) On each project’s card go the individual tasks involved. At the beginning of the week, I’m going to review all these and add a few of them to my weekly game-plan (not to self: a few). I’ve also come up with a one-day planning sheet, because at present I’m just wandering in and either expecting myself to do everything, or else I have absolutely no idea. Either way, same result: nothing happens. Or, to be more fair, things happen, but at random, and I have a hard time acknowledging or appreciating them.

All of this, of course, counts as activity in The Game, my time management board game. Does this sound tedious? Overwrought? I enjoy making up systems and all the forms for carrying them out, and I’m committed to getting stuff done because it’s important to me to do the things I’m uniquely able to do and not just consume the finished works of other people or, worse, corporations (this is the critic’s big problem with me goofing off).

To that end, I’ve decided to re-read one of my novels — like a reader, not with an eye to editing it. That may sound wanky, but it struck me today that, as I try to get my head back into writing, this would really help me recapture the possibility of it. I’m re-reading Michael Chabon’s The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which is certainly inspiring — he’s a master both of fun storytelling and wonderfully dense and evocative sentences — but that inspiration will only take me so far. Should I end up wanting to write like him? I have to write like myself, so the sooner I cut to that, the better.

It’s time for dinner. After my Slob Day yesterday (which was fine), I set about cooking a bunch of stuff for me to eat during the week so I don’t just eat popcorn. (I will also eat popcorn, which, for the sake of my diet I have declared is not a grain or high-GI food or any of that.) So tonight it’s salad with a yoghurt vinaigrette topped with baked parsnip and sweet potato crisps. I also made muffins, snack bars, and a strawberry pie that I really hope will eventually set.

Edit: It’s now Monday and I’m entering all this into the computer. One thing that struck me this morning as I filled out my daily plan was that all this business with the project cards completely ignored goals as a structure. Asking myself about this, it seems that I fully believe I can complete any project, but when I look at big goals I’m consumed by doubt. Hm.

It occurred to me that throwing my laptop loose into my (often overstuffed) bag may have contributed to its problems, so yesterday afternoon I took a deep breath, carefully followed instructions (inasmuch as I am able to) from a book I picked up in Toronto called The New Handmade, and made myself a laptop bag!

Change purse, version three: this one actually works and doesn’t leak out its contents!

Ahh, Sundays! A big stretch of unplanned time — my favourite thing. I could really use a month of Sundays.

I had another go at sewing. I started with making shorts from a pair of cargo pants. That was always my mother’s trick when my brother or I put a hole in the knee of our jeans. In this case, I got a hole in the trousers from a drop of sulphuric acid — you know, as you do. (Craig and I took a jewellery-making course last year so we could make our own wedding rings, and sulphuric acid is used to clean off the silver after you’ve been blowtorching it.)

Result!

I also put a hidden stitch in the side, because I was forever having to hike these up: a size 32 is baggy on me now, so now they also fit much more comfortably.

As they said during WWII, “Make do and mend!” I’m looking forward to getting to alter and salvage a lot of things now that would have just been waste.

My ulterior motive in doing this was to also get some pieces of fabric to work with. The bottom parts of the legs gave me some nice canvas material to use, so I set about trying to make a better version of the change purse.

The first try came out okay, but the material was too bulky, so the second version ended up as a puffy cube that didn’t fold closed well. (The image this one brought to mind for me was “executive killer whale”.)

I used a button my friend Lisa gave me at Christmas to hide the mess I made while inserting a magnetic snap.

In spite of what I just said about waste, I decided this one was a write-off — sorry, a “learning experience” — and tried again. This time I thought, “Stick to what you know” and made a little fabric envelope. (Imagery-wise, this one is uncomfortably death-camp-ish.)

Sewing that Velcro on after the fact was a b@„¢*ch, and gave me a couple of chances to use the seam ripper that Lisa also gave me.

I put the button on again, this time to make the thing look a little cheerier:

It’s a mess. I’m well aware. Again, though, it’s my mess.

I have a habit of doing this, jumping into a new skill at the deep end because there’s a particular result I want, rather than going through all the lessons from the beginning. At this point in my life, I’m okay with that. It’s how I learn, and I do keep learning.

(I credit my client, Strategic Coach, with instilling that idea in me, that my abilities and my way of getting things done are the perfect ones for me, and there’s no one else I should be trying to be. Last month marked my thirteenth anniversary of working with them, and with each passing year I’m more impressed with the people I work with there and the things the organisation achieves. And I’ve been working with them longer than I went to school — gosh!)

~

I’d got up early in the morning because a friend of ours was scheduled to drop by for tea later, so I made a skillet apple pie for us to eat, along with some muesli bread and then some pancakes for breakfast. In the evening, for supper, I made parmesan aubergines baked in a tomato sauce — mmm!

All of these recipes came from a miracle of a cookbook my mum gave me for Christmas — low-carb, gluten-free, sugar-free dishes that keep turning out really, really well. Instead of making bread that resembles crunchy dog treats, I’m now producing spongey, sliceable, toastable loaves!

Our friend Donald came by in the afternoon, so Craig and I took a break. It turns out he was our first foot, and he’d just happened to bring a bottle of whisky. I’m not generally one for the whisky, but this was an occasion, celebrating a new year with a friend who’d lost so much in the last. He’d brought Clynlish, which is made in a town called Brora, not far from here (relatively speaking), and poured out a measure for us all.

We toasted then had a sip. What a complicated experience for my mouth! A celtic knot of fire wrapped itself around my tongue. When the liquid had gone down my throat, I breathed in and my mouth filled with the chimney-smoke from a peat-fire. Then my belly warmed up like someone had turned the furnace on in a cold house.

I still can’t say I like the stuff, but it’s a lot more interesting and real than, say, vodka and Coke (blyeech!).

For Christmas, the hubby gave me a sewing machine. No, he wasn’t trying to break the last bit of my spirit and turn me into a complete wifey — I actually asked for one. (Well, indirectly, but that worked.)

My intention was to do bookbindingy stuff with it, cover details, notepad spines, and such, but as soon as I got it, I started seeing the world in stitches. It’s amazing how much stuff in our everyday lives is sewn together, and we never even think about it.

The thought at the core of the DIY spirit goes something like “Hey, if somebody made that, then that means I could make one, too.” Of course, what that observation carefully steps over is the enormous talent or capability gap between not having a clue and being able to produce our own version of things we like.

Such is the case here, where even threading the sewing machine took about half an hour of careful scrutiny, gazing back and forth between the machine and manual, whose illustrations followed the last of the repeats of the instructions. So I’d look beneath the Russian text at the vaguely numbered graphic — like a keyframe in an animation with all the vital in-between frames missing — then flip back a page, re-read the English, then go back to the large plastic machine sitting on my desk like a porpoise. I felt uncomfortable echoes back to grade school Home Ec classes, where I constantly received “speeding tickets” for my lead-footed operation of the foot pedal. (This probably explains why I’m having so much trouble learning to drive Craig’s manual transmission Polo.)

In the end, though, I got it! I shortened a too-deep pocket in a pair of Craig’s trousers, secured the little hang-tags in the corners of all our dish-towels, and then I decided to make something I needed: a change purse. (Since we’re verging on me losing every last bit of my testosterone here, let’s call it a “change pocket”.)

Here’s the end result:

It’s somewhere between “pirate” and “steampunk” in design, looking like a cross between a casket and a desiccated mouse.

Still, I love it, because I made it. (Though I’ll undoubtedly be replacing it at some point with another try.)