author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Yesterday, I was in gloom. Gloom! I was absolutely certain that This Book Would Not Be. I was midway through working on that first scene, with Babba and Diane (sounds like a John Cougar Mellencamp song), and I found myself just throwing words at the wall and watching none of them stick. I couldn't seem to gracefully or convincingly convey how the bad-ass cool chick turns into a wide-eyed child again in the old homeless woman's presence, or why, and I couldn't figure out exactly why Babba decides to give the talisman to her out of all the teenage girls in Boulder, or how to reconcile contradictory bits of Babba's personal history with the unicorn, or, or, or--gaaahhhhh! I suck! I suck like a great big sucky thing!

Today, however, I finished rewriting the scene. And it ended totally differently from in the first draft. It revealed less, it was more visceral, it got a little creepy, and it got me just totally, totally happy. I was once more convinced that I could write! Yes! Yes I could! And this book will not suck all the quartz out of great granite boulders, no, it will instead rock those granite boulders like they've never been rocked before.

No, I am not actually bipolar. But thank you for your concern.

I told my husband about this phenomenon, and he, doubtless thinking of a friend of ours, said, "Like stripping."

I kinda went blink-blink while I processed that, and eventually said, "I guess so, yeah. Or like any field of expertise."

It's true. Whether you write or paint or program or dance nude for a living, the bad days can make you feel incompetent and depressed, low in the self-esteem department, prompting you to question your life choices, your attractiveness, your very status as human. And the good days can make you say, "I can so do this. I am a total writing genius," or "Damn, I'm one hot chica."

Right now, as far as I'm concerned, I am one hot chica escritora.

Even if I maybe did just call myself overheated writing desk.