I was just sitting here innocently typing away at my favorite coffee shop. Doing what I do every Saturday morning (and every other morning, for that matter), which is work on my book.



I've long since learned to deal with that empty feeling that assaults me when I wake up alone on a weekend. I just get up and write. Sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's easy, and often that empty feeling keeps trying to strangle me, but I just keep writing anyway.



And who should log onto Instant Messenger as I sat here trying to reconstruct in detail one of my many doomed relationships from the past two years, trying to analyze where and how it went wrong, meanwhile being witty and literary and wondering, Am I really ever going to sell this thing? 



The Charming Canadian! I saw his name flash before my eyes. "The Charming Canadian has logged on." My heart sped up. I fumbled over the words I was writing. Stupid, terrible words.



But I kept writing. I wrote with one side of my brain and hoped with the other side of my brain that maybe, just maybe, he would drop me a friendly line even though he was in the midst of wrapping up what would have been the world's most romantic vacation had not, of course, The Other Girl been bit by a venmous snake while climbing up Mt. Si and puffed up to the size of a balloon like that evil aunt in Harry Potter.



He didn't, of course, and when I checked a few minutes later, after writing an entire, not-half-bad paragraph, he was offline.



Maybe he blocked me! said Needy Girl. Maybe he's so in love with this other girl - even if she is bloated beyond recognition- he knows it was a terrible idea to become IM buddies with you and is afraid you're only going to stalk him so he BLOCKED you?



So what, said Sensible Girl? Who cares? You have a f*cking book to write. So just keep writing.

 

And I did.



And I will. 

 

Because what else am I supposed to do, really?