Back when I was a wee youngster of 22, I worked as a drama counselor at summer camp in Northern California. Mostly I was there trying (and failing) to relive the halcyon days of my own summer camp youth where I spent the best days of my entire adolescence singing touchy-feely songs, riding horses, sleeping on beds strung up in trees, and generally feeling like a superstar - in direct contrast to the utter loserdom that enveloped me when I was at school.

My experiences as a counselor in most ways did not live up to my experiences as a camper, mainly because the people who ran this camp were militaristic frat boy as*holes who knew nary a thing about touch-feely songs about the campfire or making kids feel like a million bucks, though to their credit, they did offer exciting activities such as waterskiing and rock-climbing, which my own humble summer camp never offered. (Not that we needed it, of course, since we were so busy getting in touch with our feelings, but still).

As a counselor there, I first made the mistake of falling in love with a rock climber (who later went on a climbing trip, discovered "god" with a lowercase "g," and dumped me) but never mind about that. I was about to graduate from college, had no f*cking idea what I wanted to do - or rather I wanted to be a writer but had no confidence whatsoever that I could do it - and had hoped this summer would be a respite from my ever-increasing stress. Ha.

I spent that summer in a sleep-deprived, ulcer-ridden, lovestruck haze - constantly fighting with the camp directors and in conflict with many of the counselors who viewed me as some hippieish layabout because I preferred not to wear a bra, and got sick all the time because I was so stressed out and dehyrated in that sunbaked hellhole.I'll never forget how the waterskiing counselor (aka the camp director's thick-necked, dimwitted son, who was f*cking the rich horseback riding counselor and referred to her as "the bitch" when he talked to his friends on the phone) accused me of "not doing any work."

Ha! The reason I was perceived as not doing any work was because I had to spend most of my days INDOORS WRITING. My job as drama counselor was not only to teach drama a few times a day, but to write, produce, and direct an original play every two weeks. Despite the various miseries of that place, that particular task was one of the best that could have befallen me at that time in my life.

That's because found out a few things that I needed to remember for a long time afterwards: I was creative. I was funny. I could finish a piece of writing when I needed to.

Oh I had known those things a long time before, when I was a child producing bright, bold masterpieces of art and literature and dreaming of future as a great artiste. But college and impending adulthood had drained me of all my creative confidence, and now, on the verge of becoming a working adult, all I wanted to do was be a writer but I had not produced much in the way of writing since fourth grade. Nor did I ever produce anything worthwhile again for a long time after that hot heavy summer.

But I rose to the task at hand. I wrote four witty plays in eight weeks that the kids loved, and, per instructions from the camp director, included numerous occasions for them to lip synch to the bands du jour (Aerosmith, Guns and Roses, Madonna). And, besides my broken heart, that is what I took away with me from Snow Mountain Camp: the fact that I could DO it. That I could write. Because for years afterwards I was blocked as a writer. As I entered the world and started a series of horrible jobs, I couldn't write. I started things and couldn't finish them. Over and over. It took years to get to the point where I COULD finish something. Hell, it took til NOW.

The funny thing is I'm terrifed all over again now. I've published a novel and am afraid I'll never be able to write another one. I know better, of course. I know that sometimes you just gotta believe when you don't believe, or, like George Michael says, that you gotta have FAITH. It's easier said than done, of course. Having faith and writing a novel. But I can do them both. And I will.

(Maybe).

As you know, I don't believe in doing things halfway. When major life changes occur, they must occur all at ONCE. Therefore, in the next month, not only will I become a published novelist, I will leave ye olde mighty Geeksofte!

I know! Now, like the rest of the world, I will actually have to work for a living. I will have to pay copays and deductibles like a commoner. No free membership to a swank health club, in which gleaming rows of machines await and banks of hot tubs beckon. No! I'll have to go sweat it out at the Y like everyone else, where the hot tubs (if they exist) have diseases and you have to wait in line for the machines, which do not have fawning, white-garbed attendants disinfecting them every five minutes.

No more discounts to all sorts of venues around town. And cheap software? Uh-uh. I can also kiss my discounted stock purchase plan goodbye - the one that gave me a true savings account for the first time in my life, and helped me become a respectable, indebted citizen with a niceish car and a nicer condo (currently emerging from its giant condom).

But more on that (and my new job) later. In other news, I seem to have become a mass of nervous tics as the book launch approaches. My legs twitch, my arms twitch, my face twitches. Alcohol consumption has increased. By the time you see me on the podium at Elliott Bay Books I'll have no motor control left but will be so drunk I don't realize it anymore.

Meanwhile, very soon, there is going to be an opportunity to win free books. I know you can barely contain yourself at the thought of this but please, try. I am out of control enough for all of us right now.

Sigh. There is something about a combination of sleep deprivation, gray weather, and utter boredom that just f*cks with me.

Don't get me wrong. I heart gray weather. Sleep deprivation has its time and place too, especially if it's for a good cause. Boredom, however, is one of my worst enemies. Boredom is even a character in my book - a poorly dressed and pimply one, I might add - who is usually accompanied by his jabbering sidekick Anxiety - and together they wreak all kinds of havoc for my poor protagonist.

These two, combination with aforementioned factors, can seriously kick my a*s.

Never mind that I've been complimented at least twice on my outfit today. There I was, wandering around the Geeksoft grounds in my bored anxious gray haze, when some random Geeksofter startled me by saying "Smokin' outfit!"

I was like huh, who me? I mean, I'm wearing the same damn outfit I was yesterday (deduce what you will from that) and I felt a little more smokin' then but for just one brief moment I felt smokin' today too. Then the smoke drifted away.

So besides complaining, what else can I tell you? I'm making progress on that stupid article. If writing yet another draft with a whole new spin that still sucks is progress. I've gained back nearly all the five pounds I lost in Patagonia. OH. Did I mention I wish I were still on vaction when I never got bored or anxious?

Ha ha ha ha. Isn't it funny how vacation always become so idyllic in retrospect? There WERE a few times I was bored on vacation and there were PLENTY of times I was anxious (oh let's see, I worried about having a heart attack while out in the middle of nowhere; I feared blowing off a cliff in the wind; I was certain the plane would crash, etc. etc.), and there many of times I desperately missed people at home. But once you get back it's like oh, my vacation was SO perfect I was SO relaxed I didn't worry about a THING! What a lie. But hey, it was still good. And it would be completely honest to say I didn't worry about as MUCH stuff.

I mean, how could you worry about all the petty crap you usually worry about when you're just hanging out in the mountains, sucking in fresh air, and looking at views like this?


In other news, oh, my first novel is coming out in a month or so. I am so excited terrified. (Can you tell I just learned how to do the strikeout command?). I will be doing bookstore events in Seattle, Portland, and the Bay Area, and will be making the schedule available shortly. So if you live in any of those cities, *lucky you!* I'm contemplating a little east coat jaunt too, but that's speculative at this point.

OK. You've heard far too much from me already. Momentarily, I will stop complaining and do something productive. Yeah, any second now.

OK I am totally blocked on this article I want to write.

Blocked is perhaps the wrong word. I've written several drafts of it and they all suck. Not only that, I *outlined* it according to the tried-and-true outline format that got me through Breakup Babe the Novel and it didn't work!

I mean, why is it that now that I'm a soon-to-be-rich-and-famous novelist that I can't even write a f*cking 2000-word article? You'd think the words would simply flow from my pen. That, with the new reservoirs of self-confidence that come from getting a novel published by the world's mightiest publishing house (oh Jesus, stop bragging, would you?) that I could generate a few paragraphs of crystalline prose about a subject near and dear to my heart but NO. YOU WOULD BE WRONG.

I'm trying to write about how I got addicted to blogging about my love life (no thanks to YOU PEOPLE) and then got over it. To write such an article, I need to show the psychological and emotional journey I've been on since I started this damn blog, including my infatuation with being a blogebrity, to the first pricks of my conscience, to the deleterious effect my blog had on my relationships once I wasn't anonymous anymore to the EPHIPHANY that finally made me stop (whatever that was).

Yeah. You'd think I could write this baby in my sleep. Maybe the problem is I'm still an addict. Any time I make any oblique reference to my dating life, everyone flies into a frenzy begging for the details and I go through two days of the DTs. Maybe I'm not far enough away from this subject to analyze it clinically.

Motherf*cker.

But I'm going to write it. I swear I am. Even if I did procrastinate all morning by writing on the blog. Because if there is one thing I have learned in the last couple years is that it takes ten million drafts to get something right and the only way to finish something is to persevere long past the point you think you should be perservering. Yeah, great f*cking career.

In other news, my very talented friend M. has made this luridly hilarious short movie that you should watch. He owes all his future show biz success to me for complicated reasons that I won't go into having to do with our high school production of the Music Man, during which I made a star turn in the small but pivotal role of Amaryllis. (He played a lowly townsperson but has come a long way in his career since then).

Oh yes, and before I sign off, let me tell you that there are big opportunities coming your way in the very near future to win a copy of my book! Seeing as I'm obviously never going to produce another word of publishable prose again, this book might will probably become a valuable collector's item! But just try to contain your excitement and I will have more information soon.

xo
BB