Hope Springs...

After a second not-quite-Berlin-grade winter, it looks as though spring is springing.  Our hof is full of daffs and other Frühlingsblumen and there are green buds on the bushes around our terrace.  It all makes for a much-needed lift to the spirits because I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately.  I’ve practically given up hope of getting a regular job (although in this regard I think I’m relying on that perverse logic that you always find what you’ve been looking for the moment you stop).  I’m also going through a crisis of confidence at the moment. I’m regarding the written work I’m producing as trivial and irrelevant and feeling averse to continuing with it. 

I had been writing manically in the early weeks of the year, and my main project had reached 81,000 words, but just as I could see the shape of the finished article, I hit a patch of self-doubt.  I think it began when the story I’d submitted to the Reader’s competition failed to secure one of the ten winning places despite making the shortlist.  Always easily defeated, I instantly started to see my work as lightweight, clichéd and sub-standard. 

I’m now having a job trying to convince myself to get back on that particular horse. However, I have had one pick-me-up recently.  In January I wrote about a job I’d been interviewed for at a new bookshop and publisher in Neukölln.  I didn’t get the job but I was asked if I’d like to work in the publishing side of the business.  A few weeks later I was offered the opportunity of proof reading and editing a children’s book which had been written in Hebrew and translated into English by the author (one of the bookshop’s owners with whom I’d had the interview).  I agreed and went to meet him to have a look at the book. We met at the Café St. Oberholz in Mitte – a convenient location, although the only other time I'd been there I really disliked this café. On that occasion I’d paid for the two coffees I’d ordered and been left waiting while a stream of other customers came in and had their orders processed straight away. When, after about ten minutes I asked for my money back, the barman snapped that my drinks were on their way then slammed them down on the counter in front of me.  I ought to have realised from the level of ostentatious peering at MacBooks going on that this was not a place I would get along with very easily.  Nevertheless, I’m always prepared to give somewhere the benefit of a second visit so when the meeting was arranged I was quite happy to do just that.  On this occasion there was the same level of ‘co-working’ self-importance (it could have been the same people as the time before who’d just never left for all I know) but the service was actually quite friendly.  However, for some inexplicable reason they had no tea even though about five were listed on the board.  I wonder how it’s possible to run out of all the teas in one go.  Anyway, the meeting went ahead, I looked at the book and chatted with the author for about two and a half hours. He explained that he was planning a series of ten books altogether and that this was the first. After that I didn’t hear anything for a while as he was snowed under with the business of trying to get the shop ready for its opening night (which was on Friday 13^th March). 

Earlier this week I received the translation, so I’ve spent the last couple of days working on that.  I’m also going back to the shop on Friday to interview him for a piece I’m writing about the new venture. This has helped drag me up out of my self-doubting, self-pitying rut.  I’m trying to persuade myself to get back to my fiction project and, as I say, the cheerful turn in the weather is having a beneficial effect on my well-being too.