Making the yarn pretty and hoping for the best, or why I love seemingly useless electric gadgets

Well, it's happened. My agent has received my latest revision and rubber-stamped it.  After seven years of writing and revision, my book is "done." I've worked my tail off on this book, going so far as to welcome a slight case of what may or may not be carpal tunnel. It has gone from thesis to novel-in-stories to novel told in chronological order to novel told in stages by multiple narrators. The end has changed a minimum of five times. Two storylines vanished entirely. It took everything in me to shut my creator's brain up and make the needed changes, but at this finish line, I really think the book is better for it. It gained a depth, a cohesion. I somehow took the tangled thread of its beginnings and made it whole, but it wasn't easy. It wasn't fun. No part of this has really been fun. It's just work. But you can't weave a yarn without effort and you can't write one without work.

I think it's important for people who decide to embark on this journey toward novel publication to know what they are in for. I certainly did not and still don't. What lies ahead? I really don't have a clue.

In the meantime, I have a new story idea and a novel idea percolating, and while they percolate, I'm spending my leisure time on other endeavors, among those tidying my yarn stash thanks to the new yarn ball winder I got with the gift card my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday.

I never knew what it was to have a yarn ball winder until now and I can't understand
 how my knitting life could have felt complete without it. In minutes, it takes a tangled mess of yarn and turns it into a tidy, center-pull ball. The effort I put in is minimal and the output is so satisfying. It's just the mind-break I needed.

The first day I got it, I spend the entire evening until bedtime turning my yarn stash into center-pull balls while my husband looked on and watched shows on Netflix. Really, the joy of a seemingly useless electric gadget will take one's mind off the worst of stresses.