The shop that is almost ready

A woman in Manama binds journals by hand, and for most of a year she has been about to open an online shop for them.

The reasons she has not opened keep changing shape. In spring the photographs were not good enough, so she took them all again. In summer she decided the name was wrong. Then she heard that a better way to sell online was coming and thought it wiser to wait. Then she set herself a launch date, missed it, and stopped setting dates. Lately she has been too busy making journals for friends to face the hard part, which is putting a price on her work in public and finding out whether strangers want it.

Taken one at a time, each of these sounds reasonable. Some even contradict each other. She is waiting for new tools while refusing to learn the ones in front of her, holding out for perfect while settling for nothing. That is how you can tell they come from the same place.

It is the pull away from the work that matters, and it is not reserved for novelists. Anyone starting anything feels it, whether a shop, a club or a cause. It turns up as busyness, as research, as high standards, as modesty. It almost never turns up looking like fear.

It is not a flaw in her character. It is closer to a reflex, and reflexes can be noticed. Once she sees that the new photographs and the missing date are the same thing in two disguises, the choice becomes visible again. She can name it, forgive it, and open the shop.