I’ve been thinking about my sad lack of practical skills – specifically my inability to knit, crochet or sew despite tuition and guidance. I’m thinking about it now following my weekend at the fabric event, and the amount of decorating in wool that was done.
And I came to a conclusion – we all have the ability to weave threads together in one way or another; my way happens to be through the weaving of words.
(This is a basket. I didn’t weave this either!)
Think about it – you take strands of stories, plait them, plait the plaits, make sure there are no gaps – or that the gaps are structural. You create a fabric that can be twisted, folded, turned. You create images, sew through strands of light and dark, of colours and textures. What you create has the capacity to change form.
As a writer I appreciate the creativity of my imagination but – as I have made clear many, many times – I really struggle with the editing. And yet the editing is the shaping, the crafting. It’s taking the raw materials – the wool, the pattern, the knitting needles – and making the finished garment. It’s what makes a book, or a poem, more than just a selection of words on a page.
All art, and all creativity, needs more than just the basic ideas. No-one reads Shakespeares book of possible storylines, after all; it is the smoothing of jagged sentences, the polishing of rough paragraphs, that makes writing accessible to an audience. And if we don’t write for people to read, why do we write?
So next time I’m feeling unhappy about my lack of practical skills I’ll remember that I have those skills in abundance – I just use a different medium.
Happy writing,
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 
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