getting started

I am forever trying to piece things together.  My favorite hobbies include things like writing, knitting, and sewing.  I want to learn more about quilting and tatting, and I am working on getting that going.  Right now, I am working on making Christmas presents for the family gift exchanges in both my family and my husband's.  My knitting and sewing skills are coming into play there, but I won't say any more than that for fear of spoiling the surprise of someone's present!  In knitting and sewing both, you take something and put it together in a useful fashion.  You take a swatch of fabric, cut it into pieces, and sew it into something useful - a shirt, a skirt, a pair of pants - whatever.  Knitting involves taking a long, winding strand and tying it in slip knots over and over again until you have a hat, a toy, a scarf, a blanket, a sweater - whatever!  When I write, I take the bits and pieces of ideas that have accumulated in my mind and try to weave and piece them into a greater whole that others will find useful.

I have started this blog because of the suggestion of a vocational rehabilitation specialist.  Because of an unexplained illness that happened almost nine years ago, I have both short term memory problems and epilepsy.  The initial illness included a fever high enough to put scar tissue on the part of my brain in charge of short term memory.  I am the queen of sticky notes, and very much addicted to writing things down in my planner to try to keep them straight in my mind.  I do spend a lot of time trying to piece things together based upon what I can remember, and sometimes I do so much piecing together that I end up believing that something I have worked so hard to remember is true, when really I have just gotten something confused.  My world is an odd mix of fiction and reality as I double-check things I believe I remember with my husband to verify their truth.  The purpose of this blog is to be my creative glue as I strive to find things I can still do and make the most of them.

One of the creative endeavors I intend to pursue and write about on this blog is knitting.  Knitting is something I remember watching my mother do when I was a child.  It was ordinary, and even soothing, to hear the clock-like clicking of her knitting needles as the family watched a movie together in the evening.  I have an afghan on my couch that she knitted, and some sweaters and socks in my dresser that she made for me.  I have not achieved such large projects yet.  I am just starting on a patchwork afghan, and also knitting smaller projects on the side.  Knitting is something I learned to do after I got sick.  I did not learn it alone.  My husband, J, learned how from a book, then taught me and showed me over and over again until I got it into long term memory.  The repetition of one stitch after another, and the opportunity to have any changes in the repetition written out in a pattern before me left me feeling more in control than a great many other things in my life.  I could knit when many other things were out of control.  I could still cause the stitches to be regular and predictable.  As I said, the major project I have in the works is the patchwork afghan.  I am knitting a series of squares in blues, yellows, and greens with the same pattern of stitch.  When I have enough knitted, I will piece them together into an afghan - a new bedspread for my husband and me to cuddle under.  I am using a lot of scrap yarn to make it - taking the pieces and trying to work them into something beautiful.  I feel like I have to try to do that with a lot of aspects of my life.  It feels broken and disjointed, and I have to try to piece things back together again.

Another creative endeavor I want to showcase on this blog is sewing.  I learned a little bit about sewing when I was in high school, but I did not get into it very seriously until after I got sick.  I have been learning more about sewing thanks to my friend, R, my mom-in-law, and my mom.  I have made some simple items of clothing, and learned enough to be able to patch clothing better.  This is a useful skill, since my husband and I are both tall and difficult to fit as far as clothing goes.  I am saving fabric scraps from sewing projects as I go, waiting until I have the chance to try my hand at quilting and see what sorts of things I can make with that.

The creative endeavor that is closest to my heart is writing.  I have written since I was a child - I remember showing my older sister something that I referred to as a philosophy - something I had written - and she informed me that it was poetry, and that I was a poet.  I have been writing ever since - poetry from that time forth, stage plays in high school, and novels and nonfiction books more recently.  I am trying to figure out the best writing routine for me to assist me in my goals as a writer.  I want to become prolific, proficient, and published.  That is a lot to do all in one fell swoop.  I have been working on it in every way I can think of - the biggest issue is working past the feeling that I don't have the skills to be able to do it.  I am constantly reminding myself that it doesn't have to come out of me perfect - that I am allowed to write a ROUGH draft and then revise it.  That is the way life is in general.  We don't always do things perfectly, but in most cases, we have the opportunity to apologize, revise, and set things right when we need to.  I have a book that I wrote a while ago - my very first attempt at a full length book - that has been sitting and gathering dust for a while now.  It got a rejection letter from a publisher when I tried to submit it.  It was a harsh blow to me - deflating my dreams significantly.  Still, with some encouragement from friends, I am finding the courage to try to revisit and revise it with the goal of seeking other venues for publication after I have tightened it up.

The other piece I want to work on is an unfinished novel.  I started it in November for National Novel Writing Month 2011 (see www.nanowrimo.org)  I got the requisite 50,000 words written for the contest, but only began to skim the surface of the story line my husband helped me to plot out.  (He is great with coming up with story lines, but doesn't have the patience to sit and write them out.  I have a harder time coming up with the initial idea, but once I have it, I can go to town.  He is good about letting me pick his brain for ideas!)  I have one other novel part of the way written, but I am thinking it gets to sit on the back burner for a little while - three novels at once might be too much for my little brain to handle.

So my plot for the writing is to work on revising the nonfiction piece that has been gathering dust, and to keep on working on the rough draft of the novel.  Since writing is something I do still feel like I can do, I want to try doing it as a full-time job type of endeavor.  I don't know if I will end up getting paid for this or not.  I have a long while yet to wait before I find anything out along those lines.  Still, I have been feeling very strongly that this is what I am meant to do.  I need to get myself in gear and actually do it.  It will not happen all at once.  It will be a daily trudging along, not one glorious flight across the world.  But if I keep on going, I believe I can get there.  I can piece all of the ideas in my head and all of the experiences I have had into useful and beautiful things.  I can make a novel, a non-fiction book, an afghan, and some clothing, and feel more like my life wasn't completely lost when I got sick.  I can use the creative glue to work on piecing myself back together again.