The problem is, I have been instructing myself to FINISH TA for months now, and said novel is proving, even by my standards, a recalcitrant beast. There's a murder (a first for me) and I knew who the baddy was, and why she was the baddy, but I didn't know how to make it all come together at the end.
At a retreat in Bath at the end of March, I slowly but surely wrote myself into the neglected book. For the first time in months, helped by being in a quiet house full of writer friends, with nothing else to worry about, the words started to -- not exactly flow, but trickle. I still didn't know what the ending would be, but at least I was writing.
I normally go on rural retreats, where long country walks are part of the routine -- which, actually, they are at home anyway, and of course there are lovely canal and riverwalks in Bath. But there are also shops, and one day five of us writers went to a local wool shop.
Who doesn't love a wool shop? Colourful as a sweet shop without the calories, and with the added joy of its wares being soft and squishy and, well, woolly. I have been a keen crocheter for decades. Every room in my house is full of crocheted blankets; my dearest friends have all been given crocheted blankets. Did I really need another one? Did anyone? Why not try something different?
Why not knit? suggested one of my companions, Emma Pass, who is a brilliant knitter as well as a wonderful writer. Why not indeed? I had learned to knit as a child and, though I have never been able to follow a knitting pattern, my dolls were always stylishly dressed in my home knits. I would knit a jumper! Everyone assured me that I would easily follow a pattern and that if I could crochet blankets, hats and tea cosies, I could surely knit a jumper.
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| Emma Pass and I knitting in Bath |
Reader, I did try to follow a pattern. But, as has always been the case, something about the combination of instructions and numbers made my brain switch off. Never mind; it's the 21st century: everyone reassured me that, if I struggled to read a pattern all I had to do was look on YouTube and there would be videos galore. And there are, but it turns out I'm not good at learning things from videos either.
BUT! I can measure, and I can work things out, and I did invent all those dolls' clothes as a child. True, this was on a bigger scale, but the principle was the same. And I thought about all the books I have written -- eleven published so far. I didn't have patterns for them either; I did plan them to greater or lesser extent, and, having been a reader all my life, I have a deep-rooted understanding of how stories work, but there was no blueprint to follow, no guaranteed 'do this step and then this one and you will have a finished book'.
So I followed the same principle for my knitting project. I used an old jumper for measurements and off I went. Of course I made mistakes, and the finished product isn't perfect, but it is a recognisable jumper.
starting to look like a jumper
The experience of doing something creative, but not with words, something difficult enough to tax a different part of my brain, but repetitive and intuitive enough for me to do sometimes on autopilot was very freeing. I found myself thinking about my jumper at odd times, working things out in my head.
out in the real world wearing a real jumper!
So -- is the point of this post that the challenge of doing something both old and new to me unlocked something in my brain and allowed me to finish the novel? Well, the novel is still unfinished. BUT I now know how it's going to end.
And I'm halfway through my next jumper.
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