At various appearances, book clubs, conventions, I’ve talked a little about how knitting socks connects to writing a story…and it does, although I didn’t start out writing stories as a kid with any such awareness.\u00a0 But what I’ve said before has new and deeper relevance in my struggles with both writing and knitting after the 2018 concussion..and on the physical end, with my struggle to ride again.<\/p>\n
I quickly found that I could not read as well (just barely read) and could not write coherently or imagine a storyline, even one already planned.\u00a0 Over time, struggling to regain at least the ability to read and write, I began to grasp what was missing.\u00a0 I still had vocabulary and I could still form sentences.\u00a0 But I could not focus for more than a couple of sentences at a time, or through a long sentence.\u00a0 I could write briefly about concrete things–what I had for breakfast, what the weather was, etc.–but had no awareness of the parts of writing that aren’t about vocabulary and simple sentence structure. \u00a0 My nearest friends encouraged me to keep trying (and bless them for that) but said (and again–I needed to hear it) that “This doesn’t sound like your writing, keep trying.”\u00a0 The characters I tried to make up were…like bad TV sitcom characters, flat and obvious. \u00a0 I didn’t understand them, so they had no real motivation for what they did.\u00a0 When reading, I couldn’t read more than a paragraph at a time (sometimes not that) and couldn’t connect it to other paragraphs even after several readings. \u00a0 The *sense* of a story wasn’t there.\u00a0 The vital connection of motivation to action, that chain of cause\/effect, didn’t connect.\u00a0 I had never outlined, in the formal sense and trying to outline now didn’t work because I had no reference points…the “hilltops sticking out of the fog” image I’d used before for the way I write had become the blank gray of fog filling the entire visual space.<\/p>\n
When I tried knitting, while I couldn’t read,\u00a0 I couldn’t concentrate long enough to knit a complete row–I could lose my way between one stitch and another.\u00a0 I had several pairs of socks partly worked, at that time–nothing unusual, I’d learned to overlap them so that the many rows of ribbing could be done in small increments while the trickier and more challenging parts (the heel flap, turning the heel, and reconnection of heel to the “front” of the sock)\u00a0 were going on, and by the time the sock was finished, so was the ribbing, and the more interesting parts had now arrived.\u00a0 But I couldn’t do the simple knit-two\/purl-two of ribbing without getting lost, making mistakes over and over, so the ribbing was crooked, full of holes and bulges…I’d knit a purl stitch, purl a knit stitch, slip a stitch without noticing, put in\u00a0 a yarn-over, knit into the wrong part of the loop, or even between stitches.\u00a0 And though after years of regular knitting I had been able to fix the mistakes I made quickly and easily…now I couldn’t.\u00a0 I couldn’t even pick up a dropped stitch and get it back on the needle.\u00a0\u00a0 Though I’d developed (from a basic “sock recipe” in Yarn Harlot’s Knitting Rules) my own sock patterns for my particular feet, and had knit quite a few dozen pairs of socks, post-concussion I was unable to visualize how to cast on, cast off, get increases and decreases pointed in the right direction (left leaning\/right leaning)…and worse, trying to look up how-to videos now made no sense.\u00a0 I’d been knitting without a formal pattern, “feeling” what a planned item needed the same way I “felt” what a story or a book needed.\u00a0 Since knitting is concrete, fully visible and tangible, visualizing the intended complete product was easy once I’d made one (and sometimes before.)\u00a0\u00a0 And yet now, the concept of a sock–even holding a sock in hand–did not make sense.<\/p>\n
Gradually, as I went back and started reading slowly and intently, books I’d read as a child, the reading skill and speed picked up.\u00a0 FAR more slowly than I wanted.\u00a0 I didn’t, after making a mess of the projects in hand, start trying to knit again.\u00a0 Maybe I should have.\u00a0 But reading and writing still felt like one FAIL after another, and as most of us know, failure on failure on failure saps the energy to keep trying.\u00a0 I didn’t risk it with anything but the writing.\u00a0\u00a0 Story after story fizzled after one paragraph…three paragraphs…two pages.\u00a0 Not until I was reading within 15% of my previous speed and difficulty (still wasn’t up to science journals then, but could read “good” magazines) could I write something longer than a page or two of “fiction.”\u00a0 In quotes because that was the intent but not the outcome.\u00a0 I moved up and spread out from the few I could read at first–adding in genres I’d used to enjoy and had copies of: mysteries, thrillers, political, science fiction, fantasy, and checked chapter by chapter–had I “gotten” it all?\u00a0 Could I remember the gist of it?\u00a0\u00a0 I began several books (none made it very far–I would lose what horse people call “impulsion”–the feel of a story that wants to go forward, that derives its energy from the characters, whose motivations sprout plot the way good compost sprouts and nourishes plants.<\/p>\n
After a year and a half I tried knitting again.\u00a0 No luck.\u00a0 Messes, knotted globs on the needles.\u00a0 Pull it off, wind up the yarn, put it all away–didn’t need the frustration.\u00a0 Knitting and writing both depend on the brain’s ability to visualize the desired whole (for creative work–people who “just follow directions” turn out useful and beautiful items without this, I think.\u00a0 My mother was a creative person; she had an aunt (for whom she’d been named) who did perfect knitting and crochet from directions only, and no matter how many times she produced a certain motif, needed directions to do it again.)\u00a0\u00a0 I couldn’t follow the directions, because the socks I made were unique to the feet I made them for.<\/p>\n
A year passed.\u00a0 Another year passed.\u00a0 I was “better” but still not there yet, and with increasing age realized that I might not get there ever before advancing age put a lid on the pot.\u00a0\u00a0 I began yet another book, and tried for patience and acceptance and all those related virtues.\u00a0 For those who don’t know me personally,\u00a0 in horse terms I’m a hotblood, not a coldblood–Arabian, not Percheron.\u00a0 (Though these days I look fairly draft-type.)\u00a0 The urge to write, though, growing stronger.\u00a0 The book started full of energy, and when it faltered, I was able (with a lot of difficulty) to shove it forward through the mud…then it would roll along, then fall into another mudhole.\u00a0\u00a0 I wore my failing socks as they developed holes; I tried darning and managed to bring one or two pairs back…but then they wore through again.\u00a0 Last year I started a pair of socks, and very slowly felt my way back into knitting, still unsure it would ever work.\u00a0 The book finally came to an end; I sent the draft to my agent, who kindly but firmly explained what was wrong with it ( a lot).\u00a0\u00a0 I set about rewriting it.\u00a0 With every passing month, I could see more and more what the book needed, what I’d not been able to see while still concussion-fogged.\u00a0\u00a0 That fog had started, I realized, with the *previous* head injury, when I never lost consciousness and thus didn’t think of it as significant.\u00a0\u00a0 I was determined to see if this book could be fixed somehow…and then we had the blackout and Big Freeze and my feet were cold and miserable (actually we were cold and miserable period.)\u00a0\u00a0 I grabbed two other pairs of holey socks and darned them faster than I’ve ever darned before (or since)\u00a0 and put them on.\u00a0 Took a former project (way back, never finished) and got it off the needles for my husband to wear.\u00a0 Survival mode cuts through a lot of loss of confidence and puts the task in front of you\u00a0 as “this or freeze” (or in other circumstances other possible ways to survive.)<\/p>\n
We survived.\u00a0 In the days of no power, I had grabbed snarly mess of\u00a0 the blue pair of socks, plus started a longer scarf for my husband.\u00a0 With knitting (much of it outside, in the carport, where we cooked) and cooking in serious emergency mode confidence slowly returned (well until the last night, which was just plain horribly cold and I couldn’t sleep for fear of it.)\u00a0\u00a0 When the power came back on and stabilized, I reread the first chapters (already revised) and saw that they STILL needed the elusive “impulsion”…and finally figured out what that was for this book.\u00a0 So far first reader is in agreement.\u00a0 I can see, as I work on it chapter by chapter, what’s not there, what is there that needn’t be, and it now feels\u00a0 “on the bit.” in the sense that race horse jockeys and event riders mean it (not the nose tucked in sense but in the sense of\u00a0 the horse has locked onto a fence and is taking the rider to it, not backing off, confused, wandering, etc.)\u00a0\u00a0 The knitting was off and on for several weeks, but I felt confident enough after the heel turns to look at a WEBS ad online and order some new yarn.*\u00a0 It’s been hard to find a brown I really like, that has a good feel.\u00a0 I cast on the brown pair of socks.\u00a0\u00a0 And now the blue socks are past the gussets and onto the foot, the brown socks are well into the ribbing,\u00a0 husband’s new scarf is 2 feet long (and if it had been sunny today there’d have been a picture…or more.)\u00a0\u00a0 The part of the brain that “holds” a project in some mental form seems to be working again, so God willin’ and the crick don’t rise I expect to finish socks and book, and maybe more writing beyond that.<\/p>\n
*I have plenty of yarn.\u00a0 The yarn I was working through before the concussion would be a lot less if\u00a0 I’d been knitting at my usual rate the last three years.\u00a0 But knitters know that new yarn coming in, especially yarn you haven’t knit with before,\u00a0 is a spur to casting on more RIGHT NOW.\u00a0\u00a0 The blue socks are in Ella rae Classic (wool), the browns are CloudBorn (superwash wool), the scarf for my husband is in Berocco Comfort (acrylic), all worsted weight and being worked on US 5 double pointed needles (socks) and US 7\u00a0 cable needle by KnitPicks (scarf).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At various appearances, book clubs, conventions, I’ve talked a little about how knitting socks connects to writing a story…and it does, although I didn’t start out writing stories as a kid with any such awareness.\u00a0 But what I’ve said before has new and deeper relevance in my struggles with both writing and knitting after the Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/751\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}