Why the crafting matters

The next Cornflower Quilt block.

One quilt is done! Another I have begun sewing. A third has six completed EPP blocks and the photo above is another I just basted and hope to start stitching tomorrow. I can't write more than one novel at a time, but juggling quilts is different.

Okay, once I wrote three novels all in the same month; it was my second year of National Novel Writing Month, 2007. I was forty-one, which seems a lot younger than fifty-six. Those books are tucked far away; I have a lot of first drafts that will never be more than steps in learning how to craft fiction. Some of my early quilts are that way too, but the level of nigh-incompetence of those initial books is far greater than the quilts. I was thinking about that today as I started piecing a Honeycomb Star quilt from Rachel Hauser; all the stories written over how many centuries that aren't published, known only to the persons who wrote them. And how few of those books might survive to the present day.

Once I got into a chain-piecing groove, making Honeycomb Star blocks was actually a breeze.

My novels, even the crappiest ones, are on a computer or two, in flash drives as well. But until word processors and computers became commonplace, novels were handwritten or typed out, at times solely for an author's need to set down characters and plots, themes and entertainment. Those countless stories were borne of dedication, hard work, and for the majority the probable knowledge their books' existence was mostly a silent one. Quilts are visible, often well loved to the point of falling apart. Yet writing and what comes from it is an act of solitude, the reward of a finished novel mostly enjoyed by the one who spent so much time struggling to complete it.

Special thanks to my hubby for assisting with this picture. Don't yet know where this quilt will land, but it has a purpose nonetheless.

I don't know why I found this notion so captivating, maybe due to finally wrapping up the languishing no more quilt. For all my caterwauling about what I'm going to write next, so many novels exist, but I do plan to add to that unfathomably long list. Maybe a book isn't as valuable as a quilt in that a quilt can keep someone warm. Yet a novel can proffer many important points, even if it is never released. The joy of finishing a book, even if it's only an extremely rough draft that the author knows will never be more than that initial expression, oh my goodness! Perhaps that is why books continue to be written, one person telling another how good it felt to finally WRITE THAT NOVEL. If you are contemplating writing, be it tomorrow or in November for NANOWRIMO, let me just say to go for it! Don't put off writing because you think you don't have enough of a story plotted out or you're worried it's not going to be any good or that no one will read it. Write that book because it means something TO YOU. I made my first quilt under similar fears, that I didn't have a sewing machine or an ironing board or cutting mat or rotary cutter. That blanket was hand-sewn all through until it came time to fashion a binding. Then I borrowed my daughter's machine. I then gave it to my dad, who was undergoing chemotherapy at the time, and he loved it. It was the kind of quilt a parent could most appreciate, but if you are the only one who reads your book, that's fine too. And if you write it and never read it, cool! I have a few of those novels myself. What matters was that for whatever crazy reason, I wrote them. And I have a few quilts like them as well.