Do not read this

unless you want to be seriously - irritated. I read Nicola Morgan ranting on about why she writes. It was timely. Someone, a good friend, asked me the other day what I would choose if I had to choose between writing and knitting. I said writing. I did not hesitate.
Now, do not get the wrong idea please. I find both things a huge challenge. Knitting is difficult for me. I am not a coordinated individual. It took my patient paternal grandmother years before I could knit to her satisfaction and mine. If I had been given a penny for every stitch I dropped (yes it was way pre-decimal currency in Australia) I would have been so wealthy I would never have needed to contemplate the possibility of anything but a life of luxury. Knitting creates things. It clothes people. It is useful and it can, in the right hands, be beautiful. People get addicted to knitting, seriously addicted. They have a problem called SABLE - 'stash advancement beyond life expectancy' or more yarn than they can hope to use in their lifetime and the lifetime of the other knitters they know.
But, knitting is not writing. Many knitters never actually create anything. They follow patterns. They re-create other people's work. I do create my own but there is always the feeling that there is an element of plagiarism there. Knitting has to have features that are features in the work of other knitters too. Knitting is thousands upon thousands of stitches all connected with one another in ways that have been connected before and will be connected again. In between there will be only tiny detours.
Writing is different. It is mine. I can start from the very beginning. I can create an entire world. I can have as many characters or as few as I like. They can do whatever I want them to do. It is only if I want to communicate them to other people that I have to acknowledge restraints of any sort. It is no good writing something unbelievable. There have to be points of contact. I might make you see something upside down, back to front, or inside out, or as an extension but it has still to be something you can recognise from your experience and your point of view or I have failed to communicate. Writing is about making connections, not just one connection but thousands upon thousands of connections. Writing is about major detours and new journeys. It is exploration. I have to make my own map. I have to knit words in new ways.