I knit sweaters no one ever wears

Or what I'm aspiring to in my writing life

In my knitting cabinet (yes, I have such a thing), there’s a big tangle of yarn and needles, a mish-mash blanket project that uses up all the odds and ends in my yarn stash. It is not a pretty thing to look at, this Frankenstein blanket, but that’s not the point of it. It exists not because of what it will or won’t be, but because of the process of the making. It exists to give me something to knit when I need to knit. I need to knit more often than I admit to myself. I need to knit more often than I do.

I’ve written before about the specific way my brain works when I’m knitting. I don’t stop thinking, but my thinking changes. I think small thoughts. I am less inclined to worry or ruminate. I have no idea how or why this is so. Something about the soothing feel of the yarn against my skin? Or the soft click of the needles? I don’t understand the mechanism. I just know it’s true.

Early in my knitting life, I was more likely to become focused on the end product. Okay, sometimes I still do. Will this sweater ever be fucking done?

But more often, I can just knit. I can focus on the process instead of the end product. This is especially easier when I so often don’t end up wearing the scarf or the sweater I’m knitting for myself. That’s okay because it’s not about the sweater or the scarf. It’s about the knitting and the calm it brings. Process, not product.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

It’s about joy in the doing, not in the finishing. Contentment even if no one ever wears this sweater or scarf. Even if no one ever sees it or praises it or snuggles into it with a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter day.

This is how I want to feel about my writing.

If sitting in my backyard with a notebook and a pen, writing down mostly illegible words makes me happy, that is enough. The way my brain feels when I’m writing isn’t exactly how it feels when I’m knitting, but maybe it could be closer. Writing is most difficult and painful when I let myself become concerned with some future moment—when I let myself focus on the product and not the process.

Writing is ruined by the vision of the agent, the editor, the reviewer, or the random person on Goodreads. When you have been rejected early and often (and what writer hasn’t?), writing is ruined by that big, looming, NO, flashing neon in your line of vision until it precedes and follows every word on the page. No, no, no, becomes all you can hear. Writing is ruined by this crowd in your head.

But what if I don’t care that no one might ever wear the sweater? What if I didn’t pretend not to care, but truly didn’t? What if it was just about the quiet moments, alone in my head, and nothing else?

Certainly if a scarf ends up happening and someone would like to wear it, have at it. That’s a lovely bonus, but not the main point.

I don’t know if it’s possible to think about writing this way. I know I’m going to give it a shot. Try it on. See how it feels. Maybe I’ll end up writing the equivalent of the strange Frankenstein blanket thing in my knitting cabinet. Maybe that’s where it will stay, shut away from the world.

It still served a purpose, even if it does nothing than take up space in that cabinet. And even if it has no purpose at all, would that be so bad?