When I was in graduate school, one of my advisors would often send back my poems with two words scrawled in the margins: “Who cares?”
It was harsh, to be sure, but for an untried writer like myself, it was necessary to hear. The poems that received this curt dismissal were missing an initiating event, a reason for being, a spark that would engage a reader. The mere fact of words on a page isn’t enough, my advisor was saying, nor is the simple desire to write a poem. A poem needs to justify its existence. Without that justification . . . well, who cares?
Over the past few months I’ve received a handful of emails asking when I’m planning on blogging again. The thing is, I wasn’t planning on not blogging. It just kind of sputtered out on its own. I could have filled this space with occasional photographs of what I’m knitting, but if I did, it would have been just that: filler. The standard I’ve applied to this blog is the same standard my advisor applied to my graduate school writing. If I don’t have something interesting to say, I’m not going to waste my time (and yours) just making noise.
The truth is, I pretty much feel like I’ve shot my wad where interesting knitting topics are concerned. The gender stuff is covered; the Buddhist-like detachment required to rip out an entire sweater has been explored. I’ve already blogged about my deep and abiding hatred of cuteness, and how that squares (or doesn’t) with knitting baby items. And I’ve told you all about how much fun it is to be married to another knitter.
Does that mean this space is going to be silent? Well, probably not. I just submitted a pattern to knitty for the fall issue, and if it appears, you can bet I’ll be engaging in some more shameless self-promotion on this site. And if more of my fiction gets published, like my story “Daisy” just did, then I’ll certainly be announcing it here.
And if you have some kind of crazy angle on knitting that you want me to blog about, I’m always up for a good suggestion.
PS: Thank you everyone who checked out my entry in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest! I didn’t win, but I did get to find out that I’m part of an awesome community of fellow writers and readers. Thanks for the support!
9 Comments
Sometimes I like noise.
You’re always welcome to do another guest-blogger stint over at WoolGatherer. Bear that in mind, dear yarn boy!
And by the way, in response to the title of your post, I care.
I’m so glad that you had your blog, or we would never have met!
That is a good point. But I care!
I miss hearing from you.
I podcast as sporadically as you blog, so I empathize with your latest post. There isn’t always something to write/talk about knitting, so why post? As many listeners have said to me…it’s nice to hear your thoughts on knitting, whenever you care to share them, but don’t feel the pressure to be ‘regular’, so I would write to you that I enjoy your blog when you post, but don’t feel any pressure to ‘make noise’. When you do write, you do a great job and it’s very entertaining/didactic. I hope your ‘knitty’ submission is successful.
Yours blog is one of my preferred ones, its works is wonderful, took the freedom and copied photos its in mine blog with all its deserved credits, congratulations!
Berenice from BRASIL.
Retrofit in Knitty is great! Thank you!
I want to cast on right now, and would, were it not for the fact that I need yarn for it first.
For blogging inspiration, I just stumbled across an interesting article – http://www.kottke.org/08/09/some-recent-merlin-mann-goodness
Terrific do you think that was a senior prcjoet or something? I really want to know if someone got class credits for this. At U of U law school, we had a Jurisprudence prof who let us do an art piece to express how we felt about the law. I did a law school version of Allen Ginsberg’s HOWL featuring my fellow classmates.