Crochet-as-metaphor-for-novel-writing

I’m going to come out and say what you’ve all been thinking: there are not enough blog posts out there labouring this whole ‘crochet-as-metaphor-for-novel-writing‘ thing. Certainly not on this ‘crochet-as-metaphor-for-novel-writing‘ blog, which has lain fallow for almost a year. Oh the shame of it all.

So here is an update on where I am with my novel writing, as represented by some of my crochet projects. You know, because crochet-as-metaphor, etc, etc.

MANUSCRIPT #1: THE HIDDEN DRAWER
Two strangers exchange messages about their unhappy married lives in the suburbs via a hidden drawer in a cafe table, unaware that there is someone else reading them.

This manuscript is like the Forever Blanket. It took me forever and to you, the casual observer, it looks finished. But then, you get up close and you see shit like this:

And then someone, maybe me, tells you how I have to keep emergency yarn in my bedside table drawer so that I can fix it in the all the places it keeps unravelling and how I sometimes have to do this as I’m trying to go to bed, and you realise how stupidly flawed the whole thing is.

Maybe ‘The Hidden Drawer’, like the Forever Blanket, will never be finished-finished but maybe that’s okay because I learnt so much in the making of it.

Maybe.

But I’ll keep trying to fix it, because I’m stubborn like that. Also, I love it.

MANUSCRIPT #2: OUT OF WATER
A woman finds a wedding ring at the beach and shares it on Facebook in the hope of finding its owner. But as she uncovers a secret relationship, the tragic death of a child and the bizarre end of a man in a home-made fish suit, she realises the ring isn’t the quite the gift she thought it would be.

This manuscript, which I had just started at the time of my last blog post, is now in its third draft and was recently sent out into the world in four different directions. Like this baby blanket, it still needs tidying up. Also, I’m not entirely convinced that it’s big enough.

But for the moment, I’m not going to do anything else on it. Certainly, with the blanket, I won’t finish it off until the baby it’s been made for has been safely delivered into this world. And with the manuscript, I’ll just wait and see where and when it lands before I open that particular Scrivener file again.

MANUSCRIPT #3: EACH OTHER (working title)
A car overturns on a remote West Australian road. Nobody is badly hurt, but the impact is felt by the two sisters involved for decades afterwards.

This manuscript is like this new blanket project: a small, random selection of messy-looking squares that I’ve half-heartedly started stitching together, in the full knowledge that I’ve only completed 10% of the squares I’ll ultimately need to do before I can even begin to call it a blanket.

MANUSCRIPT #4: [Title completely unknown]
Something about postcards. 

This manuscript is very much like this future crochet project, where very little is known about it except that I think I might like to use this orange yarn from Morris & Sons.