i'm making fewer entries in this blog lately. that isn't because i'm not knitting, and it isn't because i'm not writing about knitting, either. it's just that i'm doing a lot of it in a different forum.
please visit the homepage for THE NOSHI KNITTING MONOGRAPH SERIES to find out more. while it's all laid out there pretty clearly, we still expect to post a FAQ on the "about" page, so if you have Qs, feel free to use the NOSHI e-mail address (located on the "contact" page) to ask your Q.
i suppose a rather broad Q on the subject will be, "why?" why indeed? you will note upon visiting the page that i have a partner in this venture. she may, in her own time and on her own platform, address her own "why" issues, which are not that different from mine, and yet, come from a completely different place. my reasons for embarking upon the NOSHI series are easily quantified:
1. i love writing, i love writing about knitting, and i often want to write something about knitting that i doubt could find publication in any of today's knitting magazines.
2. the world doesn't need another knitting magazine. nor does it need another book about knitting. do i really need to go into this diatribe again? i don't think so. filler, ads, and crap: not for me.
3. i get published in "real" publications of all sorts, all the time. it's not exciting or special for me to break that barrier to entry. undoubtedly, this fact has softened the blow, so to speak, when it comes to self-publishing; it's not the plan B, it's an active choice. (feel free to read more about my experiences in publishing and editing, as opposed to just writing, in the essay requiem for a literary journal - an essay which, a few months ago, i was surprised to find was being used as required reading, for the last couple years, in a literature course at a university in germany. you really never know who your writing is going to effect!)
4. a lot of the things i might want to say about knitting - this will make you reel with disbelief - would not necessarily be welcome in the great machine of the "knitting industry". furthermore, i think that other knitter/writers - and i don't frankly care if no more than one a decade emerges for this series - deserve a thoughtful, responsible venue. because guess what, folks, not everybody with a knitting blog should be getting a book contract, and way, way too many are. whatever "knitting books" used to mean, it's now one very watered down bottle of gin indeed. same with magazines.
that's about as much as i can put to it at the moment; the NOSHI page itself does a pretty good job, not to mention the pieces that are actually nearing readiness. i would expect to see the site in full operation by july. use the sign-up notification box on the NOSHI page if you want to receive updates.
in the long run, it's about fulfulling a personal need. i've learned, in the last five or six years - and i can't even really say "the hard way" - that this is what means something to me where writing is concerned. i like the little, personal, one-on-one recognitions: i like it when i get a letter from some doctor in manhattan that says "i read your short story in a journal and i thought it was fantastic." or when i e-mail a museum in another state for info about their hours and get a response saying "aren't you a short story writer? i recognized your name." or when a professor in germany e-mails and says "i've been using your essay in my class for the last two years!" this stuff isn't exactly instant gratification. it's the icing on the cake, this recognition, and what i'm very thankful for is that it's never been in response to work i didn't think was the best i could have done.
i write for me. i write with the hope that it will move someone else. i don't go out of my way to hope i will ever have empirical proof that it did. it's very nice when it does. but when it comes down to it, i write for me. and, a postcard featuring this quote by kurt vonnegut is in view of my writing desk at all times:
Still and all, why bother? Here is my answer: Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone.'
so check out the NOSHI page. it's not a substitute for this blog, but it's keeping me pretty busy. and i expect my partner will have something to say at some point and you'll know where to find her. in any case, she's the only person i'd trust to do this with. but we're easy to tell apart, even on the page. i'm the one who says "fuck" a lot.