The point of the book wasn’t to say “look at me, I’m a genius and I wrote a book and you are hopeless little incapable people"
Following my recent post about sending out signed, dedicated copies of my books, I opened one and discovered that it had been written all over – by other people.
I had forgotten, but it came back to me.
That book, Through The Eye Of A Needle (later renamed Sew Your Own) was theoretically about my own attempt to make all my own clothes, right down to the underpants, which I crocheted with nettle fibre (I know, I know!).
But really the book was intended to encourage readers to do something creative themselves, to make things, and thereby reclaim a bit of agency in a world that can feel out of control.
And I remember going to the wonderful Wigtown Literary Festival in Scotland and delivering a talk about the book, which went down very well thank you for asking. And at the end when people were good enough to line up and buy a copy of the book and ask me to sign it I turned the tables on them and asked them to sign my own copy.
I mean, the point of the book wasn’t to say “look at me, I’m a genius and I wrote a book and you are hopeless little incapable people, mere consumers”, if you see what I mean.
So some of them signed it, which I had forgotten until I opened the book just now.
So that’s nice.
What they wrote
“Thanks for your inspiration and humour” – Cate
“Thanks for a great talk” – Colin and Brid
“Great stuff” – Phil, Terry and Sally-Ann
“Thanks Jean-Paul, keep knitting” – Paul N
“Val Spernagel (WIGTOWN QUILTERS)”
“Keep sewing!” – Roselle
“Inspirational!” – Jo & John (on honeymoon)
“Keep enjoying the moment!” – Fiona P
“Thanks for the talk!” – Brian and Lillias
“Brilliant, thanks” – Elly & Tabatha x
“Many Thanks” – W M
“Inspiration” – Iain Drudy
“To JP. Thanks for the memories of hippiedom” – Gary C, see footnote1
“Very inspirational” – Linda
1 Gary. I remember Gary very well, because it was such a surprise to see him in Wigtown. We had been colleagues at the Financial Times, in London, until he stopped working there because (as I learned) he had moved his life to Scotland.
Finding this again is interesting and timely. Over the last few years the internet has become increasingly un-generous – a place where everyone wants to keep you on their own site or platform. Don’t Look Away!, seems to be the message.
Everyone is fighting for a bit of attention.
Me too, obviously. I imagine that anyone who ever posts anything on social media has succumbed – at least a little, occasionally – to the temptation to work the algorithm to advantage, by doing THIS instead of that.
I’m trying to move away from that, by spending much less time on social media. I’m putting my work here on my website instead. When I first established the site, in 2002/3, it was both an archive of my own work and a place to share links to other fascinating material elsewhere2. I miss that!, and I’m trying to get back to it3.
In this instance, I can’t share links to the people who wrote kind words in my book, but I can at least go to the mild trouble of writing it out here, for you to see.
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2 Fascinating material elsewhere. Case in point is a blog post I wrote in 2012, about the Wigtown Book Festival, and filled with links. I looked at that post today and saw that several links no longer work. People I mention must have closed down their websites, can now perhaps only be found on social media. Sadly, I removed the links.
3 Trying to get back to it. Please help me to hold myself accountable as I try to share more and more links.
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