Straight Talk

 

One more essay.

One of the things about doing these essays is that I am being fairly blunt about what I do and why I do it.

I'm sure that my opinions will not align with the opinions of others.  I've always been on the perimeter of the weaving community, pretty much from day one.  Offending others unintentionally has been something I've had to deal with for decades, in spite of being as tactful as I could manage.

When I've written articles, I've always done my best to be as inoffensive as possible.  You can catch more flies with honey, as the saying goes.  Sugar coat the 'bad', entice people by convincing them that the information you are conveying will help them.

But the thing is, it doesn't matter how much you sugar coat some things, someone will be offended.  

When I wrote my books, I was very careful to present only information I could document and defend.  It was only when I was teaching in person that I would let more of my opinions loose, but not before in my writing.

With these essays, I am writing them from the viewpoint of having someone sitting with me.  I'm answering questions they may not even know they needed to ask.  I am addressing information that is at best incomplete, sometimes inaccurate within the weaving community and trying to be as complete and accurate as possible (given the state of my knowledge at the present moment.)

They are being written from my perspective as a production weaver, needing to earn an income, therefore my lens is very specific.  And if that lens doesn't apply to anyone else, I can only hope that they will use the 'not all' rule and accept that what I am conveying will NOT be for 'all' and if it isn't for them, they must go their own way and ignore me.

But a lot of the things I'm documenting in these essays are things I didn't feel able to explore in detail, even in The Intentional Weaver.  It was a 'text' and therefore my opinion had to be kept at bay, to a certain extent.

The essay format is giving me much more latitude.  They are not articles for someone else's publication. I don't have to satisfy an editor who possibly knows less than I do about some of these things.  I can handle 'rejection' but I also don't want to have someone else edit what I am saying and removing the bones from it.

I am well aware that not everyone agrees with me.  Not everyone has done what I have done, or dug as deeply into the craft to understand the nuances.  (No, I'm not the only one, just saying that those of us who have done it are few and far between.  I will not name them because I highly respect them, even if I don't always agree with them - they came to the craft with a different lens, so their experience is not the same, therefore their conclusions are different because their needs are/were different.)

So I am not going to try and find a 'real' publisher.  They won't likely understand most of what I am saying or why I am saying it.  The revenue an author gets from a 'real' publisher is so little I can actually make more per unit by publishing it myself, just like I did with my other two books.

And if no one buys it?  I won't have an advance to worry about or remaindered copies to get rid of. 

Ultimately I am writing these essays as one last attempt to get what I know out into the world.  What happens to it then will be beyond my purview.

I'm quite sure Mary Black or Margaret Atwater didn't aspire to having their books still being used decades after they were published.  I have no such aspirations for this one.  What will be, will be.

But I can no longer travel to teach, so writing it all down, as best I can, is one way to spread what I know (or think I do - what I know changes) pass it on for others to do what they will with it.  For those who will be offended?  I accept that is going to happen.  For those who benefit from what I write?  Great.  That's my goal.  To help.  To shine a light, if possible.  Learn as much as you can.  Take the wheat, throw away the chaff.  Do what is good and right and correct for *you*.  These essays are *my* story.  If someone can learn from them, that is all I can hope.