Turn it over! by Jane Walters

Some of you may know that I have recently moved house. Again. (No one could accuse my life of being boring.) Every move brings its challenges, some in the same kinds of categories: settling in, sorting out; but this one feels different. For whatever reason, I am having the mother of all clear-outs. Things I have clung onto through every storm now seem redundant. Childhood relics still amuse, but even the book of terrible, terrible poems I wrote at the age of 10 has gone – laughingly assigned to the bin, along with my dream of them being posthumously viewed as the unlikely foundation of an illustrious career.

I’m no Philistine, though, and this week I have attempted to salvage a tapestry I stitched during my first pregnancy. It never did become the fire-screen the pattern book promised; instead, it got caught up in a pile of other oddments of sewing, decaying quietly together. I don’t think any soap product could remove the damp stains, but as I gently and hopefully massaged the bubbles into the stitches, my eye was drawn to the back of the canvas.

Seeing the reverse of the design reminded me of a prophetic word I was given some years ago. ‘You’re looking at the wrong side of the picture,’ the lady said. ‘All you can see are the knots and dead-end trails. But God is working beauty in, if you can only turn it over.’ These days, I apply such thoughts not to stitching but to writing. The lessons can feel the same. Hunched over, head-ache looming, convincing myself that every word is meaningless, pointless. I hold up the results of the latest session and am no more encouraged. But…

What if I were to turn it round? Instead of scrutinising what I have written, why don’t I invite someone else to take a look or a listen? I might still be looking at the reverse side of the canvas, so to speak, but at that same moment, the other person is only seeing shape and pattern. The picture makes sense to them and, what is more, they see things I didn’t realise had been woven in. That part where there is the mark of a tear falling, or over there where the words came only after great effort and surely anyone can see the blood and sweat – all received and understood.

Sometimes, we can be so hung up on the need to edit, edit, edit, that we miss what the apparent imperfections in our words can convey.

Turn it round. Look at it differently. The way that your readers might.

Jane Walters is Chair of ACW and loves to encourage writers.

To hear more of her thoughts, why not come to this?

ACW Summer Writers' Day Two (Zoom) Tickets, Sat 15 Jun 2024 at 10:00 | Eventbrite

www.janewyattwalters.com