The Pursuit of Woodworking

Yes, me again. Oh I know, I just won't go away, will I? Sorry.

The other day I had cause to observe that "you can take the girl out of woodworking, but you can't take woodworking out of the girl". Somehow I'd managed to read the words "slash camp" (don't ask) as "sash clamp". It could happen to anyone. Well not anyone perhaps; but probably any of the readership of this blog. Wouldn't happen to the non-woodworking person who confessed to having looked at my website and "not understood one word in ten" of course, but her loss. Actually I was impressed she got one word in ten, until I factored in the "and's", "the's" and "whoops, that went wrong's". Maybe I need to clean up my writing style a bit...

Ya see, while I haven't been woodworking, the old creative juices have still had to be channelled off somewhere, and I've been exploring the world of fiction writing. It's rather good fun. No, I tell a lie. The chatting with other persons also struggling with recalcitrant muses, "plot bunnies" and trying to balance "fluff" so cloying you're teeth'd drop out just reading the title with "angst" so painful your reader would be as likely to commit suicide as finish reading, that's fun. Having someone to "beta read" what you've written and provide feedback and proofreading is superb luxury. The writing itself is as tortuous as any review ever penned.

Incidentally, did you understand one word in ten of that? No? Now you know how she felt. Why do all these hobbies/crafts/trades have to have their own language? Sometimes I feel that human beings waste about 90% of their brain capacity having to store a glossary of terms...

Anyway, it turns out I write fiction as a sort of combination of review and blog. There's an inordinate amount of checking facts (quite ridiculous for fiction), jokes (natch), a conclusion at the end (frequently unexpected, which is rather less like reviewing) and even a helpful diagram in one instance. Starting with a bizarre premise seems to be a bit of a habit too. It's just a matter of time before fiction embraces woodworking and my current schizophrenic existence is resolved.

So there I am, hobnobbing with entirely non-woodworking persons, right? Exclusively female, what's more, so the odds against are ridiculous. In which case can you explain how it is that my beta reader has started taking woodworking classes (nothing to do with me, guv) and I've just had an email from her wherein she opinions that she "loves the router"? What's worse is she actually finishes projects. Talk about embarrassing... I may have to send her a plane just to side-track her into making whispy shavings and give my guilty conscience a break.

Thus, I give you the pursuit of woodworking. Even when I'm not pursuing it, it pursues me.