Joined by a Thread

    I was sorting through my mother’s sewing notions this afternoon and discovered some huge spools of thread in a box. Here they are compared to a regular sized spool.  My mind immediately returned to a visit I made to the Paisley Thread Mill Museum. It is all that is left of the mighty thread mills that used to operate in Paisley, Scotland in the 1800’s.

     My great grandmother Margaret was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland. When she was about four years old, her father, a tailor with a shop on George Street, passed away. This left Margaret, her little brother James, age two, and their mother to fend for themselves. The family history suggests that their mother returned to work in those thread mills and when she was old enough, Margaret went to work in the mills, too.

    At the museum I learned that girls could start working at the mills at a young age. They were called half-timers because they worked half the day and went to school the other half. I am quite certain my great grandmother was a half-timer at one of the mills.

    Then I noticed that one of the spools of thread was waxed thread. In the same box was a leather sewing tool. I remember seeing it as a child. My great grandfather was a cobbler in England and this may have been one of the tools he brought with him when he immigrated to Canada during WW I. Another tool here is a leather trimming knife.

    These old artifacts were once just everyday objects with no special significance, but now they are treasured. They represent people I never met but who are connected to me. They represent a time that is gone.

    I wonder what things we’ll leave behind from our time that will interest and fascinate the generations to come? I must say, the idea of time travel has a powerful draw.

Are you intrigued?

I am. Down in a crawl space, through a maze of spider webs and spiders, my eleven- year-old grandson found this old jar and pulled it out. We are doing some renovating at Windy Rafters and the crawl space is under the oldest existing building here, other than the barn. This jar hasn’t seen the light of day in decades. I bring it in the house and clean it up. That’s when I notice there is a date stamped on the bottom of it: 1930. My “spider” sense is tingling, no pun intended.

Right now, I am outlining Windy Rafters Roughnecks Book Three. It takes place at the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of WWII. Some of my grandchildren and I have been out walking around Windy Rafters, poking into all kinds of old things, and as we do, our imaginations have been running wild. We’ve been talking about the possibilities. What kinds of things could have happened here back in those years? Their ideas come fast and furious and I can hardly keep up at times.

One thing I know for sure. This jar is going to resurface in Book Three. When we found it, it was empty. But what if it hadn’t been? It could have been full of canned fruit, as you would expect, or it might have been used for another more mysterious purpose entirely. I’m not sure yet. Only time will tell!   

Editors are Pure Gold

Editors are priceless. They are so much more than a grammar or spell check. They dig right into the heart of the book, the setting, plot, and characters. They also tackle the art and mechanics of the writing itself.

 Editors see the things I can’t see. To write is to be vulnerable, to reveal yourself to others, to open yourself up for scrutiny and evaluation. That is a hard thing to do.  

There are numerous times, when an editor’s comments have given me insight, not just into my writing, but into myself as a person. We all have blind spots. An editor artfully exposes those in the kindest, but clearest way possible. If you want to write, you must be able to listen to what is being said.

 That doesn’t mean you’ll always agree, but you must be able to step back and look at your work objectively, then change and revise. Sometimes you have to let go of a favorite passage or a scene that doesn’t contribute to the whole. That’s why you need another perspective. An editor is that second set of eyes that helps you see your writing in a new, more accurate way.

If you can work through this difficult process and listen to what’s being said, you can move your writing  to a whole new level and create something even better than what you imagined. A big part of that is learning to trust your editor’s feedback.