make something.

for others, but mostly for yourself.

It’s almost Christmas. Two of my three children were sent home sick from school yesterday and so among other things, getting semi-cogent thoughts on the page has been repeatedly sidelined.

Of course, getting sidelined is sometimes exactly what needs to happen. It’s the twentieth of December and I can feel myself starting to power down. I’ve started to daydream about what novels I will devour in front of the fire at my mom and dad’s house over the holidays. I’ve let my desk get overrun with Christmas presents in progress. Over the next few days, and in the languid, lazy week before the New Year, I’ll be turning off my writing brain for a bit and settling into a different kind of space and pace that lets me recharge a bit.

I’ve been thinking a lot about making things. The book, always. But the act, especially.

Earlier in the week, when I first sat down to write a different version of this essay, I caught a glimpse of the small pile of dishcloths that I had bought impulsively while perusing roasted nut options at Trader Joe’s. I’d washed and dried them before realizing they didn’t come with the hang tab I demand of all my kitchen linens, and so I’d stuck the pile in my office to be ready for a spare moment when I could or would sit down at my sewing machine and add a length of cotton twill. As I sat contemplating whether I should real quick before getting to the real work of the day, sew those tabs, my mind skipped to the small set of wooden block stamps I was sent as a gift a month ago. I can usually ignore one crafting siren pulling me away from my writing desk, but not two. So, I rifled through the closet and chose a smallish stamp. I readied a squirt of ink and rolled it out on a rectangle of plastic until it made a satisfying sucking sound. I began to print small flowers on rumpled cotton.

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And then, as tends to be the case, as I was making that one thing, the more I was inspired to make other things. I decided that perhaps it was finally time to unearth the linoleum blocks and blades that James had enthusiastically given me two Christmases ago. It was a present that I had grumpily deemed something I had neither the time nor the talent to put to use, but with my fingertips freshly covered in ink, I saw the error in my thinking and was reminded of words I’ve already written: All you have to do is begin.

I decided what I needed to make most of all was an olive branch, and so I did. I sketched branches in my notebook and then I sketched another onto a pink linoleum block. I guided my blade along the lines of my drawing, plowing into the smooth, sliceable surface. I had never cut into a linoleum block before. I had never coated one with ink or pressed it against paper or cloth.

The resulting olive branch is not an exquisite work of art. I’m sure that by certain measures I didn’t make it correctly. But making things is not just like flexing a muscle, it’s literally flexing a muscle, most often more than one. The more you make things, the more you can make things. Maybe this is true, or nearly true, of most things. The more you cook, the more you’re able to taste when a dish needs a pinch of salt. The more you speak another language, the easier those words roll off your tongue. The more you write, the more the sentences will form when you’re sleeping, or walking, or half-listening to your spouse tell the story of the faculty cookie swap.

I tested my inked-up block by pressing it into wrinkled brown kraft paper, and I was reminded for the millionth time, why I agreed to write Making Things with Rose in the first place. I didn’t write this book because I have particular expertise in crafting. I am not an authority on making anything, really. Most of the time I’m utterly winging it. Most of the time I fail to measure and walk myself into a hole that can only be climbed out of with scrappy improvisation and mixed results. I wrote this book with Rose because I wanted other people to give themselves permission to do the same.

For me anyway, the sweet spot of making comes not from striving for perfection, but for proliferation. I look to my industrious, relentless children who churn out one drawing after the another with help from the muses that live in their fingertips. I don’t need to make one perfect thing, I need to make lots of things. I need to experiment and see what works with the same kind of abandon and confidence that they do. I need to dabble in different things so I can find what what process feels good, what feels onerous, what I want to get better at, what I’m happy to do only moderately well.

On a practical level, the small, personal addition I made to those generic dish towels made them feel special enough to serve as small presents. They’ll get wrapped up and given to people in my life who I want to offer a small token of my love and appreciation, to say nothing of a place to dry their hands or wrap their heads of lettuce. I feel glad that I was able to take something inexpensive and utilitarian and several steps removed from being lovely, and make it lovelier. I’ll take my olive prints and send thank yous and love letters. But if I’m being honest, the real gift was for me. Making those prints gave me the gift of time and creativity and allowing my screen-weary eyes to rest.

I don’t expect everyone to derive the same sense of meaning from making that I do, but I’d hazard the guess that if more of us were simply given encouragement to try, the meaning would come. Our children, if they’re lucky, are given regular opportunities at making. They bring home drawings and finger paintings. They build sandcastles and lean-tos. They ask their beleaguered parents if they can help stir the beans and add salt to the pot. We give them play dough because their fingers positively itch at the prospect of being able to shape something. Mine too.

So, that’s my year’s end plea: in these very darkest days of the year, try to make something. Fold your paper receipt into an airplane. Braid three strings together. Cut a paper snowflake. Dust off the project you’ve told yourself you don’t have the time or talent to do. I’ll be doing the same.