4 More Ways That Knitting Is Like Writing

bc obviously u didn't get enough the first time

1.  Surprise patterns

If you’re knitting with multiple colors, there will probably come a time where you mess up (it’s difficult to juggle multiple strings without a mistake or two), and sometimes it takes a while for you to figure it out.  Sometimes that results in surprise patterns, which can be surprisingly beautiful and make you decide to change the direction of your current project, or can be horrifyingly ugly and make you want to burn everything everywhere forever.

Writing a book is the same; in the course of writing your story, you’ll find things happening that you didn’t expect.  New plot complications will arrive, new side stories will unravel, new characters will reveal themselves from betwixt the luminous petaled asscheeks of a flower man; sometimes these little things will add up to make great new structures within your novel that you never expected and cherish all the more for it!  Other times it’ll take you down the windy road to tangent city, and you’ll need to take a bulldozer to the mountain pass.  

2.  You usually want a tight knit, sometimes tighter than others

When you knit a blanket or scarf or what-have-you, you want the knit to be tight, to keep the water or snow or just general elements out, to keep body-heat in, and to keep the thing from falling apart.  Sometimes the knit needs to be tighter than others, depending on what you’re making and for what kind of weather it was made for.  You wouldn’t want to be caught in a snowstorm with a summer t-shirt!  

Likewise, the weave of your story needs to be tight, to prevent plot from spilling out or characters being inappropriately exposed.  When you read a story, the flow should appear seamless, as if every last word is inextricable, and to remove a single one would be like removing a keystone from a jenga tower.  

Sometimes, depending on your genre and tone, the knit can be a little more breathable than others--to pull from television, no one asks why Bugs Bunny can pull a carrot from nowhere, or how Brian Griffin could possibly have a human son older than he is, because it’s just accepted that that’s how that world works; once the structure is set up, you can safely function within those parameters.

You also need to beware of going too tight, leaving yourself no leeway with which to make the next stitch.  You need to leave yourself room to breathe, or you’ll inevitably reach an impasse and have to go back.

3.  Pattern or no--everyone has a way to get the job done

Some people can only work with a pattern; some people absolutely CANNOT work with a pattern; and some people bounce between the two, or go half-and-half.  

But whether you start out with an outline, or just go by the seat of your pants, in knitting or writing, all that matters is that you get it done.  Whatever gets you there best, that’s the way you take the journey.  

4.  It may turn into something else, and that’s okay

Sometimes a scarf becomes a shirt; sometimes a dress becomes a blanket, or a blanket becomes a snuggie.

Sometimes you start out with a novel, and end up with a screenplay, or a podcast, or a musical, or a webcomic, or an experimental new artform that can’t quite be described.  

And that’s fine.  No, in fact, it’s better than fine, it’s GREAT!  Some of the best plot twists and turns come about organically, or else blindside you while you’re taking a nap, the same way that some of the best patterns you develop in your knitting could be the result of a screw-up; the failure of one project can be the success of another.

Follow new leads; let them take you where they want, and don’t be afraid to explore alternative routes.  Sometimes you need to take the mega super highway, but other times the scenic backroute, while longer, is just better.  Even if you do fall into a couple bear traps on the way.

Story or tapestry, you’ll be happy you took the risk.

3 Ways That Knitting Is Like Writing

Knitting is a wonderful hobby--it’s soothing, it keeps your hands busy (great for all those nail biters out there!), it can be done while most of your attention is affixed to something else--TV, or a conversation, or a game or something--and it’s creative.  I mean that literally, you are literally creating something fantastic out of nothing more than yarn and metal rods.  Plus, there’s all sorts of different stitches and patterns to try out.  

And knitting is also a bit like writing--the tools look similar, there are people who use patterns, people who don’t, and the mechanics and emotions that go into it can look really similar, when you get right down to it.

Here are three ways that knitting is like writing, and how seeing the connection can help you with your prose.

1.  Sometimes you need to unravel it

Over the course of a knitting session it sometimes becomes necessary to undo seconds, minutes, or even hours of your hard work in order to fix some dastardly mistake--a dropped stitch, a mix-up in the patterns, etc.  It’s frustrating, but every writer knows that feeling. It’s not as tangible as it is with knitting, you can’t just look and point out where it all went wrong, but we all know, deep in our souls, when Chapter Fifteen just won’t work, that something needs to be done--and sometimes what needs to be done is to trace back the problem and start over from the point that things went wrong.  

Unlike knitting, however, it’s important that you don’t discard your work so far--when unraveling a knitted something, you are by definition discarding everything done right with what’s been done wrong--to minimize your losses, you should copy and paste your “unraveled threads” in another document, which you can always reference later, much like you might take a picture of your knitting thus far so that you have a clear idea of where it was going before you noticed your errors.  

And like with knitting, sometimes it’s only a quick fix--maybe you need to rewrite a paragraph, not a big deal, we’ve all been through it, but maybe you start realizing in chapter fifteen that this character should have been introduced on page two, while this other one that’s been center stage since page one should never have been put to paper in the first place.  Plus the setting is all wrong, the mythos is too simple or too complicated, the plot is inconsistent, etc. etc. etc., in which case unraveling may not be enough.  Which brings us to...

2.  Sometimes you need to start over

Sometimes a knitting project goes awry.  Yo had this amazing idea in mind, but now you’re forty rows in and the string is tangled, the connections are weak, the pattern looks awful, the loops are too tight or too loose, and you realize all at once that your options amount to 1. abandoning the project immediately or 2. starting all over from the ground up.

In writing you have the same options--and yes, there are manuscripts you’ll want to abandon, and that’s okay, but the other option is a tad bit more interesting, so that will be our exploratory topic for now.

When things get too messy to unvravel the yarn, you’ll want to open a new word document (or notebook, depending on what it is you’re using) and start writing the story as you believe it should have been told in the first place.  

It’s daunting, I know, but sometimes it needs to be done--in order to be your best and produce your best work, you need to work your hardest and give this story the attention and time that it deserves.  If some irreparable evil has occurred, unless you go back to ground zero, you will never do it justice.  HOWEVER, many problems are nowhere near this severe, and

3.  You can always fix it in post

I find that knitting has a far wider appeal than many might think--almost every time I start knitting backstage during a play, I’m either beset by people who also knit, or asked to teach someone (or someones) to do the same, which I’m always happy to do.  

During Dream Barn’s production of Legally Blonde a couple years ago I taught two of my friends, Casey and Chris, to knit; Chris was a natural, and was knitting on his own in no time.  Casey was also very good--she had a nice, tight knit, and the few mistakes she made were the same ones that all beginners make; dropped stitches, knotted yarn, etc.  

But Casey was very nervous about her work--she would come to me, anxious and panicky, every time she screwed up.  I didn’t mind, I showed her that her mistakes were nothing to worry about, and showed her how she could just keep going and fix the little things in post, tie off the dropped stitches, cut, untangle, and reattach yarn, etc.  It wasn’t a big deal.

That neuroticism for perfectionism is something many writers (if not most all of them) share, and it’s understandable--what we write is a piece of our souls bared for the world to see, and we want them to see only the best of what we have to offer.

But how can we show them the best of what we have to offer if we spend so much time workshopping a single chapter that we have nothing to offer in the first place?  There will always be time to fix grammar, spelling, plotlines, characterization, etc. when you’ve finished actually getting the story onto the page.  

One of the great things about NaNoWriMo is that the speed at which you’re forced to write keeps you from going back to look, reference, and fix, fix, fix.  

You just have to take a deep breath, close your eyes, and plunge right in.  Your first draft will never be perfect anyway, no matter how hard you try; that’s why we edit.