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.  

3 Strategies To Keep You Writing

     Writing is work, and as with any type of work, different routines work differently for different people--but over the years I've found a number that work for me, and may work for you as well.  These 3 strategies are good for generating ideas, developing your characters, and increasing your word count and quality.

1.  Write in the mornings

     Generally, the later in the day it is the harder it is for us to get our write on.  There's a certain amount of energy we have each day that is expended in every activity, and our creativity sometimes corresponds to this energy--in the morning, we theoretically have the most energy.  Whether this is practically true or not, it generally is true that our minds are clearest in the morning, before we have time to clutter our consciousness with worries and concerns and problems galore.
     If you develop a morning routine in which writing is one of the first things you do, you'll find that you make more progress--you're able to write more words quicker, and the stuff you come up with isn't terrible.  You don't have to spend the rest of the day worrying about it, either--if you accomplish your daily writing goal earlier on it's done and over with, and you can put your mind to other things.  Plus, there's less chance that you'll be too tired by day's end to even get started, which is always at risk; it's really easy to get tired and say "I'll do it tomorrow" (which is, of course, where creativity goes to die).


2.  Tell yourself the story

     When I say "tell yourself the story," I mean out loud--talk to yourself!  Narrate dramatically while you're in the garden or practice dialogue in the shower, act out all the parts if it feels right!  Speaking out loud is how we organize our thoughts.  It helps clear things up and gives a sound and feeling to the language you use.  It also engages a different set of creative pieces in your brain, since you're focused on sound and flow rather than visual appearance; it's like slam poetry, only with prose.
     And don't worry about other people thinking you're crazy.  Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

3.  When you're stuck, write the easy scenes

     I like to write in chronological order.  I usually know about how my endings will turn out, but holding myself back from working on it gives me something to look forward to--an incentive, if you will ("come on, Coates, two hundred more pages and we can write that silky smooth fun part, you can do it!")--but when I get stuck, really, truly stuck, I find it can help to skip around and write the parts of the novel you know will happen, but haven't gotten to yet.  It helps to get the creative juices flowing, and can sometimes reignite your passion for a project you've grown a bit cold for.
     It doesn't have to be perfect or line up with where the story eventually ends up exactly since nothing is perfect in your first draft, but it gets the thoughts out and leaves room for new ones.  They say that while you're working on something your subconscious mind is always trying to solve problems in the background, so this lets you act productive while giving yourself some problem-solving time.
     Plus if tomorrow you come down with amnesia, you'll know what general direction your story is headed in!

     There are millions of writing strategies you can take advantage of, and I encourage you to try as many as possible--what you're doing now may work best, but how will you know until you compare it to what else is out there?  Maybe your current methods actually suck ass, or maybe they've done great for you--but you might still be able to do better!
     What strategies work best for you?