Missed Stitch

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know I like to knit. Badly. I mostly make scarves and hats. I'm working on an afghan. I like to knit because it keeps my hands and mind busy as a way to deal with stress, but not so busy that I can't talk or have music on, or even sit with Baby Girl while she watches TV in my room.

But today . . . my post is less about the rainbow assortment of balls of yarn in my closet (I can tell you, it's a relatively inexpensive addiction, and I cannot pass a store with yarn and NOT buy yarn, even if I have no idea yet what the hell I will knit with it). But it is about . . . the missed stitch. You see when I started knitting, I was just happy to end up with a sevicable SOMETHING at the end. Much like, I think, beginning writers. I didn't see the flaws--or barely did--because I was so delighted I had actually put hundreds and hundreds of knit stitches together and made SOMETHING. Even if it was lopsided. And had holes in it.

Then I learned to purl (for the non-knitters, it's a different kind of stitch). Once you can PURL, you can now do ribbing and patterns and "cool stuff." Much, I am sure, like learning about deeper characterization, or how to show not tell. At THIS point, I would look at my old knitting and want to vomit. Well, maybe that's extreme, but you get the idea. For example, I am knitting my friend Bruce a scarf. For a year now. Because every time I finish one, I decide it's not good enough for him, because he is such an honored friend. Now it's summer, so I have until fall to make one I like enough to give to him. I am on my 4th (count 'em) scarf. I rip the others apart. Much like as your writing advances, you want to chuck everything you ever wrote before and cringe that you actually QUERIED a real, LIVING, BREATHING editor with that piece of sloppy knitting that was your first scarf.

Finally, you start getting really good (I'm at the "not half-bad" stage). But then . . . you miss a stitch. You don't notice it at first, but you get a couple of rows up and realize you have a missed stitch. A mistake. Something that's NOT WORKING. Now, had this been your first pathetic attempt at a scarf, you'd leave it. Hell, it's a scarf. It's SOMETHING. But no . . . now you know. So NOW you have to undo rows, working with a crochet hook to fix the dropped stitch.

Over at Mark Terry's blog (and as far as I know, he doesn't knit), if you read the last two or three posts, you can see he is working on a new book, and he's given it to beta readers and maybe (just maybe) it has some problems.

Now, Mark has two choices. Submit with what's possibly a missed stitch. Or gingerly go through the entire manuscript with some new "fix" or stitch or angle (change the age of the character, maybe? write it geared to a different genre, perhaps?). But the problem is, just as with yarn, you are working with long threads. You have to pull that missed stitch, that problem through the WHOLE thing. You can never, if you drop a stitch, just go to that ONE spot and "fix" it. It impacts the rows above and below. So it is with a fix in a novel. As an experienced editor, a lot of times, I can spot when a writer has applied a "fix" because it's not pulled all the way through. Or it feels tacked on, like just slapping an extra stitch on the end of a row. I've shared here before about working with a writer a few years back who tacked on a HUGE character flaw for his detective because the editors didn't think the detective was unique enough in an overcrowded genre. The add-on was a gambling addiction. But gamblers have a HOST of problems and as an addiction it is considered as tough or tougher than heroin to beat. It also has psychological ramifications. You can't just have a guy like to bet on the NY Giants and one day "get over it" and call it an addiction. It's never that simple a characterization. It's never that simple a fix.

So this is my knitting analogy. Now I am off to work on my afghan. I am using FLEX needles and four strands at once now. In other words . . . I'm gettin' fancy.

Peace,
E