Knitting with words

Because I am a knitter and a writer, I find that words and yarn tend to blend themselves well. This probably won't make sense to anyone who isn't a knitter. I find that when I write certain words lend themselves better because of the way that they sound or feel in the mouth. It is much like choosing a yarn to go with a pattern or a pattern to go with a specific yarn. It might be the most scrumptious Merino and silk, but it may make horrible cables or it might be the most fabulous lace pattern but the mottled yarn causes the lace to be lost amongst all the color changes.

In writing my NaNo for the year I wrote about knitters. This yarn and word mixture was even more pronounced for me. Now not only did I have to find the right word for the moment, but also the right knitting words. Words such as needles, cable, stitch, Malabrigo, wool, cotton all came into play. If someone is angry, the word cashmere is all wrong. She doesn't pick up a ball of cashmere and throw it against the wall. She picks up a ball of linen or a hank of black scratchy acrylic. Cashmere comes into play when he thinks about her or perhaps she remembers that disastrous first date while grasping a pair of fourteen inch long size US 4 Stiletto needles. That combination of words and what they represent varies from page to page and it is all important. I loved seeing that evolve in this book. The fibers that reflected the moment. The knitting actions that represented a feeling. Someone who is angry doesn't flit the stitches from needle to needle, but rather she picks at them or perhaps she is extremely angry and she stabs at her work.

In the end a sweater is born and a book awakens. It was a fun process. And now I have many ends to weave in, seams to sew, and blocking to shape it correctly. It's very sweater-like this book writing.

(Side note to all the non-knitters: you may find this true of your own interests outside of writing. I can't really give you any non knitting or cooking ideas, but you probably see it, if not consider it next time you sit down to write, especially if you involve those things that you love.)

I survived (and won)

Once again I managed to pull of the NaNoWriMo challenge and finished in at 63,785 words and actually managed to reach The End. It was a fun and wild journey with several days lost due to dental appointments and Harry Potter. My Big Goal to actually blog my way through NaNo this year failed on day three. That's ok. I figured one of a few things.

1. Those who were truly interested in my NaNoWroMo word count could always go check out my profile on NaNoWriMo or follow my progress on Twitter.

2. Those who weren't interested in my NaNoWriMo progress were probably relieved to not have to hear about my month long ramblings about how my writing was going.

3. Those who were irritated because I wasn't posting blog entries for the month of November could go find someone else to placate their need to read and I probably wouldn't know they weren't here anyway. And I'm OK with that because this is my blog and while I share my thoughts with other people, I'm not out to please anyone.

4. Those who didn't notice I wasn't posting well, you were probably writing right along with me and trying not to "waste" words on blogs but rather your own novels.

5. The knitters and the cooks had more time to do their thing.

But NaNo is over so I can get back to my regular blog entries and start editing my NaNo novel (after the first of the year). I've decided that I really need to work on revisions of my last novels and give my brain a break from Harriet and Carl and the lovely yarn shop I created.

Tune in tomorrow when I hope to talk about knitting with words.

Word count update

Because I promised myself I would. My total word count for NaNoWriMo is currently at 7,878. Nice number. Over 4,000 words today which included knitting 3 rounds on an entrelac fingerless glove (that's not three rows, that's three rounds and that's saying something in the entrelac world because I do not knit backwards very quickly), making dinner, doing the dishes, doing a load of laundry, running to Office Max for a set of bookends that meant I also had to run into Books-a-Million and get an Oreo frappe. I'm glad I'm this far ahead because tomorrow is knitting in the afternoon which is usually my good writing time. Maybe I'll take the laptop with and see if I can knit and write at the same time. (Stop laughing, Julie!)

Off to bed so I will be a fresh daisy in the morning.

And we're off!

It's the first day of NaNoWriMo and I think it is looking pretty good. As of 5:00 this evening I have 3,502 words written and may even get some more out tonight before I go to bed, but first I must pause for dinner and Stitch and Bitch. One must have some pleasures in life.

I'm really enjoying the story and did a couple of challenges with PoMoGoLightly over at the NaNo Salons. I out-wrote her, but I think she was going easy on me. I've seen her 750 count on Twitter and she can easily pull it off in 15 minutes. But it does feel good to be challenged. I'm considering Write or Die, but need to make sure that the electric shock is just a joke.

If anyone else has any great ideas about word count challenges, let me know. Meanwhile, keep on writing!

Oh there it is!

I had a Really Good Idea for NaNoWriMo this year. I had a plot and everything. And the more I looked at it the more I realized it was nothing more than a short story. There was no way I could turn it into 50,000 words. At max it would be 10,000. So it was back to the drawing board. And nothing was coming. Do you know the sound that nothing makes in your brain? It's sort of like playing Pong with the computer as your competition. It's full of dark empty space with the echoing plink as the pong hit the paddle. Yeah. That bad.

Usually when I get into one of these states I will head to the bookstore and just browse the back of rows of books to read their covers. It gets my mind whirling and I end up with a plot about a computer nerd, a nun and a prostitute who are trying to save the world from aliens. (Do not steal that idea. I'm planning on using it one day!) I've had this horrible desire to want to create, but lacking the, well, gumption to actually jump off the creative diving board and do it. I've been that way with my knitting as well. I want to make gorgeous Jane Thornley inspired sweaters and shawls, but I keep standing on the edge refusing to even get my toes wet. It isn't that I don't have the talent or skills or education to do those things. It's that fear of failing or not being good enough. The bookstore did nothing to help inspire me. If anything it made me feel pathetic and clueless.

That's when the wonderful words that keep coming back to me started taking over the plinking of the everlasting Pong game.

"Write what you know," my brain finally heard.
"But what do I know anything about?" I asked.
"Knitting," said the mysterious voice.
"Uh, have you forgotten that this is National Novel Writer's Month?"
"So incorporate it."
"Leave me alone. I'm enjoying my game. Plink. Plink. Plink."
"Have it your way," said the voice.
"Bzzzz. Darn it! You made me miss."

But now it is there. I've got the idea. And yes; it incorporates knitting. Well, knitting is a character really. I've got a plot with a beginning, middle and and end and it can easily become 50,000 words. I passed it by my biggest critic and she said, "Aw, Mom, that sounds like a wonderful romantic comedy that I would pay money to see as a movie." (That, by the way, is a major compliment.) So beginning Monday morning my word count will appear here. You can also follow my progress on Twitter (user name is knitcookwrite there, too).

Now to go find all that yarn for my creative shawl.

OMG run around in circles screaming, "It's almost time!"

NaNoWriMo is almost here again and this year I actually feel prepared going into it. I'm planning on posting my word count each day so those of you cheering me on can know how much further I have to that 50,000 word mark. I love NaNoWriMo. I feel free when I'm writing in a blitz like that. Just write. Don't think about it. Don't edit. Don't critique. Don't even spell check for that matter. Just sit there and write. I should write like that more often because I get really good stuff pouring out when I'm not all concerned about how it looks or reads or if it even makes sense. I think I'm hypercritical when I write leisurely.

In other news, I'm still baking away. It's fun. You should try it. I also am knitting up a storm. Have finished a few shawls and am almost finished with my hexagon socks.


I'm trying to settle on my next "thinking socks" and have a feeling I am going to lean either towards the Miss Marple socks by Star Athena or a pair of entrelac socks.

I'm alive ... but just barely

I'm crawling out of the NaNoWriMo trenches to say: I WON! I made my 50K with an end (thank you very much) Friday night at 50, 806 words. Of course I do need to go back and fix a dangling subplot that was just dumped when more exciting things to write about came along. It was tough this year. Not because I had no clue what I was going to write about, but because I had a planned Disney vacation that started on the fifth. We came home a day early because of Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Wake Me When It's Over Ida. Then three people decided to get the flu and the room with the computer was contaminated. I refused to step foot in there and people say I'm mean because I shoved grilled ham and cheese sandwiches under the door. Hey, I could have stolen Dan's laptop and just gone to a hotel and left them to make their own grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Thanks to a few five thousand word days, though, I quickly caught up.

I like this story. In fact I like it better than the first in this series. Maybe it is because I'm understanding my characters better and finding them more developed the more I write about them. The really nice thing is that I know what is going to happen in the next book. I love these guys.

In knitting news (yes, I actually got a bit of knitting done amidst all the NoWri-ing) I managed to make a scarf and hat to go up to Sylvia's place and made Dan a fair isle ear flap hat since he is about to leave to Someplace Cold later this week for a month or two. I finished his third pair of socks at Disney and am almost finished with Keon's socks that I started there. It's nice mindless endless rounds of stockinette and I found I can do it easily while standing in line, riding in the car, or waiting for movies to start. I really need to get on the ball and knit up the lace scarf sampler for the January/February JoAnn classes and I have another (super secret) project that I want to work on as well. I just can't decide which to do first. (Especially since I really want to just write some more seeing as I lost eleven days.)

And I'll catch up on cooking before I get back to more writing stuff. Everyone will be happy to know that I have finally successfully had a complete Thanksgiving dinner. Yep. I set the oven on fire and didn't get to bake the rolls. The good news is that the oven was easily cleaned out (the next day) and the rolls were baked on Friday to go with the leftover turkey and rice. (For those of you who don't know, you can stuff risen bread in the refrigerator overnight. In fact you can even do a cold rising if you are patient enough. I'm rarely patient enough.) They were delightful and now I'm craving another batch. I wonder if anyone would mind another batch of turkey and rice tonight. Or rolls. Oh the funny part of all this: the firefighter in the house thought it would be OK to spray "mostly water" sanitizer on the blazing fire. Do not do this. It will not put out the fire. Your best friend for kitchen fires: baking soda. It's cheap too and won't cause your oven to burst into huge tongues of flames and billow out (most likely toxic) smoke.

Now back to writing because that is what interests me at the moment. I bought a magnet a while back that reads: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? Then Saturday evening I received a fortune in my cookie that read: No man is a failure who is enjoying life. It got me to really start thinking about my books and what I want to do with them. I really want to publish them. I go to the bookstores and I look for the place where my books would sit on the shelves. I touch the books on either side. Is it too presumptuous of me to want to rest between Ursula Le Guin and Madeleine L'Engle? And what happens if I fail? I'm really no worse off than I am, but perhaps with a broken heart. I have an advantage of not needing to be financially dependent on my writing. I don't have to publish. I just want to publish. So I'm going to pursue that earnestly in the coming year. I'll keep you all posted on how it goes.

No Prob!

As promised I am here to write about No Plot No Problem by Chris Baty, founder of NaNoWriMo. It was a fun read. Having already won NaNoWriMo once before and having written that ubiquitous 50,000 words in 30/31 days several times since then, I saw this book as more of a reflection of the work I have done while picking up a few ideas on the way. For someone who is trepidatiously stepping off that cliff of insanity that is the power writing of NaNoWriMo, it could be a great comfort as well as affirmation that you can indeed write 50,000 words towards a novel in 30 days (or less). There is much wit over the task of forced word count writing which I easily saw as a reflection of my own derangement. (Please, I am the sort of crazed author that has lengthy conversations with her characters when she is alone in the car. You just think that I am singing to Cold Play.)

In other news, I did finally sit down and write the synopsis to last year's NaNo. I've heard that the weather here is supposed to cool down this weekend. Maybe even highs in the lower 70's, which is fantastic to finally get out of the 80's that we've been hanging on to like a toddler fearing that first solo step. (That was a feeble attempt at changing the subject. Let's just say that if I were to read the synopsis that I wrote I wouldn't be interested in reading the novel. And no, I really don't want to talk about it anymore. Suffice to say I much prefer writing novels than synopses and it is an area that I know now I must expend more energy in order to become a better synopsist, synopsisist?)

The next book on my table is The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman.

Another day another book on writing

Sorry to all my knitting friends, but you are just going to have to live with more posts on writing for a while. At least until Nanowrimo is over. I'll *try* to sneak in a few yarns here and there that talk about food or woolly goodness if I can.

This weekend I sat and made my way through Your Novel Proposal: From Creation to Contract by Blythe Camenson and Marshall J. Cook. It has an excellent chapter on writing synopses which I totally SUCK at (all of those agents who are reading this and might be considering my book(s) please disregard that last statement) primarily because I tend to become way too wordy or I fall into the "then she did this and then she did that and then they all died." I think my challenge for today is going to be to actually write a real synopsis of one of my books.

I was most impressed with the use of real and fictional examples of query letters and synopses. It was helpful to read synopses and pitches for books that I had actually read rather than books that are either on my "to read" list or that I had never heard of (or that don't actually exist). I keep reading the chapter "Handling the Wait - and the Rejection" over and over. That I think is truly the hardest part of being an author. At least a new, yet-to-be-discovered author. I obsessively check my e-mail account and the spam folder (just in case) and double check to make sure that I actually sent what I was supposed to. I mean what if I only filed the follow up letter in my drafts folder or what if s/he is really writing back, but Gmail is considering that all important letter as spam? It's hard not to worry. My favorite "analysis of the silence" is "They haven't stopped laughing long enough to put the rejection slip in the envelope." I keep reminding myself that I write for my own enjoyment. Publishing will be the icing. It's good cake without it, but it would be more the sweet with.

As far as my most recent exercise (to write about a vampire without eluding to vampires). Well, that went miserably horribly fantastically badly bad bad bad. No, really. I'd post it, but I'd be too embarrassed. I'm going to try again, though. Of course the entire writing exercise wasn't a waste because it did help me rewrite a portion in my third book that I wanted to remain ambiguous as to who was speaking. It did help me find key words that one character would say and another not. So I can't say that trying to write vaguely about vampires was futile. I have yet to find a writing exercise to be completely wasted. Sometimes it just doesn't reveal itself immediately.

Next up is the book No Plot? No Problem! : A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty. First step is going to be digging it out of my daughter's hands. She's glommed onto it and is considering attempting NaNoWriMo herself. I think her biggest concern is character development as she has mostly written Harry Potter FanFic up to this point where characters have already been created for her. Cheer her on, though. I think she has some marvelous stories in her head to share. The problem I foresee with two writers in the house both competing for NaNoWriMo is that we will be consuming far too much caffeine and no housework will get done. There's always December, write? Uh, I mean right?

The anticlimaticness of it all

Today is a sad day. You strive and work and toil and write a fantastic novel (at least in your own unbiased opinion of your own work) and you are proud of what you have accomplished. And then you log on to NaNoWriMo and realize that they have reset all the stats from last year. You are left with a zero word count and you no longer have a purple bar under your name declaring you a WINNER! Your novel information is blank and you feel like all your work from last year has been wiped away. Erased. Deleted. It was all for nothing because now there is this zero under your name. A big fat black 0! There isn't even recognition that you even wrote a novel last year. I wept. And then I ate a turkey pot pie and felt a little better.

And then I sat down here at the computer and realized that I don't have my novel idea for this year even half formulated. Perhaps I'll write another witch book. Perhaps it will be the next installment of my vampire series. Maybe another romance. Although, I like writing in the young adult genre more than romance. Maybe it will be a whole new story with a whole new genre and a whole new idea with a whole new cast of characters. I just can't decide. Last year it was so easy. I knew I wanted to tell Aria's story. I knew that it was only going to be the first of a three part set. I knew from a dream how it was all going to play out. I knew the characters (at least most of them) and I knew I was going to enjoy it. And then 84,000+ words later I sat staring at the finished novel and wondered how I'd done it so quickly.

And now it is T-29 days and counting and I have no enthusiasm. All because Chris Baty reset my word count.

Perhaps I need tea and chocolate.

Eeep! It's been that long?

This past few weeks have felt like they have flown past. Sadly, I can't really tell you what has happened. Part of me was at a loss for two weeks as my computer wouldn't boot, so I was stuck with only Internet and basic word processing. I didn't want to edit on just my memory stick (I insist on two back ups of everything) so I did no writing at all during that time (as long as you don't count writing out knitting patterns as writing and recreating my knitting class notes so I didn't stand around bumbling my way through a class trying to remember everything I am supposed to teach).

The good news is that my hard drive was recoverable, but now it sits as an external hard drive on my desk and squeals at me very loudly. It makes it hard to write when there is this high pitched buzzy squeak that sort of reminds one of a huge swarm of mosquitoes chasing after you as though you were an animated character running for your life. That means that I don't want to write much at the computer and my hand writing skills are slow ... slow ... slow. (And then I get bored when I transfer handwriting into word documents because I've already written that and I want to write something neeeeeewwwwww!) (I promise no more whining.)

The other good news is that in this time I have also had the ability to catch up on some reading that I have wanted to do. I finally got around to reading The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger This is one of the most amazing pieces of literature that I have read in a long time. Not because it was "the story of the century" or even because the actual writing was so dynamic (although it is a wonderful story and the writing was pretty dynamic). No, the thing that caught me about this book was the author and editor's (I'm presuming here that Niffenegger's editor had to help in some capacity) abilities in keeping the story straight and remembering how old Henry and Clare were at various times of his time travelling and remembering when he'd seen her when and what he told her. It was electrifying to think about what she went through just to be able to keep her story in order. I've written books that span decades. After reading this book I will tell you it is a piece of cake. I mean I'm at least keeping things in order in a linear fashion whereas Niffeneger's time line looked like she was following silly string sprayed by a group of adolescent boys at an unsupervised party! I am in awe.

Aside from that I also read a few knitting books (nothing much to note on that front) and re-read the J.R. Ward Black Dagger Brotherhood series (just for some mindless reading). (Yes, again. You got a problem with that?) Sometimes it is good just to relax into a familiar book that is comfortable and has a decent plot to keep you interested. Interesting is good. If something isn't interesting it isn't worth reading. I refuse to try to continue to drudge through books that are droll just because they are on a bestseller list.

My next read is The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe. I seem to be reading quite a few "author's firsts." So far I'm enjoying it. Of course I need to get past the acknowledgements, but hey, it's a start.

I'm also gearing up for NaNoWriMo. I'm going to attempt to win again. Might be a tad challenging considering I've got a Disney vacation planned right in the middle. However, if I can pull off the eighty-three thousand I did last year and didn't start until the 7th (had to wait for the elections to be over) and write over fifty thousand earlier this year in 10 days, I think I should be able to handle it. I'll be sure to keep you posted.