Wednesday, August 12, 2009

finger knitting and writing

This week I learned to finger knit, thanks to a beautiful 6th grader. Alex deftly looped yarn named Fiesta around four fingers, growing her yarn tube into a bookmark, a bracelet or choker. She coached me, guiding the yarn between my fingers, which I tended to spread awkwardly. My first tube was loopy and stretchy. I commented that it didn’t look like her even finger stitches. She said, “Well, you’ve only been doing this for five minutes. I’ve done it for three years.”

And isn’t that just like writing a first draft? Or in my case, adding chapters to an existing manuscript or expanding existing chapters. What I had seemed even and polished. After all, I have been working at it for eight years now! But an agent has suggested that I ditch the certain parts and build others up. Essentially, I’m trying to incorporate more historical fact into a fiction manuscript. And the more historical fact is the loopy part right now.

So I will continue growing my manuscript until my words are even once again. I try not to think about the finger knitting option of ripping out what I’ve done and starting over!

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