A Life in Stitches

by Rachael Herron

  Because after all, what did I have to worry about? I already had an idea, since I’d had to write several paragraphs on the plots of my upcoming books. I knew the second one would be a romantic suspense, set in the same small town the first novel was set in, and it would be about a bookseller and an ex-cop. The third would be about two doctors, practicing on the same fictional street. What more did I need? It would be great!

  Oh, how little did I know. People have different experiences in the writing world, but there’s one absolute truth: Your second book will kick your ass.

  See, there’s no pressure on anyone to finish his or her first book. No one is standing at the author’s door panting for the first draft of a first novel. I’d had all the time in the world to write my first book because I hadn’t sold it yet. There were no deadlines, no publisher waiting to for me to deliver. It actually hadn’t taken me overly long to write, but I’d had plenty of practice writing: years and years of starting projects, stalling out, starting up again. My second novel, however, was different. I needed to write it in six months, something I’d never done before. No problem, I thought. I’d just bang that puppy out.

  During the time I was writing the second book, I was also designing the knitted cardigan pattern that would be included with the book. I wanted it to be very simple, but very feminine, and I pictured a fitted shape, yellow, with a crocheted, lacy edge. I wasn’t sure how I’d design the neck, but I’d figure it out when I got there. It was a bottom-up raglan—no worries.

  Oh, how an ego swells before its deflation.

  Writing the book was infinitely harder than I thought it would be. I knew it had to be suspenseful, since that’s what the publisher had purchased from me, but my characters didn’t want to play that way. They were lovey-dovey and they laughed too much; their drama was quirky, not nail-biting. So I threw in a bad guy, made him do some pretty mean things, and then had my heroine shoot him through the heart in the last scene.

  Ugh. The suckitude. If I could have admitted to myself that perhaps I’d been writing a mistake of a novel, I would have recognized the problem I was facing. But instead I just wrote The End, and I hoped that when I reread it, I would find myself to have been wrong. I prayed that while the pages marinated in my closed computer, the manuscript would become good all on its own.

  Meanwhile, my knitting pattern was sucking too. I’d made it to the neckline of the bottom-up cardigan, and I had no idea what to do. Whatever I did seemed to go badly, and finally, I just decreased, bound off, and called it good.

  But it wasn’t good. It didn’t work. It looked funny when I put it on, all wonky, the collar too tall, the back neckline too short, but I couldn’t bear to think about undoing those woven-in ends and ripping back. What was wrong with me? I hadn’t made mistakes like this in knitting in ages. I never ripped unless I absolutely had to, and I wasn’t willing to admit I’d hit that point.

  I sent the manuscript to my agent. Susanna was as kind as she could be, but over drinks at a conference, she told me the truth. The novel wasn’t working. I heard it, knew she was right, and started to panic.

  “Crap,” I said, knitting furiously away on a sock. At least I knew how to make those.

  She nodded and said nothing.

  “How do I fix it?”

  “Can you…? Um…” She looked up at the skylight. Usually excellent at brainstorming, she was at a loss.

  “I could…oh, crap.”

  So Susanna did something that agents do and writers often don’t: She called my editor, who was attending the same conference. May bounced down on her way to the gym, looking adorable and tiny. I felt like the Incredible Hulk next to her as I screwed up every ounce of courage I had and said all in one breath, “What if I rewrote my book and made it women’s fiction? With no suspense.” I closed my eyes and waited for the blow.

  It didn’t come. May said, “Okay.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Whatever you want. Just write what the story needs.”

  I collapsed in a grateful heap before I realized that I’d just agreed to edit my novel. And it wasn’t a small edit, adding a few things or taking away others—it was going to be a total rewrite, from beginning to end, and it was due in eight weeks. I started to sweat in the cool lobby. “I love editing!” I almost shouted. Then I wondered how the hell one really edited.

  In my hotel room, instead of turning on my computer, I picked up the yellow sweater I’d brought with me. I tried it on again and, just like before, it looked wrong. I took a deep breath and sat in front of the window in the hotel armchair. I started unraveling the sweater.

  For the next two months, I pulled apart the novel and put it back together again, and, at the same time, I reworked the whole sweater. I finished the rewrite and turned it in. While I waited to hear from my editor, I finished the sweater. It turned out okay. I didn’t love the way the shoulders lay, but I didn’t hate it. It was kind of wearable. Mostly.

  While I wondered whether I was up for ripping the yarn out again, I got a call from May. I stood in a parking lot holding my cell phone, trying to keep my hands from shaking as she told me, “Your writing is strong and so are your characters. But you need a plot.” Her voice was kind. She’d done this before with second novels.

  “Can I fix it?” I needed reassurance. I wanted her to say, Of course. No problem.

  “Well, it’s going to take some heavy lifting,” she said.

  I sat on the curb, feeling like I’d been sucker-punched. No plot? Of course I had plot! The characters got totally mad at each other! You know… they were really mad…so mad…oh crap. She was right. I had emotional conflict, essential to a good romance plot, but since I’d taken the ridiculous bad guy out, I had nothing that couldn’t be solved with a fifteen-minute heart-to-heart discussion. That wasn’t real conflict, that was just a bad mood.

  And now I loved the book too much to scrap it. I had one more shot, and I had to nail it. I packed my car with the damn manuscript, the damn yellow sweater, and a bottle of wine, and drove to Pigeon Point, a hostel on the coast an hour south of San Francisco close to where my fictional town is set. I got a private room—from the bed I could see the base of the decrepit lighthouse. I stared at it, waiting for a breakthrough. Where was my inspiration? I was ready for it. Come on, dammit!

  I wore the sweater as I walked past the lighthouse and down to the beach at sunset, and I pulled at the neck, trying to make the collar and shoulders fit better. I continued waiting, as the sun dove into the sea, turning the sand golden on the beach. I was the only person in sight. I waited for my own illumination. I knew from movies that because I was at my lowest, the answer was just around the corner. Any second now, Morgan Freeman would rise from behind a rock and say something Godlike, and I’d know how to fix the novel. If I were really lucky, he might dispense knitting advice too.

  It didn’t happen. The sun disappeared, and I got cold, and the light of the auto-strobe at the base of the defunct lighthouse blinded me. I tripped as I felt my way up the cliff toward the hostel, skinning my knee. In my room, I looked at the words I’d written, and I still didn’t know what to do. In the same way I knew what shape I wanted the sweater to take, I knew how I wanted the novel to hang together. I knew what I wanted it to say in the end—I just didn’t know how to get there.

  In the shared kitchen of the hostel a woman put a chicken into the oven for dinner. As she wandered away, I asked, “How long are you going to cook it for?” I had my manuscript spread out on the kitchen table and wanted to know when I’d have to move.

  She looked at me in surprise and said, “I don’t know. I just let it cook till it’s done.”

  I’m pretty sure Morgan Freeman wouldn’t be caught dead in the broomstick skirt she was wearing, and it wasn’t exactly instruction from God. It was cooking advice from a woman visiting from Iowa. But it was what I needed.

  I turned to the front page and started working. Again. The book would be done when it was done, and if I didn’t know
how to get there, I’d figure it out on the way. I lifted paragraphs and moved them. Inspiration came in painful flashes, like the lighthouse’s beam. I shifted whole chapters, moving and rearranging, adding and subtracting. At the same time, I ripped back the sweater again too, starting from the sleeves, trusting my hands to knit it new, knit it better.

  In take three, I finally understood: Editing is as creative a process as creating the first draft. The reason the later draft is better is because it rests on the bones of the drafts below it, even if it’s unrecognizable from its earlier forms. In life, if one makes a mistake, it may be permanent. A broken glass remains a broken glass—you’re unlikely to put it back together. But in both knitting and writing, mistakes can be made, learned from, and unmade, in order to make something new, something better.

  I added a lighthouse to my book, making it an essential part of the plot. I added a long collar to the cardigan, something it took me a while to realize it needed. The book I ended up with is exactly what I wanted, even though I didn’t know it until I was done. The yellow cardigan fits me perfectly. And I’m less nervous now than I used to be, in both knitting and writing, which is to say, my life.

  At least in knitting and writing—these essential parts of who I am— I can always go back and fix things. I know how. It makes me bold. And it’s a comfort to know that when I knit badly or when I write poorly, I haven’t really lost anything but time—and even that time has changed into something: knowledge. Every time I fail, it hurts like hell. But I know more than I did before I tried.

  And knitters are a hardy lot, aren’t we? We keep clicking along, one stitch following another, mistakes noticed and often fixed. We keep going, just as writers keep putting words on the page, whether we’re filling journals or writing novels. As the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, has said, small actions, repeated over and over, lead to astonishingly large results—stitches become sweaters, words become books. Many knitters added together become a community, and I do believe it is the best group of people in the world.

  THE END

  YARNAGOGO’S EASY CABLED HOT-WATER BOTTLE COZY

  (Just right for trying cables for the first time!)

  YOU WILL NEED

  200 yards worsted weight yarn

  1 U.S. size 7 (4.5 mm) 16-inch circular, or size to achieve gauge

  Stitch markers

  Cable needle

  Yarn needle

  FINISHED MEASUREMENTS

  Circumference: 17 inches

  Length: 18 inches

  GAUGE

  16 sts and 24 rounds = 4 inches in Stockinette stitch

  DIRECTIONS

  Cast on 52 sts and join to work in the round. Place a marker at beginning of round and after 26 sts to mark sides.

  Round 1: *K1f&b, knit to 1 st before marker, k1f&b, slip marker; repeat from * once—4 sts increased.

  Rounds 2–4: Repeat Round 1—68 sts at end of Round 4.

  Rounds 5–;9: K12, p2, k6, p2, k12, slip marker, k34.

  Round 10: K12, p2, slip the next 3 sts onto cable needle and hold behind work, knit the next 3 sts from the left-hand needle, then knit the 3 sts from the cable needle, p2, knit to end of round.

  Repeat Rounds 5–;10 until piece measures 10 inches from beginning.

  NECK

  Decrease Round: *K1, ssk, work to 3 sts before marker, k2tog, k1, slip marker; repeat from * once—4 sts decreased.

  Maintaining cable pattern, repeat Decrease Round three more times—52 sts remain.

  Ribbing Round: *K2, p2; repeat from * to end of round for rib.

  Repeat this round until the neck is 8 inches long (total length is 18 inches). Bind off all sts loosely in rib.

  FINISHING

  Using yarn needle, sew bottom closed. Weave in ends. Roll hot-water bottle so it slips into the neck, and you’re good to go!

  xxx

  LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

  K—Knit

  K1f&b—Knit one front and back (increase 1 stitch)

  K2tog—Knit two together (decrease 1 stitch)

  P—Purl

  Ssk—Slip two stitches, one at a time, as if to knit to right-hand needle, return these two stitches to left-hand needle in turned position, and knit them together through the back loops (decrease 1 stitch)

  St(s)—Stitch(es)

  Stockinette stitch—in the round, knit every round

  Photo by: Khalil Robinson

  Rachael Herron received her MFA in writing from Mills College, and has been knitting since she was five years old. It’s more than a hobby; it’s a way of life. Rachael lives with her better half in Oakland, California, where they have four cats, three dogs, three spinning wheels, and more instruments than they can count.

  Copyright © 2011 by Rachael Herron.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  eISBN 978-1-4521-0997-8

  Designed by Allison Weiner

  Typeset by DC Typography, San Francisco

  Cover design by Allison Weiner

  Cover photography by Leigh Beisch

  Prop styling by Sara Slavin

  The cover knits were made by the author, with help from Bluebird Yarn and Fiber Crafts in Sausalito.

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  www.chroniclebooks.com

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