Writing Starters Instalment #1

Here are the first 5 writing starters for the week.

 1. Find a place where you can do some serious people-watching. Pick three strangers and, one by one, imagine them saying good-bye. Decide what they are saying good-bye to–their homeland, their family, a lover, a job, a threat. What has happened to bring them to this moment? What lies ahead of them? Is the good-bye the beginning of their story or the end?

 2. Draw a map. It could be of a country, a city, an island, a kingdom, a space station. Add lots of details and place names. Now send your characters on a journey through the imaginary world you have just created, making sure that they get into lots of trouble along the way.

 3. Start with the sound of sirens. How does that sound affect you? What do you imagine has happened? Where has it happened? Who is affected?

 4. Have your character find or receive something small enough to be held in two hands. Now create a story around that small thing that turns your character’s life upside down. Think of Bilbo and a ring, Arthur and a sword, Snow White and an apple.

 5. Free write using one or all of the following words: sage, match, corner, light, border.

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.”  Samuel Johnson

Fresh Start

Well, my partially completed sweater became balls of yarn yesterday. Then I cast on 200 stitches and started again. My new pattern

Same Yarn - New Pattern
Same Yarn - New Pattern

has a very simple cable and I’m enjoying getting back to work with needles and yarn again.

I started something else new, yesterday—brainstorming ideas for my NaNoWriMo novel. This is my first attempt at NaNoWriMo and it’s an intimidating prospect. To survive, I plan to rely heavily on Chris Baty’s No Plot? No Problem!  I’ve already read it once; I expect to read parts of it several times before the end of November. I love the humour, the practical advice, and plan to follow all the recommendations for coffee and junk food consumption—though, sadly, my coffee has to be caffeine free.

If you’re brainstorming ideas for your NaNoWriMo opus, or for your short story or poem, and are looking for inspiration, I’ll be posting 5 writing starters a day for the next 7 days.

 I’d love to hear where the writing starters take you. Drop me a line here or join me on Twitter .

Losing the Pattern

Sweater-No-Longer-In-Progress
Sweater-No-Longer-In-Progress

I have looked everywhere for the pattern for my partially completed cardigan. The only thing I can think of is that I laid it on top of the newspapers on the kitchen table and it got scooped up in the recycling. Can I remember what magazine it was in? No. Have I looked everywhere? Yup, pretty sure–darnit.

 Now what do I do?

I had just about reached the decreases for the neck and sleeve shaping on the left front. Now, I have to figure out what I did with the right front and reverse it.  The decreases are very difficult to see in the pattern, and, of course, I will have to invent a sleeve pattern, too, to finish the piece.

Is it possible for me to do all this? Yes, probably, if I had lots of time and patience and was willing to slog through a lot of trial and error to get it right. And I’m sooooo not in the mood to go there. The yarn is lovely to work with and I want to get back to the feel of it slipping through my fingers and making its unique colour pattern as it grows.

Solution? Tear it down. Frog it. Find another knitting pattern (and make several photocopies of it!) and start again.

Has this ever happened in my writing? Definitely! I have lost the pattern there, too. Or rather I’ve found that the pattern I was following was the wrong one. Sometimes I’ve realized that I’m writing in the wrong voice. I change third-person to first and suddenly the story takes on a new life. My main character gets a little cheekier, takes more risks, and has more fun— and so do I. Sometimes, the plot lands in a bog where it threatens to sink into complete inaction. In that case, I need to drag my characters back to the crossroads and point them down a different road.

Today, I’ll be winding balls of yarn and looking for a new knitting pattern. Tomorrow, I’m going to go back to my young adult work-in-progress and get my character into a lot more trouble than she was expecting. And I’m going to enjoy doing both!

A Pattern of Trust

If anything requires trust, it’s turning the heel on a sock. No matter how many times I read the instructions, I can’t visualize that what my needles are doing will actually become a heel. But I follow the pattern and keep on knitting and inevitably a heel is what I get.  

 A while ago, a friend asked me for help when she was knitting the sleeve of a baby sweater. Starting at the cuff, the first 6 rows were supposed to produce a picot edge. She and I looked at the pattern and couldn’t imagine how it could possibly work out to look like the photo in the book.  We decided to trust the pattern and see what happened.

 After 6 rows all she had was a neat row of holes nestled in between some tidy rows of stocking stitch. And then the light dawned. We folded the piece along the row of holes and the picot edge magically appeared. If she hadn’t trusted the pattern, she wouldn’t have made that pretty picot trim.

 Turning a HeelIs trust a part of writing, too? I think so. But it’s bigger than trusting the pattern. In writing, I have to trust myself.  A far riskier and challenging proposition. I have to believe in myself as a writer and trust that I can choose the right words to tell the story I want to tell.

 If I make a mistake in a knitting project, I don’t stop knitting or suddenly decide I’m not a knitter. So, when the rejections come in, how can I stop believing I’m a writer? So, I’m going to keep on writing, following my own pattern, and most important—keep on trusting.

 And now, back to my needles.    

 Photo published under Creative Commons licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/klippity/

Knitting and Writing from the Top Down

Final paragraphs of "Out There" by Heather Wright
Final paragraphs of "Out There" by Heather Wright

My summer knitting project was a knit-from-the-top-down Fair Isle sweater. I’d never knit a sweater this way before. I’d always followed the traditional route of starting at the bottom and working my way up. I also found this route stressful at times. There was so much I didn’t know until the end. What if I made the sleeves too short? What if the body was too long? I really only knew how the sweater would fit when it was almost finished.

 Knitting from the top down gave me the chance to try the sweater on as I was going along. I knew precisely when it was the right length. I knew exactly when to start finishing the sleeves. And what fun to see the project growing every time I slipped it on. Knitting from the top down completely turned around the way I think about putting a knitting project together. My thanks to Barbara G. Walker who gave North America top down knitting. I can’t wait to start my next one.

 Knitting ‘in reverse’ made me think about my writing, too. I have a novel in progress that is stuck. I know how it will end, but I’ve got to a point where I’m not sure which route to take to get there. I’m beginning to lose control of the shape of the project.

 Maybe I’m going about my writing in the wrong way, too. I have a final moment for my book that I love. Why not start there and work my way back? If the traditional method isn’t working, isn’t now the time to try something different? Here’s my chance to learn and create in a different way, just as I did when I was knitting my sweater. And, who knows, the final product might be just as satisfying. I will probably have to unravel a bit of my book to get this all to work, but that is part of my process whether I’m knitting or writing.

Have you ever knit a sweater from the top down? Have you ever started at the end of your story and worked back? Drop me a line and share your stories.

 p.s. To read the rest of the story, “Out There” (from the beginning) go to http://www.wrightwriter.com/index_files/Page949.htm

Do you follow the pattern?

Summer 2009 Knitting Project
Summer 2009 Knitting Project

This is a photo of my knitting work-in-progress–a knit-from-the-top-down, black, Fair Isle cardigan. I’m slogging through the sleeves on 4 needles on a hot August afternoon, and what breeze there was has died.

You won’t find a final product resembling my sweater in the pattern book I’m using. I haven’t followed the suggested colours, I’m using different yarn, and I’m not going to put a zipper in the front. What remains of the original is the shape and the stitch count. Do you do this, too?

I like patterns in the books I read, too. I love to read mystery novels. In fact, one of my writing works-in-progress is a mystery novel. But just because mystery writers need to follow certain patterns, such as being fair and revealing all the clues to the reader, doesn’t mean that there isn’t an endless variety of mystery novels and short stories out there to delight readers of every taste.

In knitting and writing, patterns are a starting place for a creative journey that can result in a lot of fun and some surprising and satisfying final products.

How do you play with patterns in your knitting and crochet projects and in your writing?

First Steps

When I make a mistake in a knitting project, I have two options–go back and fix it, or find  way to get the pattern back on track so I can move forward without unravelling everything. Does one small mistake spoil the entire project? I don’t think so, as long as I’m content with the final product. Have I ever proofread a writing project before sending it to my client and found a mistake–or 2–or 3? Of course. Has an editor changed my work to make it even better? Yes!  In writing and in knitting, the process and the final product give me a lot of pleasure–flaws included.
I want to write about knitting and about writing because I think they are similar in many ways–and I love doing both.  And if I make some mistakes in this new venture, I look f0rward to … well … doing just that–looking forward. I want to share and invite and respond and enjoy the company.
So, what are you knitting? What are you writing? How are you stitching these activities into your life?
There–first steps taken.
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