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Sleep, Shakespeare said, knits up the raveled sleeve of care. I wish something would knit up the raveled sleeve of prose when loose ends of yarn are hanging out and there’s not a knitting needle in sight. However, the authorial crochet hook is working hard. (My mother, who was incredibly good at needlework, pointed out one day that knitting and crochet are the same thing, really, except geometrically in some relationship I forget. Upside down and backwards, maybe.)
After the massive removal of text came first the infilling of interior gaps and then growth from the end. The interior gaps aren’t all smoothly filled yet–a sort of loose scaffolding is spread across to show where the final weave (yet another fabrication technique) will go. I still see problem spots in the interior as well. Places where I was writing out ideas and they did not, in the end, work. The story is reaching towards its end. Total count is back up in the 160s.
Comment by Chris — October 19, 2010 @ 1:49 pm
Knitting pulls loops through other loops vertically only. Crochet pulls loops through other loops both vertically _and_ horizontally. That’s the basic difference.
Nalbinding — the older art that preceded both and can sometimes look superficially like both of them — is fundamentally different because it’s worked with an eyed needle and cut lengths of yarn, and the _end_ of the yarn is pulled through every loop.
Knitting dates to somewhere around 1000 AD, perhaps a couple of centuries earlier, and originated in the Middle East (as far as we can tell). Crochet dates to, at the very earliest, about 1745 and seems to have grown out of tambour embroidery; as far as we know, all the early crochet was “lacy” and making a solid crocheted fabric seems to have started around 1820. (That’s the short version of about a 1-hour class 😉
Comment by Margaret — October 19, 2010 @ 9:08 pm
What a massive project! I can see where all those people in the credits who read the manuscript looking for problems (forget what you call that) come in real handy! Maybe its like stepping back from the trees and looking at the forest.
Elizabeth, is this your typical process? It seems like Paksworld is much more complex than some of your other series, which is not to say they are simple and straightforward, either. I’m just wondering if at this stage of the Vatta series, or the Familias Regnant, it required so much backing and filling.
Writing a singleton book, like Remnant Population, must be a much easier process, although the end product is just as wonderfully complex and creative as the series-ez (how does one plural a plural??)
Comment by elizabeth — October 19, 2010 @ 10:27 pm
Chris, somewhere in my archaeology shelf I have a book with a picture of a knitted garment (or I think it’s a knitted garment) older than what you’re saying. Could I be confusing a photo of nalbinding with knitting?
Margaret, my typical process varies from project to project, in part because of the constraints of publishing–how much wordage I have, and how much time. The Paks-world books are much more complex than the science fiction books–for one thing, I had unlimited time with the original, which allowed me to build a large and very “deep” foundation for them. The design goes all the way out to the edges and beyond.
Writing in them is very fractal, in the sense that anything, if I stop and really look at it, has layer after layer of detail and complexity. I don’t get to the plain whatever it is that the universe is “painted” on. More is always there. That amount of depth has two countering temptations–to take it all “as read” and just lay a storyline on top of it, without connecting the layers, or to dive in and wallow in the world, imagining the settings, following all the interesting characters around, chatting with them, laying out the gardens and petting the cows, ignoring the actual story.
If I had the time, I would write the whole thing, as I did the DEED, and then be able to revise it front to back several times (and I’m so very glad I had that opportunity on that book…it made the rest possible.) On the other hand, we’re talking a minimum of five years for that process, and that’s not practical.
Writing the singleton books is intense but–since I know they’re singletons–the task is easier. There’s no need to make each volume have an internal arc and still fit on the big arc.
The other series…well, both of them had a middle book (or two) that nearly escaped me with its demands. (The twelve major POV book in the Serrano-Suiza group–ye gods, that thing was a bear to pull together. I *liked* my Armenians-in-space trading family, but they complicated things.)
Anyway. The process is always messy, because I never know all the points along the way, and all attempt to define those points at the beginning risk turning the book into plastic. I know the beginning, one or two things in the middle, and have some idea of the ending (X will be married. Y will become king. Z will vanquish something or other. And yes, the “something or other” is often that vague.)
Middle books are the worst, because I haven’t written the later ones yet and thus don’t know exactly what happened, and thus am terrified that I won’t put in the right connections. (The temptation to put in all possible connections just in case must be resisted. It turns the book into something like a plate you’ve filled at a buffet table with some of everything in the hope that something will taste good. Too much, and if you eat it all, you’ll fall asleep and wake with a headache. But determined details, the right details–like the puppy in Vatta’s War–must be defended against editors and kept in, because they’re vital to the rest of the plot. Which you don’t know yet.)
In the midst of big projects, my brain is at least 2/3 of the way into the book–sometimes 9/10, and I’m barely able to find the kitchen at that point. I have to hold the book (all existing volumes and as much as I can see of future ones) in my head–on this side–and then focus hard on the brain’s writing space–on that side–and then let everything else go and sort of slide down into it, while hands are on the keyboard. When this works, I’m in the story for anything from a phrase to a page or ten…seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling what that character does, and with luck I get enough down to use later. Then I bob up a little, blink, breathe, shake out my hands…and do it again.
See why everyone thinks writers are crazy?
Comment by Kip Colegrove — October 20, 2010 @ 8:05 pm
Crazy…? Makes perfect sense to me.
Has to make sense to a writer’s household, too, or so I suppose.
I got it right away about the puppy. A pivotal act of mercy, like Bilbo sparing Gollum’s life during his escape from the orcs. It’s not clear right away, or even for some while, how such a seemingly incidental thing will play out, but it ends up doing a lot for the story.
Comment by elizabeth — October 20, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
The editor on that book didn’t trust it was anything but a trick at first. My explanation was that the puppy had to stay in, because it was going to bite someone at a significant point.
It was, as you say, more than that.
Comment by Patch — October 26, 2010 @ 3:16 am
On knitting history, until the 1970s or so it was believed that the bits of ancient Egyptian textiles dating back to the 3rd and 4th century or so were knitted, but further research showed them to be made by nalbinding, not knitting.