Knit One, Revise Two: What Being a Knitter Taught Me About Writing

Photo by Markus Spiske

Today’s post is by author, editor, and book coach Nita Collins (@nitacollinswriter).

I was staring at my draft the other day, contemplating a scene I loved but that didn’t quite fit the storyline. As I debated whether to fix it or ignore it, a post from my knitting friend Dee popped up in my feed. “I screwed the pattern up,” she’d written in the caption under the photo of a partially finished pink scarf, “and I don’t know how to fix it without making it worse. Do I ignore it and hope it doesn’t show too much?” Suddenly, the connection between knitting and writing couldn’t have been clearer.

Writers and knitters have more in common than you might expect, because creative work, whether in words or in wool, rarely happens in a straight line from beginning to end. Creative work loops back on itself, gets all tangled up, and sometimes requires you to undo hours of effort before you can move forward again. Accepting this truth has been one of the hardest lessons for me as both a writer and a knitter, but also the most valuable.

Whether knitting or writing, new projects always start in the same exciting rush of possibility. I open a fresh Scrivener file, full of a story idea, certain that this will be the one to get me a literary agent and a publishing deal. My friend Dee falls in love with a scarf pattern, buys the yarn and casts on, visualizing the way she’ll look draped in perfectly knitted pink mohair.

We both get to work. Everything is flowing along smoothly until suddenly it isn’t.

Somewhere between casting on and binding off, between Chapter One and The End, we each realize we have a problem. Dee’s scarf has developed a mysterious hole. So has my novel. We’re each staring at wonkiness with no idea how it got there. Or how to fix it.

In these moments, the temptation to ignore what’s wrong in hopes it will disappear into the larger story fabric is strong. Even though we know the issues will simply compound themselves, Dee and I still carry on, hoping for the best. Hoping that when we get to the end, the problems will have magically sorted themselves out.

For both of us, this bit of magical thinking arises from the same fear: “What if I have to chuck it out the window and start all over?”

As human beings, we are fixated on the idea that progress should be visibly measurable. For a writer, forward motion is seen and measured in word count, number of pages, how many hours spent bum-in-chair, your novel in the airport bookstore. And since the act of undoing work means erasing visible evidence of forward motion, starting over can feel like sliding backwards. Negative progress. That’s why, when Dee has knitted 20 inches of lace or I’ve written 80,000 words, the thought of ripping back to the beginning is agony. “All that work!” we cry, feeling like complete failures.

The truth is that knitters drop stitches, and writers drop secondary plot lines, and even though it stings like heck, nobody—nobody at all—gets away without continually finding themselves on a skills-building learning curve.

Thankfully, one of the biggest things that being a knitter has taught me is that learning a new skill isn’t a pass/fail exercise; it’s more like climbing a spiral staircase. You go around and around, but each time when you come back to the same place, you’re a rung higher up with a clearer, more objective perspective as a result. Eventually, what used to feel like failure simply becomes fixing.

As a knitter who carefully tinks back stitch by stitch in order to correct a mistake, I’m not incompetent because I messed the pattern up in the first place, I am being attentive to my craft, learning as I go. When I finish a draft of my novel knowing that I will need to go back and make adjustments, I am doing the exact same thing. I am being attentive to my craft, and respectful of both my manuscript and my readers.

Still, it doesn’t always come easy, especially when I’m not sure what’s wrong in the first place, let alone what to do about it.

Which brings me to the next thing that knitting has taught me about being a writer in revision: Asking for help doesn’t make me any less the author of my own work.

When Dee encountered a problem she couldn’t resolve that day, her instinct was to reach out to other knitters for advice. Dee is still 100% the knitter of her scarf, even though someone else showed her how to fix that hole. The same goes for writers. When I lean on support, I’m not giving up authority; I’m gaining perspective and insight.

Perspective and insight bring with them something that every creative person needs in order to succeed, and that is: trust in the parts of the process that are not visually measurable.

Progress isn’t always linear, and it can’t always be measured visually, but it is cumulative. Every revision sends you another turn around that spiral staircase, teaching you something you’ll carry forward into the next project.

Knitting and writing both teach us that mistakes aren’t just inevitable, they’re instructive. Every dropped stitch, every tangled subplot is an invitation to learn. The willingness to stop, rework, apply what you learned, and keep going is what transforms a skein of mohair into a scarf, and my rough draft into a polished novel.

So if you find yourself staring at your manuscript with the same worried question my friend Dee had, “Do I fix it, or do I hope nobody notices?” choose the fix. Yes, it may mean ripping out a few rows. Yes, it may mean slowing down or even starting over, but the time and care you put into the process will be visible in your scarf’s smooth stitches and your novel’s clear arc.

So knit one, revise two. And trust that your story—and your skill—will be stronger for it.