Of Dreambirds and Ojos de Dios and other knitted things.

I thought I'd done a knitting post fairly recently, but then I did a search. Holy cats -- the last one I did was in July? Surely I've finished something since then...

So, um, yeah. I've finished several somethings, the most recent one today. But I like things in chronological order, so let's start where we left off in the summer.

I mentioned I was interested in making a Dreambird shawl -- and I did. Here's how it turned out. The pattern called for making 17 feathers. Maybe it was 22. It was some crazy number, anyway. I had no interest in making a shawl long enough to wrap around my middle multiple times, so I measured another shawl of a similar shape and decided eleven feathers would be sufficient for my purposes. Now that I've worn it a few times, I kind of wish I'd made one more feather, or maybe two. I still could -- I have plenty of yarn left over -- but since I haven't done it yet, I'm guessing it's not ever going to happen.

Next, I tackled a cowl for my friend Kim. (That's her, wearing the cowl.) She gave me several skeins of yarn when she was packing up to move from the Washington, DC, area to Michigan, and I used one of deep purple to make the cowl for her -- figuring she would need it because it's so much colder and snowier in Michigan than it is here (oh haha, see last week's Snowzilla post). The pattern is called Millwater, and it's pretty simple except for the 24-stitch cable up the middle. See, to make a cable, you move a certain number of stitches to another needle and drop it either in front of, or behind, the work in progress, depending on which way you want the cable to cross. Then you knit an equal number of the stitches from the original needle, and then you do this sort of awkward, hey-presto thing to bring the needle holding the set-aside stitches into line so you can knit the stitches off that needle. A four-stitch cable is pretty easy -- set aside two stitches, knit the next two, and knit two off the cable needle. But the wider the cable, the more awkward the maneuver gets. And 24 is pretty wide.

At least I only had to do the cable crossing row 17 times. You're welcome, Kim.

Next up in our Gods, Whatever Was I Thinking category: The Tuscan Sunflower. This is the summer shawl/table-topper in my seasonal series. The pattern in the brown is a spiral, which was challenging because I wasn't exactly sure how it was supposed to look. Once I got to the golden petals, it went very quickly. Honest.

Technically, this is a lace pattern, and knitting that brown section in the center reminded me why I hate doing lace.

After that, I needed something stupid easy. Behold: the Dangling Conversation. I picked up the yarn and pattern in Virginia Beach, VA, while on a self-designed yarn crawl with my pal Melody. She was on vacation with her family, and I came down to hang out with them for a couple of days. The yarn I used comes in a cake with the colors in order. You do stockinette stitch 'til the yarn changes color, then throw in a row of eyelets and keep going 'til the next color change, when you do another row of eyelets and keep going again. The pattern calls for knitting in beads along one edge, but I decided instead to lace big, wooden beads onto the tie ends. I've been wearing this one to work a lot.

I also mentioned in July that I planned to make an Ojo de Dios shawl. I got that one done, too.

The way you make it is to knit a triangle from the outside to the middle; then pick up stitches along one edge of the triangle and knit another; and so on, until you have 17 triangles. Then you pick up stitches and do garter-stitch short rows to fill in the rest. I didn't like the way the pattern called for joining the triangles, so I got a little fancy, and consequently ran out of yarn a few rows short of the top. But I've been wearing it a fair amount because it goes with a bunch of stuff in my wardrobe -- and also because at Yule, Kitty gave me a cool silver shawl pin that features a three-sided Celtic knot.

After I finished the Ojo de Dios shawl, other things began to take priority -- NaNoWriMo, the holidays, and so on -- and the knitting kind of got bogged down. I did cast on a cowl called the Black Forest once I'd finished NaNo, but it featured lace panels on relatively skinny needles, and it seemed to take forever to do a single pattern repeat.

Finally last weekend, I got sick of looking at it and decided to power through and get it done. I finished knitting it last night and steam-blocked it this morning. I'm calling mine the Blue Forest for obvious reasons.

I still have two other works-in-progress: a garter-stitch afghan so I can use up a bunch of leftovers from various projects; and a braid of roving that I intend to finish spinning with my drop spindle any day now. Did I ever do a post on spinning? Maybe I'll do that next week.

Anyway, back to the Tuscan Sunflower. I now have three of the four seasonal table toppers done, leaving only spring to knit. I plan to use this pattern with this yarn in the Green Apple colorway. We'll see how it turns out. Stay tuned...

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Speaking of NaNo, don't forget: I'm offering 50 percent off my usual editing rate through the end of March. Email me at lynne.cantwell@hearth-myth.com if you're interested.

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These moments of knitting-frenzied blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Writers, you may start your post-NaNoWriMo engines.

Remember back at the end of November, when that NaNoWriMo deadline was breathing down all our necks? And I congratulated you on meeting the deadline, but told you in no uncertain terms to set aside your novel until January?

Well, it's January. The holidays are over and the decorations are put away (except for the icicle lights on the eaves -- yeah, yeah, you'll pull them down when the weather's better, I hear ya). We have feasted and toasted and exchanged gifts, and maybe even garnered some congratulations for a NaNo job well done. Now, it's back to work.

Do not -- I repeat, DO NOT -- hit publish yet.

Yes, I am going to let you hit publish. Eventually. Just not yet.

I wouldn't even hand over your book to a friend or family member yet, no matter how much they've been pestering you to see it. Instead, I would direct you back to the NaNo site to sign the following pledge:

Then  put on your own reader's hat and read your book yourself. Make a list, if you're of the list-making persuasion, of the plot threads that go nowhere. See whether you've included a beginning, middle, and ending, and cast a critical eye toward whether you sped through any of them to get to the finish line (not that I've ever done that). See if things need to be moved around. Consider whether you've committed an info dump, either in the first few chapters (hint: if a whole chapter is backstory, break it up) or in dialogue (hint: if Character A is telling Character B stuff that B already knows, move it out of dialogue and into the narrative).

Then swap your reader's hat for your editor's hat, and get to work.

If it helps, I am right there with you. I have mentioned before that I'm a plotter -- that is, I create a rough outline before I start writing -- but even with that in hand, I had no idea how Spider's Lifeline would end when I sat down at my computer on November 1. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, but not the final shape it would take. So on November 1, I yammered for a couple of paragraphs, just so I could get going on the thing. By the end of the month, of course, I knew how the book ended (because I'd written the ending) -- but I also knew I was going to have to rewrite at least the first few paragraphs of the book, and possibly more.

So this afternoon, I decided I'd dithered long enough, and opened the file. Turns out that it's not as bad as it could have been (yay!). But I'm sure glad I hadn't sent it to anybody else yet, because I'm finding typos and extra words and missing spaces, and all the other glorious messes one makes when one is powering through a first draft at light speed.

And I'm only up to Chapter 3.

So take some time over the course of the next few weeks to polish your work. The folks at NaNoWriMo suggest you spend January and February revising, but every writer is different; some may need more time, some less. In any case, don't send your story out into the wilds before you edit the hell out of it. Which can be almost as much fun as writing the first draft. No, really.

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When your book is ready for a professional edit, I'd be happy to consider taking it on. Contact me at lynne.cantwell@hearth-myth.com and mention NaNoWriMo for a 50 percent discount off my regular editing rate. This discount is good from February 1, 2016 through March 30, 2016.

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And thanks to those who have purchased Fissured during the 99-cent sale I forgot to mention before now (whoops). It'll still be 99 cents for another couple of days at Amazon, in case you don't have a copy. And if you have a friend who ought to be hooked on the Pipe Woman Chronicles, Seized is still free. So that's two books for less than a buck.

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These moments of not-so-headstrong blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

NaNoWriMo -- the home stretch, or: Don't hit publish yet!

I wrote a lot of words this weekend. A lot of words. When I went to bed Wednesday night, my NaNoWriMo total was 43,800 words. Between cooking the Thanksgiving meal and visiting with family on Thursday, I managed to add just 200 words to the total. But by midnight Friday, I had comfortably crossed the 50,000-word threshold and validated this year's NaNo novel. And I kept writing Saturday to finish up the last chapter or so. So the final word count for Spider's Lifeline is either 55,756 (my count) or 56,095 (NaNo's count). I dunno where NaNo found the extra 300 words, but I wasn't inclined to argue with them since the difference was in my favor -- and I was over 50K either way.

(As most of you know, I think, my daughter Kitty is also doing NaNo this year. She blew past 50,000 words long ago, and won on the 20th, the first day validating was allowed. But her story wasn't done at 50,000 words, so she's still writing. And writing. Her goal is 150,000 words by midnight tomorrow. And she says her story won't be done even then.)

Some of you reading this may be doing NaNo for the first time -- or maybe you've done it before, but this is the first year you're going to win. Congratulations!

Now, I'd guess, your friends and loved ones are reacting in one of two ways:

1. Wow, that's a lot of words. So can we resume Real Life now? You need to clean out the gutters before we put up the Christmas lights...
2. OOOOOH! That's so cool! I want to read your book! Gimme gimme gimme!

As flattering as reaction #2 is, I'd recommend you tread even more carefully with this one than you would with reaction #1.

I'll be blunt: Writing 50,000 words in a month is a notable achievement -- but it doesn't mean you've written a publishable novel. At best, you have a first draft. More than likely, it's what my indie author friend Alexes Razevich calls a zero draft. It's the thing you need to have so you can start shaping it into a novel.

Our friends at NaNo will be posting a whole range of winner goodies on Tuesday. In the past, the prizes have included a free paperback of your book from CreateSpace; I think I heard that this year's prizes include a free hardcover from somewhere-or-other. Please, please, please resist the urge to order a copy before you have edited your book. If you publish it right away, there's a really good chance you'll re-read your book six months from now and say, "You know, really, this thing is a steaming pile of crap."

Or worse, someone else will tell you.

The NaNo folks know this to be true. On Tuesday, they'll have a bunch of suggestions for what to do with your book next. But I guarantee their number-one suggestion will be to leave it alone over the holidays. Close the file and set it aside until after New Year's. That will give you some distance from the work, and will give you a better chance to see its problems.

On January first, when you crack open your draft for the first time in a month, read it critically. Try not to get swept up in the story. Look for missing words and homonyms -- spellcheck and grammar check will not catch everything. Watch out for dangling plot threads; places where you've said the same thing two or three different ways when one way would suffice; characters you never properly introduce; characters you introduce too many times; and so on. 

Once you've been over your book a few times, find some beta readers. And I don't mean your mom. Look for people who will give you an honest opinion -- people who will tell you where the trouble spots are. Once you have their feedback, edit your novel again. The rule of thumb with beta readers is that if one person says something is a problem, it might just be them -- but if several people say something is a problem, it's a problem.

At this point, you might want to hire a professional editor. Lots of indies don't -- but lots of indies do. And don't hire your high school English teacher, unless he or she has professional editing experience. Novel editing requires a different skill set than term paper editing.

Then there's cover art. You might have mocked up something for NaNo, but compare your mockup to books in your genre at Amazon -- and be honest. If your cover looks amateurish, hire an artist to make you a better one.

Only after you've gone through all this will you be ready to publish your book.

But you don't have to worry about any of that until New Year's. For now, bask in the glory of your accomplishment. You wrote 50,000 words in a month! Tons of people have tried and failed -- but you've done it! Congratulations!

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These moments of congratulatory blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

Are editors negative people?

I saw an intriguing topic in a LinkedIn group a couple of weeks back. The title was something like, "Editors spend all their time finding other people's errors. Does that make them negative people?"

Gee, I hope not. Because Kat, Suzu, and I are officially hanging out our shingles (at long last!) as honest-to-goodness editor-type people. We kicked around a bunch of names, and concepts for names, and finally I just said, "Let's call it hearth/myth since it's kind of a brand already." So that's what we're calling it: hearth/myth editorial services. Or Hearth/Myth Editorial Services, if you want us to go all title case on you. Here's the logo (drumroll, please):

There's a tab up top that will take you to our bios. And there's contact info there, too, in case you're intrigued enough to want more information.

But getting back to this idea that editors might be negative people: I don't think that's true at all. And I know several authors who also do editing work, and they're actually very pleasant people. Detail-oriented, for sure. Funny, occasionally. Interested in helping others make their work look as good as it can, definitely. That's certainly what we're aiming for.

Now news editors might be a different story. Those folks are usually working under a tight deadline, so they're not going to suffer fools gladly. Still, I wouldn't call them negative -- just busy. Harried. And again, generally nice folks once the deadline is past.

I saw the link to that discussion in an email, and saved it because I didn't have time to read the thread right then. Now I wish I had moved faster, because the whole thing seems to have disappeared. I'd be interested to hear what you all think: Do negative people gravitate to editorial work? Or do editors become angry, cranky people because of the work they do? Or...? 

I promise we'll take any horror stories as object lessons.

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I've still got some free copies of The Maidens' War to give away. Let me know if you're interested. Thanks!

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These moments of bloggy editorializing have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell