fiction should not be this stressful

I feel like there should be a fic panic button, where small droids appear and offer you tranquilizers when you finish the first round of edits and realize that the story is now completely not the same as the one you sent the first time and have to send it off again to the betas with words like "you told me it needed more x!" to blame them and not yourself for having some kind of midnight epiphany that in the cold, hard light of day you realize was possibly merely a stomach complaint. Especially when you didn't exactly do more x, but added y, z, fifteen pages and a massage that despite your best efforts and the addition of wine did not end in sex.

(I actually kind of wanted to beat something. Coitus interruptus is not pleasant even by proxy.)

To say that I feel vaguely fictionally schizophrenic is to understate the case. I could have been a knitter. Knitters do not angst over comma placement and the entire history of cavalry. Nor do they try to read translations of Xenophon for plot points.

(They also aren't reading Catullus for context. Just look at that sentence. There is no part of me that doesn't want to cry that I'm being serious. And I never was a classics girl.)

ETA: *Grins* I bow to the knitters who have explained their gauge stress. I crochet. I feel your pain. I just never had to get a Latin dictionary while I crochet. Though now I am kind of afraid there are, in fact, knitters and crocheters who in fact do use classic Latin patterns and I may just have to die.

Comments

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

Dude, I'm a knitter. I may not angst over comma placement but I've been angsting over gauge issues, lace pattern reading problems, the problems with the linen I'm using and in a spectacularly ridiculous fit of not paying attention this morning, seaming the two sides of the cardigan's back together instead of to the fronts.

waves needles in solidarity

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

I've done that. Not knitting, sewing, but yeah. The upper sleeve to hem.

Headdesk doesn't begin to cover it.

And I was thinking more of knitting = writing stress like, "Okay,I can frog right about two thirds of every stitch I've put into this, or I can adjust on the fly, do the same on the other side, and claim it's a "reinterpretation" of the original idea.

Of course, I'm a staunch proponent of the "I meant to do that" school of creativity. To the ridiculous extent of having an icon for it.

edited because "sleebe" is not a technial costuming term.

Re: waves needles in solidarity

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

I figure, if I repeat the same stitch mistake everywhere, it's no longer a mistake. It's a design feature.

The seaming mistake... there's no way to disguise that. I just need a glass of wine and time to sit down and fix it.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*falls over and dies* I bow before knitting wisdom and gauge stress.

re: your eta

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

I know Franklin Habit did some Latin translation and research when he knit his heirloom christening shawl for his niece: http://the-panopticon.blogspot.com/2007/07/four-wishes-for-abigail.html (aside from the Latin, there's a ton of research and planning that went into that project, too.)

Re: your eta

[puckling.livejournal.com]

...wow. One day I hope to be a good enough knitter to make a pattern and then knit something that amazing.

Re: your eta

[jenna-thorn.livejournal.com]

Thank you for linking to that project. the shawl is beautiful, but the idea behind it is wonderful on its own.

[sleepingfingers.livejournal.com]

Nor do they try to read translations of Xenophon for plot points.

I am intensely interested in this story of yours. *waits -- rather impatiently -- for it to be posted*

[transtempts.livejournal.com]

Knitters stab things with their knitting needles and emphatically wave them at people. Trufax.

The massage AND wine didn't lead to sex? *blinks* HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?

And, you will appreciate this. I just broke 9,300. *headdesk*

Knitter here.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I just ripped back a perfectly good portion of my current sock because I needed to reduce the foot, and the *sole* wouldn't look as nice if I reduced from where I was.

The *sole*. The part of the sock no one sees because it's on the bottom of your *foot*. But if I didn't, it would bug me.

So. Yeah. We all have our nits that we pick (and for the record? Comma placement is VITAL.)

[ratcreature]

Probably all creative hobby stuff is stressful at times. You could perhaps pick something like popping plastic packaging air bubbles to escape that...

[waldorph.livejournal.com]

I empathize entirely. All the way down to the bit where the classics get involved- that is just wrong, okay?

[norabombay.livejournal.com]

I'm feeling a little bit better about my complete inability to knit. And my lack of fiction writing. Mostly.

Except I don't want to discuss the amount of time I spent today, carefully maximizing my TIVO so that it gets the most appropriate number of Law & Order episodes, carefully balanced with large quantities of VH1 'celebreality' programming.

[seekergeek.livejournal.com]

How about weavers who recreate a woven fabric based off of corroded imprint on the back of brooch pin buried for a 1500 years? Seriously. No, really, I'm not lying.

[iseult-variante.livejournal.com]

... if it helps, I am delurking to say that I am really, really excited by the idea of this story? Um. Yay, classics?

[fyrdrakken]

Actually, given the number of really good knitting patterns out there that just happen to have been originally written in Japanese or German or something Scandinavian or Baltic, translation issues can indeed occur. (I lucked out on the one Dale of Norway sweater pattern I've worked so far, in that it was printed in English, but. I've got several others of their pattern booklets lurking in my collection, and at least one made me gulp at having a single page of English text inserted in the middle of multiple pages in Norwegian.)

As of course is the madness that is struggling to translate Victorian knitting patterns into modern instructions. (And on reading down through the other comments before actually hitting post, I see someone else referenced Franklin Habit's work.)