How the Stitches Came Together: The Writing Process behind "Friday Night Knitting Club"

When I was little, I used to draw pictures and then tell myself stories about the people in my drawings. (Pioneer girls, no doubt influenced by Little House on the Prairie and my Holly Hobbie playhouse, was a big theme.) The funny thing is that I still sketch out my people when I write novels today, although I'm not sitting here and drawing stick figures of the characters (because believe me when I tell you that I cannot draw). The difference is that now I only use words - and a lot of paper tacked onto two large bulletin boards above my desk.

For each character, I sketch out a basic back story, which I then continue to flesh out as the novel progresses. And things can change! At one point, Georgia from The Friday Night Knitting Club was going to be a cheerleader in high school. As I was writing, that didn't seem to make sense to her personality anymore and so ultimately she became the editor of the school newspaper. These are just quick details to the reader but they can tell me a lot about Georgia, for example. That's because making these kinds of decisions about what happened in a character's past can change how they behave later on. (Even once the book is done I am still thinking about the characters fondly and often: They are like old friends that live in my head.) So it's important to me that I have a paragraph or two on each main character before I start writing, and then I detail what I call my 'road map.' I call it that because I know where my journey is beginning, and because I even have some sense about where I want things to end BUT I am not sure of all the points I am going to have to stop and visit along the way. So I plot out a very general summary, and then do a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. (It always amuses me to go back and look at my initial chapter outlines when the book is done because the story will have changed so much through the writing and getting to know the characters, and I will shake my head at some of my early ideas!)

Of course, not all of my writing process is about the actual act of writing. No, there's a lot about habit, about creating certain steps that say to the brain that 'it's time to work now.' For example, I am completely not a morning person. But when I am deep into a novel then I wake up by 6 am. (This is very hard for me but my dog, Baxter, highly approves!) That's because I write faster and more clearly in the quiet hours of the morning, before the phone begins to ring and the emails have started coming in. Sometimes the words just flow but that typically happens for me right when I'm falling asleep or in the shower. So I try to carry around a notepad (okay, not in the shower) to jot down these thoughts. The rest of the time it's all about the process of sitting at the desk, day in and day out, exploring my way into the story. I type much more than you actually read!

When I begin a new novel, the writing is slow, and then it speeds up tremendously towards the end. No doubt part of that is the looming deadline to get the book to the publisher! But it's also because I am much more connected to the characters and, just as when you really know a friend, the conversation can be quick and intense. I love my characters. That's why finishing a story is wonderful but also somewhat sad: I continue to think about the lives I've imagined for them but it can't be quite the same because there are other stories I also want to tell. I hope that you enjoy getting to know these characters as much as I have!

For more conversation about Friday Night Knitting Club, visit the Sisterhood Group.