Four hundred pages and a thousand miles of yarn*: or, how to beat the sunk-cost fallacy
Our greatest duty as artists and as humans is to pay attention to our failures, to break them down, study the tapes, conduct the postmortem, pore over the findings; to learn from our mistakes.
Just frog it already!
—the wise friend of many a knitter
Out of all the cognitive biases identified thus far—188!?!!—the sunk-cost fallacy has got to be one of the most pervasive. To make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s the standard definition (using a veganism-and-creativity presentation slide from 2021):
In other words, humans tend not to own up to mistakes and misconceptions simply because we’ve spent SO MUCH TIME making and believing in them. It can be embarrassing, even painful, to admit that the premise of a novel we’ve been writing for years is fundamentally flawed, or that we’ve spent money we don’t have on a graduate program that definitely isn’t the career path we want after all, or that the relationship into which we’ve poured all our emotional resources is never going to be the loving and growth-oriented union we’d hoped and longed for. When we hang on too long, the original mistake can compound itself many times over. Nor does the sunk-cost phenomenon play well with the standard pep talk on perseverance; we’ve all known at least one writer or artist overworking material they ought to set aside because they hold a (not-unfounded) conviction that professionals don’t trash work that isn’t working, they fix it. And in this productivity-obsessed culture, you’ve pretty much got to be a Zen monk to avoid framing the situation as a waste of time and resources.
…Okay, I am not nor will I ever be a Zen monk. But I think I’ve figured out what to say to myself to make it easier to admit that something’s not working and take action accordingly.
Sunk-Cost Dilemma A:
In my “‘writer’s block’ revisited” post last fall, I told you I submitted 360 pages of a novel I had no idea how to finish. And there were lots more pages that didn’t make it into that document, well over 400 total I’d say (it’s hard to tell when you’re working in Scrivener). With all my other novels I’d been able to write my way into the answers, but that wasn’t happening this time. To put it in quilting terms, I realized there was nothing for it but to cut up the thing for scraps and try for a different (simpler) design than the one I’d envisioned. I’m now pretty close to the end of this replotting process, and when I found myself in the midst of another sunk-cost dilemma last month, I decided it was time to write this post.
Sunk-Cost Dilemma B:
Waaaaay back in the spring of 2013, soon after moving to Boston, I purchased a sweater’s worth of sport-weight linen-rayon yarn in a life-affirming shade of green. Over the years I tried to knit myself a cardigan, but I always abandoned it (vintage stitch pattern + math to fit = eternal UFO. I should know myself by now!) Then in the midst of my craft decluttering, knowing I have a much higher/faster finish rate on gift projects, I figured that was the quickest way to stash down. Green is Heather’s favorite color too, and I’d found a sweater pattern on Ravelry I thought she’d love, so I downloaded the pdf, knit and laundered some gauge swatches, did some math, and cast on, hoping to finish it before my mid-October trip to Minnesota.
Well, I’m writing this post just after flying home from those ultra-cozy four-and-a-half days with Heather and Zach at a lakeside cabin under perfect blue skies and a canopy of orange and gold. And this is the current state of the sweater:
*A thousand miles of yarn is the most ridiculous hyperbole I’ve indulged in all year, it’s more like 770 yards (not even half a mile, HAH!)
I could have finished it in time. I chose not to. What went wrong? I knit multiple gauge swatches and measured them before and after laundering. I DID THE MATH! But I flubbed it somehow. This yarn grows A LOT widthwise, so a relatively snug bust measurement of 51” (the designer recommends 15-20” of ease) would have blocked out to approximately 68.”
Thirty inches of ease. Way. Too. Big.
Ordinarily when it becomes clear that I have made a mistake in my knitting or sewing, my anti-perfectionist script begins to play in my head: Follow your perfectionism to its logical endpoint and you will never finish a thing. Not a dishcloth or a granny square, not one sentence, nevermind a complete paragraph. You will be THE CREATOR OF NOTHING!!!
And this is all true, of course. I tried to tell myself it would be okay, that I could put in a crocheted “seam” up the sides to tuck in some of the excess width, or that if it doesn’t fit her (“come on, it definitely won’t fit her!”) it will fit someone else who will wear it and love it.
But I’m not knitting this sweater for some other person. I am knitting it for my friend, who will look and feel good in a garment that is “slouchy” but not to such an extent that it feels like a(n albeit pretty-green) trash bag with three slits cut in it for her head and arms. If it doesn’t feel good to finish something that isn’t quite right, it definitely won’t feel good to give it.
Over morning coffee with Heather and Zach, I started knitting a smaller size. She oohed over the color (I knew it!) and we talked about sunk cost. Here are Heather’s two primary pieces of advice:
to practice self compassion when reflecting upon supposedly-wasted time;
to look at EVERYTHING we write (or make) as skill building, meaning that the words we toss are just as necessary as the words that show up in a published work.
Our conversation reminded me of something Téa Obreht said in conversation with my friend Deirdre at the International Literature Festival Dublin this past May:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Dross is inevitable when we live in a state of creative possibility. False starts, dead ends, and poop-outs aren’t evidence of our failures, they’re an ***occupational certainty.*** No writer has published every single word they have written. Every fiber artist has had to pick apart (frog, seam-rip, whatever) stitches that won’t get them the result they want, just as every home cook or baker has had to dump a failed experiment in the trash at least once.
Knowing if and when to quit (or pivot) is a call-and-response between intuition and logic. Heather’s two guidelines are the most essential, but I also feel like that’s easy for me to say since my considerable writing and knitting experience (25+ years and 19 years, respectively) allows me to come to a quicker decision than I could have done at, say, age 25. If self compassion feels out of reach (so far) and “everything is skill building” doesn’t automagically override your obsession with the One Perfect Outcome, here are a few more things to try:
Put the project in time out, and for longer than you think it needs.
When you circle back to your sunk-cost dilemma, ask yourself these questions: What’s the un/happiest outcome if I persevere? The un/happiest outcome if I quit? What are the one or two likeliest scenarios of all these, according to my inner guidance system? Are there other options I haven’t considered yet?
Now for the most clarifying questions of all: Is this project making me miserable right now? Has it ever made me feel radiantly, ludicrously happy? If yes and yes, return to step 1.
If you find yourself flinging your project (figuratively or literally) across the room again and again, over a period of years, well then—you just might have your answer. Keep in mind, too, that an indefinite time out still siphons a small amount of creative energy from your active WIPs.
I could have admitted the sweater was too big about five inches sooner. I worried about it all that time before I finally stopped. Owning up to the sunk cost meant not being able to give Heather her present in person, and that part was tougher than the necessity of frogging a full month’s worth of knitting. I was surprised at how I felt about the actual starting over. I felt good about it. I was looking forward to it, because knitting half of this sweater was a lot of fun. I listened to three wonderful novels—Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust and Maria Dahvana Headley’s The Mere Wife—feeling oh so content all the way through. Casting on a second time for the same sweater means I’m 2x’ing my enjoyment of this collection of stitch patterns and (hopefully) listening to twice as many excellent audiobooks. I’m practicing self compassion and choosing to value process over product. I can reframe my glorious-mess-of-a-time-travel-novel similarly:
Cutting up (or altogether chucking) these pages is the first step towards a stack of pages that WILL work.
Tossing this plot gives me plenty more time to live among these characters, for whom I feel such profound affection.
After this reframing, it is obvious to me that starting over is a joy and a privilege. I’ve learned so much from this process that I can (and will!) someday write a book about it.
Whether or not you decide to throw in the towel, look for the boons inside this period of frustration and uncertainty. This is how we get better at the work we love to do.
P.S. The International Rescue Committee is the humanitarian aid organization to which I contribute on a monthly basis. Here’s a link so you can click through and donate if you feel so inclined.
