Q+A: Alanna Okun, author of “Knit a Hat” and editor at The Goods

Okun's new book, “Knit a Hat,” is a combination of how-to guide and personal philosophy.

Beyond her day job as the deputy editor of The Goods, Vox’s vertical about money and consumption, Alanna Okun somehow finds time to write books. (Don’t worry, we asked her how.) Her first book, a memoir in essays called The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater, came out in 2018, and now she has a new book, Knit a Hat: A Beginner’s Guide to Knitting. It’s a how-to book, teaching the kind of DIY activity that seems very suitable for quarantine, but Okun makes it personal, her voice guiding you through the steps.

The work wasn’t just about writing. Okun collaborated with the book’s designers to make sure the layout fit the instructional content and posed for all of the photography — not usually the author’s job. We talked to Okun about different kinds of book deals, balancing personal projects with editing, and the best ways to edit and pitch for a column like the one she oversees for Vox,“The best money I ever spent.”

Interview by Kyle Chayka. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Study Hall: How did this specific book come about? Did you have to write a proposal for it?

Alanna Okun: My first book came out in March of 2018. I did a fair amount of promo for it, I was writing articles for different outlets. I believe that the editor of this book, which is a different editor than the previous book, read an article that I’d written and approached me and was like, “Hey, Abrams is trying to put together this new series of intro to craft books.”

In an article I wrote for the New York Times, I put forward the somewhat controversial opinion that people should learn to knit a hat first, which is contrary to the traditional knitting lore that you should learn to knit a scarf first. On some level, it’s true; a scarf is certainly easier than a hat. But I’ve seen so many people who I think would enjoy the craft quit because a scarf is so goddamn long.

She approached me, we had a great conversation, and I decided that it was a project I wanted to take on. It was one of those first date-style editor conversations where I wasn’t sure at first, and then I got on the phone and I was just like, “Oh, I really love your vibe. I really love what you’re picturing for this.” It was also shorter than my previous book. The old one was 60,000 or 70,000 words, and this clocked in closer to 12,000 words.

SH: If the editor reached out to you directly, at what point did your agent come into the conversation?

AO: After I had the initial conversation with the editor, I looped [agent] Kate McKean in and was like, “How should we go about this? Do you think this is something I should do?” And then she sort of took over from there. I am so lucky to have an agent who does both these things, who did quite literary books but also represented crafters and crafting books, so it was really easy for us to cross that aisle. She knows what a crafting book is and what the market is.

SH: Often with cookbooks, the photo budget is included in the actual advance, so it’s up to the author to deal with it. Was that the case here?

AO: They just commissioned me for the text, so I didn’t have to do that.

SH: What was it like figuring out the balance of personal versus instructional writing in this kind of how-to project?

AO: The best craft books have some personality in them and certainly have a little bit of the writer’s philosophy. From the get-go, the publishers were just like, “Yeah, of course it can sound like you.” I think that the best service journalism and the most useful service journalism also has a point of view and has life in it. The book process was actually a lot more writerly, quote unquote, than I think I would have expected. I came up through a service journalism background. When I was at BuzzFeed [as senior editor], a lot of what I was doing was service and how-to stuff.

I think knitting should be accessible to everyone and it shouldn’t be this obscure, high-minded, scary thing to take on. Also, it’s really okay to suck at something. We’re taught that in the capitalist hellhole in which we all reside that if you’re not amazing at something the first time you do it, it’s not for you and it’s not worth pursuing.

SH: What was your strategy for the actual knitting instructions?

It’s more of a recipe than a pattern. I really wanted to leave a lot of room for variants; if people had different yarn than I use or if someone wanted to make a hat for someone with a very large head or very small head, I wanted to include signposts for how to navigate that yourself and not feel like you can’t substitute anything. I tried to write it almost as if I were sitting beside the person or sending them an email of instructions on how to get started.

SH: As an editor at Vox, how do you work with beginning writers — is it similar to the way that you’re trying to teach someone to knit?

It really varies based on the person and also based on what I’m editing. I edit this series for Vox called The Best Money I Ever Spent. [Ed. note: Originally created by Vox editor Meredith Haggerty.] Most of the people who write for that I have either not worked with before or have not written for Vox before, because it’s personal essays and they’re sort of specific. You’re not writing a service recommendation so much as you’re trying to interrogate this concept of value. What does money mean to people? What does it mean when we are exchanging it for these goods or experiences? In what ways can money actually bring us happiness or bring us satisfaction or bring us pain and suffering?

One of my favorite parts of my job is just getting to seek people out or getting to accept pitches and shaping what the series can look like. It’s a pretty intimate process because someone is trying to tell their own story, but it does have to work in conversation with the rest of the column pieces. It’s a balancing act. When the first draft comes in, maybe half the time I end up writing an edit memo that’s like, “Hey, before I get into line edits, let’s rejigger the structure, let’s figure out exactly what question we want to answer here,” finding the narrative through line. Then the other half of the time I will end up just diving right in and saying, “This is a great opening gambit. I think we could push in more here.” The column usually has three edit rounds, soup to nuts.

The whole time, I’m really trying to make sure that the writer feels comfortable, that we’re communicating what we want the story to communicate, and that it feels like it’s doing something new. Preserving their voice is paramount for me.

SH: What’s the best money you’ve personally spent lately?

I bought this under-desk elliptical, but I don’t have a desk. I just stand on it and balance. I don’t actually even think it’s a good workout. Being able to just stand on this thing and get a couple thousand steps in and feel like I’m in motion even if I’m not going anywhere — that’s amazing money to have spent.

SH: How did you actually write this book while doing your full-time editing job?

I am not a write-everyday writer at all. And in fact, I should say during quarantine I’ve just not done any of my own personal writing whatsoever. Maybe a couple hundred words. But I am someone who, when the spirit moves me, will sit down and churn out a couple thousand words. Then I have to wait another week for that to happen again. I wrote my first book that way, too, and it worked out fine.

I also have a wonderful boss. For this book, I think I took a week off, went to Montreal, and sat down and put the whole thing together. I had probably drafted most of it at that point, but I hadn’t just printed it out and put it in front of myself. It was the mini book vacation that I needed to screw my head on straight.

SH: So it sounds like the end goal isn’t to quit your job and write books full time forever.

I do like the structure, and I like having to use the editor part of my brain during the day so that then the writer part of my brain can get a rest. I don’t actually know how the human body works, but it’s like working a set of muscles near the muscles that you’re then going to use later.

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