First of all, I have this habit of putting food in my novels that is way too delicious.  In two separate stories–one, Nice and Mean; the other, one called Not That Girl that may someday be unleashed to the world–I prominently featured doughnuts.  Every time M and E would make up, or J, M, Z and B would gather at the shopping center, I would have to stand by and watch while they stuffed their mouths with chocolately, cakey goodness and try not to care that I didn’t–and shouldn’t–have any in my house.  It was particularly rough when M wiped the extra glaze off the wax paper and then ate it.  That’s what I would do!

Then there was–and is; in contrast to the doughnut scene, this part made it into Nice and Mean–the matter of ravioli.  There’s an important scene in which Marina and Sachi eat ravioli.  I love ravioli!  Marina accidentally pours too much parmesan onto hers (I seriously hope this does not count as a spoiler), but I would eat it like that anyway.  I think they’re eating peas at the same time…I love peas with my ravioli!  Every time I’d revise that scene, I’d be tempted with the prospect of a ravioli lunch, and let me tell you, there is a lot more fat in ravioli, even cheese ravioli, than you realize. 

But now I think I’ve taken the cake for myself–or even, ha ha, the Cakesters.  In my camping story, workingly titled The Book of the Dead, some genius sent my characters Oreo Cakesters.  It’s important how many come in a pack, so just now (before lunch, I might add), I went online to find out and ended up having to look at this website:

http://www.nabiscoworld.com/oreo/cakesters/

Why can’t they just have the info without pictures?  It’s so mean and tempting.  Now I want Cakesters, and I should not be having Cakesters!  (I don’t mean to make this blog another lament along the lines of Women and Food Denial, but I very much doubt that most peoples’ healthy eating plans include regular consumption of Cakesters, especially in the middle of the afternoon.) 

So I may be on the verge of deciding that I should forgo research–or at least, internet research on food.  I am just going to make up all my facts from now on.  Even if I need to learn how long it takes yeast for yeast to rise–too bad!  I don’t want to be tempted with images of fresh-baked bread.  They may be making their own veggie burgers from a mix, but I will just have to imagine the finished product, thank you very much (okay, maybe some people would balk at the idea of mix-made veggie burgers, but at this moment, when no peas or ravioli have crossed my path recently, I am finding it quite tempting.)  If my subconscious is going to keep throwing tempting items into my stories, the least I can do is resist further temptation.  And if I put errors in my story in the process, who cares?  Wouldn’t you rather have me wrong than expiring of a heart attack before completing this novel?  I would.  Thank you. 

ps I am sorry if I tempted you with the pretty pictures here.  I had to get them out of my system.  Of course, now they are in my system.  Hm. 

pps It has been pointed out to me that I have not really made good on my tagline.  Consider this a love song to cake…a song of the broken-hearted.

instead of this:

This is the second time I’ve had a laugh on behalf of Casimir Pulaski, a Polish hero of…something or other.  I’d tell you more about it, but you’d probably think it was silly and agree with me that you had to be there.

If you have any stories of resarch snafus, however, or, indeed, tales of Casimir Pulaski, feel free to share.

(Well, except that there are people, too. It’s not a about elk. I won’t even pretend that sounds interesting.)

I’m loving writing it, but I don’t always get to write it, because I keep needing to re-outline. I’ve come up with a sort of metaphor. (Actually, now that I’m rereading what I wrote, I realize it’s a simile.)

Writing a first draft is like trying to cross a wide, rushing, rock-filled river. If you’re me, you know where you want to land on the other side–ie, the end of the book. So I can cross in a few ways: charge across the river, freezing cold. You cut your feet on the rocks, get pushed by the current and have to scramble over debris, but at least you land on the other side pretty soon after you started.

You can also gather stones around you on the bank and toss them into a path across the river–at least, as far as your throwing arm will let you. This would be the outline stage, and for me, it’s more successful than the dingle-doodie shamble-run across the river because I’m more likely to land where I want to and less likely to end up stranded in the middle of the river, blocked by a big honking tree branch.

However, I can’t always land the rocks perfectly from the shore. There may be an obstacle I can’t see from where I’m standing. But I’ll get impatient and want to get to the other side–maybe there are some foxes nipping at my heels where I am–so I step out onto the rocks as far as I can go. Drafting–yay! View of the river! The rush!

Then, of course, you know what happens: I may still run into that tree branch. I may see that some of the rocks landed wobblyly (I now dub this an adverb), and I need to shore them up. Or I may realize that they’re not in an arc that will let me land where I had planned to, and I may need to retrace my steps and start again-over and over and over.

At some point, I start to ask myself, should I just abandon these rocks and charge across the river? Am I being wimpy, throwing stones instead of running? Maybe I should run. At least I’ll be able to say I’ve gotten to the other side.

But then I think, if my feet are all bloody, is it worth it? And oh yeah–did I mention that I’ll need to use that same path to get other people–readers–across the river? At some point, it’ll need to be navigable for them, too. So I keep up my rock-throwing, hoping my aim will improve and that eventually, I’ll have the path.

What about you guys? Do you see first-drafting like this at all? Are you a rock-thrower or a mad dasher? Or somewhere in between? That’s where I am now: in between. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Yesterday was a very thought-provoking day in my writing, because I started to ask myself, is this too easy?  (Pause to duck while other writers throw tomatoes.)  Yes, I know that’s kind of a hideously obnoxious question, but believe me, I’m sure I will not ask it often.  In fact, if the power of the blog is really such that the boundaries of the world melt away, I may at some point try to go back in time and throw tomatoes at my own self. 

It was, though, an extraordinarily productive day.  I revised a wee bit and wrote 11 pages of what I call The Camping Book, aka The Book of the Dead.  On most days, if I’m really going great guns (a term borrowed from my slightly odd college counselor), I can write 5 pages; other days, I’ll settle for 1,000 words–roughly 2-3 pages.  (Why are we wordsmiths so numbers-obsessed sometimes?  I guess everyone has to have a goal.) Anyway, as you can see, 11 pages is kind of gnuts.  Why was I so productive? 

I’m thinking it’s because I spent the total of two weeks outlining in September, and then I dedicated a whole other slew of time to elaborating on it two weeks ago.  I got to a point where I could push myself to answer the questions, “Who should this scene belong to?  What will be the tension in this scene?  After this scene, what will we be burning to know next?” 

So hooray for outlining, as it provided me a map to guide my productive driving these last few days.  Still, though, I wonder if I’m leaving out something major that will smack me in the face when I revisit these pages.  Will I discover that, somehow, it’s really boring?  I already know I need to go back and add visual description.  I’m just going to hope that the pages are at least half as good as they were easy.  That seems like an okay kind of math, right?