Baking with a New Recipe

Hello on this sunny Monday here in western Missouri. The sun’s warmth belies the air’s chill, and I may get out for my first walk in over two months. Let’s hope!

Meanwhile, today I want to write a “scone”—my last posting explained that if you are new here—about why I’m going to continue to write yeast bread and cookies. That is, I’ll write them with a new recipe that will reflect my having less energy now that I’m aging.

I also now have less time to devote to book-publication writing for two reasons:

1)    I’ve decided to post and read blogs each week as well as write pancakes—a 250-word pet article and the advice column for the Idaho newspaper I told you about last week.

And . . .

2)    Dr. Ann, the glaucoma specialist, has advised me to sit at the computer to write for only 25-minute sessions, followed by 10 minute intervals of resting my eyes with an eye mask on.  I try then to clear my mind and embrace what is. What I mean by that, is that I want to embrace my life as it is right now. I want to avoid dwelling in the past and what was and has been; I want to live in the present and find the good it offers me. One good is a new recipe for writing.

That new recipes consists not only in writing baked good—yeast bread, cookies, scone, and pancakes. But also in being more flexible about my writing. That is, not setting a schedule and assigning myself deadlines that often, in the past, have been unrealistic. I’m going to simply write until I’m done. I’ll write for as many days, weeks, months a manuscript needs as it goes through its various drafts.

Then and only then will I announce the publication of the book.  

In other words, my new recipe calls for a new baker—one who is gracious to herself and one who stops being her own taskmaster. That’s a recipe for success. The way I’ve been operating in the past two years has become a recipe for burn-out. You and I both know that.

I want to continue baking yeast bread (novels and memoirs) and cookies (gift books for cat lovers) because I already have so many manuscripts done in first draft. They represent writing I’ve done for the last twenty years—writing for which I couldn’t find an agent or publisher.

Here’s what I have ready to work on in the time I have left to write:

Novels/Yeast Bread:

The Reluctant Spy: I need to write three scenes to add to the final draft of this historical novel on which I’ve worked for twenty years.

Three Roads Diverged: Draft 1 of this Bronze-Age Greece historical novel is completed.

Winter Tapestry: Draft 1 of this novel about four ex-nuns in the 20^th century is completed.

Memoirs/Yeast Bread:

Ceaseless Chatter: Half of Draft 1 about the years 1967-1977 is completed.

Abandonment: Half of Draft 1 about the years 1936-1958 is completed.

Cat Books/Cookies

Bastet-Net #2—Saints: Half of Draft 1 completed.

Bastet-Net #3—Prayers: More than half of Draft 1 completed.
Cats Speak Out: Final Draft completed; tweaking needed.

Having done work on these manuscripts, I’d like to see them through to publication. That may or may not happen, but I would enjoy discovering their final drafts!

Peace.