I baked a batch of cookies tonight. They are for a Fourth of July gathering this
weekend, but also to take to my day job tomorrow. These cookies are pretty
labor intensive. You don’t just toss a
bunch of ingredients into a mixing bowl and then throw the dough on the sheet
for ten minutes and you’re done.
Nope, there are stages and steps. First you have to combine
the sugar and butter to make it all nice and fluffy before you add the egg and
vanilla. Then you combine dry ingredients,
mix those up and then stir them into your fluffy stuff. Yes, I said fluffy
stuff. Baking is serious business
ok? Stay with me. Now you add the milk chocolate chips. They must be milk chocolate, never ever
semi-sweet. Because that would be a gross waste of a good cookie.
Now you let this whole batch of dough sit in the fridge for
several hours, or ideally overnight.
Then… wait what? Not ready to
bake yet? For the sake of all that is good and sugary please tell me we can
have a cookie now? NO. Now, we roll the
cold dough into little balls. Once you have
a few hundred little balls you put them back into the fridge for an hour to
re-chill.
Now, you can start dusting each ball of dough in powdered
sugar and then put it on the baking sheet.
You know what? You
still don’t know how to make those cookies do you? However, you probably know why I don’t bake
them very often. They are a pain in the
ass. Though well worth the effort. I
freely admit, everyone loves these cookies.
Why am I even mentioning this? The process of writing a
story is a lot like baking these cookies.
There is the recipe, which is like when you get your idea and start outlining,
or writing down notes. Then you get to your first draft, you’ve made your
fluffy bit with the butter and sugar, maybe added the egg and vanilla too. Then
you start revisions, edits, critiques, that is when you’re sticking the dough
in the fridge and rolling into little balls and covering it in powdered sugar. Then finally somewhere along the line you
realize it’s really done and you get to take the story out of the oven and eat
it.
It could be that this is an awesome analogy, and the very
best idea I’ve EVER had. Or,
alternatively I shouldn’t bake at two am. It's what came into my head after I finished baking tonight. I'm going to bed.
Does that mean when you lick the egg beaters and get your tongue caught between them is part of the editing process?
ReplyDeleteNo, that means that there is a serious plot problem that can only be fixed with the addition of more vanilla. Or possibly you need to add some chocolate chips and send a minor character on a side quest. It's hard to say...
ReplyDelete