Tricky Business

When I became a novel writer, I had no idea how time-consuming the act of creating a book would be. In addition to the uninterrupted blocks of time I needed to do the actual writing, I discovered that a fair amount of thinking time had to happen in order to get the story where I wanted it to go. For every hour spent putting actual words on the page, I found I needed an equal or better amount of time to conjure up the details necessary to create an imaginary world and people it with extraordinary characters. I needed to think about my storyline, to create a suspenseful and believable plot, to develop a sense of movement and structure, and to make sure that there were high stakes involved. I imagined my characters speaking, so I could recognize their voices; I visualized what their pasts might be, so I could construct their future actions.

Sometimes this thinking time was a conscious effort, where I pointedly outlined different scenarios for the story in my head; other times the thoughts cooked in my subconscious, bubbling up to my awareness at random moments to surprise me or, in many instances, provide a feeling of relief.

I learned that the time I spent thinking about my book was almost more consuming than the actual time I spent putting words on the page. And, frankly, this scared me a little, because as a working wife and mother, there are other people in the world who also needed me to be thinking about them.

All writers sacrifice in order to find time for their writing, and our family and friends and businesses bear the brunt of it. Not only are we physically unavailable while we’re holed up in our writing lairs, but we’re mentally absent, as well. Many of us find that when we’re writing, the stories we’re creating consume our consciousness. Though our bodies are present in the real world, our thoughts are somewhere else.

Unfortunately, the outside world doesn’t wait while we’re living in that creative state – our kids grow up, our parents age, our businesses succeed or fail, the world around us spins forward. We sacrifice our presence to our art, and the price can sometimes be steep.

For this reason, it’s important that we writers take the time to step back once in a while and evaluate whether our desire to tell the story inside us is stealing from other equally important aspects of our lives. Call it whatever you will -- a creative time out, perhaps – but every once in a while it behooves us to check in with those who love and need us. This, of course, is not a mandatory exercise and a lot of writers forego it by choice. But if we don’t balance the demands of the real world with our need to create, the things and people who mean so much to us can sometimes slip away.

It’s a tricky business, this writing thing we do.

Rituals

When my friend, Pam, called to cancel on our movie date tonight, I was glad. Not because I didn’t want to go out with Pam – I relish our nights out, partly because I enjoy her company and partly because we share a love of indie films (something our husbands don’t have much interest in). But tonight I was glad we weren’t getting together because the unexpected block of time became an opportunity to bake holiday cookies with my son, Max.

Baking cookies may not seem like a big deal to some, but to me, it is. That’s because Max is sixteen years old now and between his interests - the homework, driving lessons, basketball and volleyball practices, and flag football games – and my own, there isn’t always a lot of time left for us to spend together.

We had made the dough last night, at Max’s urging. To be honest, with all I have going on with my publicity work and fiction writing, I could skip the whole Christmas-cookie-baking gig. I could skip the tree and the lights and the presents, too. But my kids, who are now fourteen and sixteen-years-old and straddling that gap between adulthood and childhood, won’t let that happen. So, with Max pestering me to pull out the New York Times Cookbook (we love the gingerbread recipe) and even reminding me to let the butter soften before he left for school in the morning (how many teenage boys do that?), the dough was ready to go.

After I hung up the phone with Pam, I called Max into the kitchen and said, “Let’s hit it.” My daughter, Sasha, and husband, Dan, made us promise that they could help decorate when they returned from softball practice, so Max and I were on our own to bake. We put some mood music on the CD player (A Charlie Brown Christmas, one of my all-time favorites), sprinkled the table with flour, pulled the cold dough out of the fridge, and selected Christmas and Hanukkah (for Dan, who is Jewish) cookie cutters from the drawer that only gets opened once every year in December. There were the old favorites – the rusty gingerbread man, the plastic Christmas tree, the rocking horse, the teddy bear, the holiday wreath, the Santa, the dreidel, and the six-pointed Star of David – along with some new ones: a Texas longhorn and a cactus shape that Dan had brought back from a business trip to Dallas this year.

And we baked. I rolled out the dough, and Max positioned the cutters and pressed them down, then peeled the excess dough away and transported the newly cut cookies (the longhorns gave us some trouble) to the new baking sheets the kids gave me for my birthday this year. Max and I shoved the filled trays into the oven and loaded up empty ones, working together in a rhythm based on years of doing the same sprinkling, rolling, and cutting Christmas ritual, on the same kitchen table, since he was a toddler.

We didn’t say much, Max and I, but as we worked together, gathering the loose scraps of dough to press into a ball and roll out again, I held my breath. I know that there won’t be too many more of these times. In two years, my son will be off to college, studying, working, falling in love and, some day, developing his own holiday traditions. But for now, I’ll treasure these stolen moments in the kitchen with flour on our hands, the scent of warm gingerbread in the air, and the fullness of this comforting winter ritual in our hearts.