Are you someone who prefers savory to sweet? I definitely lean toward the savory. Give me fish & chips over cookies and apple pie any day. However, one of the things I do when writer’s block attacks, is bake. Tarts, pavlovas and apple cider donuts. Gooey chocolate chip brownies and French macarons. Sweet, sweet, sweet.
Writer’s block is always a part of the process, but WHEW! During a pandemic it’s so much more intense. I feel myself dragging through the writing process, through each individual word as though I have to offer up a limb for each letter I type. When during a non-pandemic, not-pandemic, un-pandemic (Is there a correct way to say this?) my kids are at school for six hours out of the day. That’s six hours of quiet for my mind to think, to fight through writer’s block when it arrives.
Eventually I will have to write through the block. But taking breaks and doing completely different things helps too. Non-writing tasks give my brain other creative ways to behave. And that can be a necessary part of the process as well.
Baking is great for this, especially when I know the writing will be more difficult, like when my son has his Zoom band class. (He plays the trumpet. He’s a beginner. Sooooo not quiet.)
Baking doesn’t necessarily relax me, in fact, I do a lot of gluten-free baking, which has helped me create a few new swear word combinations, and I can often be found yelling or chucking the ruined tart into the garbage. But for a few hours I can set my writing woes aside and concentrate on some new baked good even if it does fall apart in the end. I can take out my stress on kneading dough or mixing batter. Gluten-free baking, baking in general is not for the faint of heart. But really, neither are writing & publishing. One has to try over and over again, sometimes tweaking a recipe or a story a gazillion times before it’s delicious, before it holds together, before anyone else will want to taste/read it.
There are many days I don’t feel like a real baker, no matter how often I bake, times when I still consider myself a newbie, an amateur, someone who doesn’t really know what she’s doing. There are times when what I’m baking is a complete fail and I swear, very colorfully, that I’m never baking again.
But I do, I always do. There are days I feel like the writing will never come, as id I don’t know how to put sentences on the paper. But the creativity always returns. I think part of it is giving myself permission to write through the crap. To know it won’t all be great, especially during the first draft or second, or third, but regardless, to try over and over again, and to accept the flops. Just like in baking. To get back up and bake and write again and again. And to remind myself, despite the days when the tart fails or the writing block hits, I still genuinely enjoy both, baking and writing.
What do you enjoying doing when the pandemic woes or writer’s block hits?
Above photo: Fig, Taleggio, & Pine Nut Tart from the cookbook Canelle et Vanille: Nourishing, Gluten-Free Recipes for Every Meal and Mood by Aran Goyoaga. This cookbook is amazing! It hits all the savory and sweet notes, and Goyoaga’s gluten free recipes are the best I’ve ever tried. I made the above tart with homemade gluten-free puff pastry from her book. DIVINE!!!! Maybe I am a real baker!
