Ann Dee Ellis dot com

I wanted to post a picture of a regular boring cake. I went to cakewrecks.com and got sucked in. Those cakes are not regular or boring. I wasted maybe fifteen minutes? Maybe more? This is why the internet it bad.

Why was I looking for a boring cake? Like the kind of cakes I make? From a box? In a pan? With bad frosting on top?

I will tell you. One time someone chucked a cake at me.

Not really. I wish.

I’m tired. I need to finish a book this week. I’ve been working on this book for forty thousand years. And while it’s no secret this process has been painful, I have realized that all the sweat and tears and long nights are not wasted.

When you first start a book, the character is a stick figure. You may think you know him or her, you may know what they look like, where they live, what they worry about, etc. You may do tons of get-to-know them exercises, etc. And you may have a pretty firm grasp on who you think they should be.

BUT

As you write, as you push them into different situations, things happen. They start to change and change and change and through the change, they become more real. You rewrite. They get thicker and fuller and realer (love). You rewrite again. They grow even more. You start asking yourselves questions. Why isnt’ this working? Who is she really? Why would that boy react to her in that way? Why would she even talk to that boy? I thought in my character sketch she was shy? Is she shy?

Is he shy?

is the mom shy?

Who is shy?

You may be in shower and you realize, oh  man, I think she murdered someone. And you go back and rewrite.

Then you take another shower and no, she just thinks she murdered someone because she has delusions.

Then you rewrite. And the whole thing starts to jump to life.

Books need time. People need time. Situations need time.

Go on walks. take showers. Watch the sunset. And think about your book. Think about your MC. Think about all those other people that walk around the MC. Let it marinate and then rewrite. Then let that marinate. Don’t stress if it’s taking you awhile to get a hold of that person. You are creating a PERSON. A real live (sort of) person. That’s not an easy thing to do.

Now the cake. We can bake a cake in a few minutes. Like forty. It will taste okay. It comes from a box that someone put together and sold to us. We can decorate it, put on sparkles, candles, candies, etc. and it will taste fine. Fast and fine.

Or. We can plan. We can get the ingredients. We can envision. And then we can work. We can work hard and it will take us a lot of time. So much time and we’ll be sweating (not into the cake please) and we may mess up and have to start over a few times, we may even have to get a new recipe. We may want to give up in the middle and go buy a cake, or pull out a box and make one of those boring ones.

But then we don’t.

We don’t because we know how wonderful it can be. We can see it in our head and we can almost taste it in our mouths and we think about the delight and surprise it will bring to those who get to eat it. We work hard because we love those people and we want them to have something special. Something unordinary. Something they will remember and talk about and maybe even push them to come up with an awesome cake of their own.

So we don’t quit. We work at it and work at it and work at it and add layer upon layer upon layer.

And when we’re done, and the kitchen is a mess, and our back is aching, and we think we never ever ever want to make a cake again, we’ll sit down, take a drink of water and look over at that beautiful creation sitting on that plate. Right then we’ll know, this is not just a cake. This is love, baby.

That’s what our books should be. Love. Love and sweat and hard work. But mainly love. A cake with many many layers.

image from Ohhappyday.com

I wanted to post a picture of a regular boring cake. I went to cakewrecks.com and got sucked in. Those cakes are not regular or boring. I wasted maybe fifteen minutes? Maybe more? This is why the internet it bad.

Why was I looking for a boring cake? Like the kind of cakes I make? From a box? In a pan? With bad frosting on top?

I will tell you. One time someone chucked a cake at me.

Not really. I wish.

I’m tired. I need to finish a book this week. I’ve been working on this book for forty thousand years. And while it’s no secret this process has been painful, I have realized that all the sweat and tears and long nights are not wasted.

When you first start a book, the character is a stick figure. You may think you know him or her, you may know what they look like, where they live, what they worry about, etc. You may do tons of get-to-know them exercises, etc. And you may have a pretty firm grasp on who you think they should be.

BUT

As you write, as you push them into different situations, things happen. They start to change and change and change and through the change, they become more real. You rewrite. They get thicker and fuller and realer (love). You rewrite again. They grow even more. You start asking yourselves questions. Why isnt’ this working? Who is she really? Why would that boy react to her in that way? Why would she even talk to that boy? I thought in my character sketch she was shy? Is she shy?

Is he shy?

is the mom shy?

Who is shy?

You may be in shower and you realize, oh  man, I think she murdered someone. And you go back and rewrite.

Then you take another shower and no, she just thinks she murdered someone because she has delusions.

Then you rewrite. And the whole thing starts to jump to life.

Books need time. People need time. Situations need time.

Go on walks. take showers. Watch the sunset. And think about your book. Think about your MC. Think about all those other people that walk around the MC. Let it marinate and then rewrite. Then let that marinate. Don’t stress if it’s taking you awhile to get a hold of that person. You are creating a PERSON. A real live (sort of) person. That’s not an easy thing to do.

Now the cake. We can bake a cake in a few minutes. Like forty. It will taste okay. It comes from a box that someone put together and sold to us. We can decorate it, put on sparkles, candles, candies, etc. and it will taste fine. Fast and fine.

Or. We can plan. We can get the ingredients. We can envision. And then we can work. We can work hard and it will take us a lot of time. So much time and we’ll be sweating (not into the cake please) and we may mess up and have to start over a few times, we may even have to get a new recipe. We may want to give up in the middle and go buy a cake, or pull out a box and make one of those boring ones.

But then we don’t.

We don’t because we know how wonderful it can be. We can see it in our head and we can almost taste it in our mouths and we think about the delight and surprise it will bring to those who get to eat it. We work hard because we love those people and we want them to have something special. Something unordinary. Something they will remember and talk about and maybe even push them to come up with an awesome cake of their own.

So we don’t quit. We work at it and work at it and work at it and add layer upon layer upon layer.

And when we’re done, and the kitchen is a mess, and our back is aching, and we think we never ever ever want to make a cake again, we’ll sit down, take a drink of water and look over at that beautiful creation sitting on that plate. Right then we’ll know, this is not just a cake. This is love, baby.

That’s what our books should be. Love. Love and sweat and hard work. But mainly love. A cake with many many layers.

image from Ohhappyday.com

Right now I’m a little desperate for some ice water. Is it weird that I forget to put my water bottle in the fridge or fill up the ice tray even though I know know know how much I’ll be wanting something cold to drink a few hours later?

Sort of like writing. Doing the little things pay off huge in the end. Like writing just a bit a day. with this bear of a novel I’ve discovered how refreshing it is and how much ground I can cover if I just diligently write a scene a day.

We went to bear lake last week with some friends and it was heavenly. The kids played on the beach. The baby slept. We hung out at the campfire. so nice. In fact, I looked up bear lake real estate right when I got home (summers on the lake! Writing retreats! Family reunions!). Unfortunately, a lake house is not in our foreseeable future.  I guess life can still be good without it.

One thing that happened on our trip was i went on an early morning walk with my baby. I like to get out before everyone wakes up. Unfortunately my tennis shoes were locked in the van, so I was out in flip flops and maybe a sort of weird outfit–we’ll leave it at that.

So we went along the highway that circles the lake.

I’d been walking for awhile when two bikers passed me.

When they obviously thought I was out of earshot, one of them said, that lady is out in the middle of nowhere with a baby! The other guy was like, I know, weird. Where did she come from?

I am happy to say this delighted me to no end. I imagined them getting back to their families and telling them about the strange lady and child, making their way down the lonely early morning highway.

maybe I’d gotten in a fight with my abusive boyfriend and got kicked out of the car, maybe I was walking to Wyoming in protest to public nursing ordinances (is there such a thing? I don’t know but it’d be a good story), maybe I was walking to my mama’s house–ten miles down the road from the lean-to I lived in. Maybe aliens dropped me off or better yet, maybe I was an alien with a half human child. The possibilites are endless.

I love thinking about the what ifs. I love watching cars drive by and wondering what the people in the beat down Datsun are talking about. Where are they going? Where have they been? I love trailer parks. So many stories packed in one parcel of land. I love odd things like ladies in flip flops with a babies strapped to their bellies in the middle of nowhere. How mysterious.

At my core, I love a good story and good stories are everywhere.  I think it’s important that no matter where we are with our WIP or where we are with our career or where we are with our crazy lives or blah blah blah, it’s important that we don’t forget to have fun. To play. To laugh. To keep telling ourselves stories.

Because stories equal joy, don’t you think?

And don’t forget to put the water in the fridge.