The book I am writing has been like baking bread, not like a loaf of quick and delicious Irish Soda Bread – created and baked in an hour, but the hand-made eight hour, give or take, French Bread kind. My book though has been in the making for far more than eight hours.
First I had to create the recipe and figure out all the ingredients and how to put them together. Over time, I picked up:
1 Wild Hair Idea
1/3 cup of experiences
3 1/2 bushels of words
1 1/4 cups of research
2 1/4 tsp of seeds-of-story
1 swimming pool of playfulness
1 1/4 cup of whipped courage
I’ve now mixed the ingredients and completed kneading the bread (writing). I then proofed the book similar to putting bread in a glass bowl and covering with a kitchen towel and waiting for it to rise – I set my draft aside and most recently read it, then punched it down and while it is proofing for the second time, I will make the changes I saw were “kneaded” during my read-through.
I am coming close to having my book ready to self-publish – maybe by the end of this year or sooner. It’s kind of exciting. The current title for my book (this recipe) is A Wild Hair Idea ~ An Invitation to Play, but I’ve been fooling around with the title, so we’ll see if it holds.
For those of you trying to recreate my recipe, please be aware that I’m really not sure of the exact measures, I’m more of a too-taste cook / baker. For this recipe, I might have used a lot more than 1 1/4 cups of whipped courage or will by the time I have published. And for a book of this kind the mixing – how you put the ingredients together – is important and has everything to do with our individual process as writers, artists, and human beings. I guess you know I am not writing a “recipe” book!
In the meantime I look forward to being able to register my book with the copyright office near the end of this year.
Enjoy the stories and have a playful day,
Mary
P.S. if a book was a drum, it might have a beat all its own. I think each book does. Do you?
