Cake and Writing

I am currently developing my 3rd sitcom! It sounds great doesn't it? The truth is, I've gone nowhere with the first two. No matter how many times I read them or rewrite them, something doesn't feel quite right. I simply do not love them enough to even get some professional notes on them, let alone submit them to Producers.

Rather than insisting on something that's not working, I started fresh with a new idea that I've been wanting to write for the last couple of years.

It's not just the sitcoms that sit stored away in my computer, I also have a couple of features and various shorts, none of which I have deemed worthy enough to be shared. It's really bugged me though that I've not been able to just focus on one project at a time and feel the constant need to move on and start a new script. I feel like a child that desperately wants a toy but is easily distracted by a fly.

Then last week I baked my favourite cake ever and I realised that just like my writing is just like my baking. I'll explain.

I've always enjoyed baking and would never miss an opportunity to do so but it wasn't until the kids came along that I started to get a little more creative and ventured into the world of so-called novelty cakes. I admit, they are not the most mouth-watering cakes out there but they can look amazing.

My first attempt at a novelty cake was a 3D Frog for my niece from Debbie Brown's 50 Easy Party Cakes book. I remember being praised for my cake,  but you know what they say about family reading your work, well, it's the same in the cake world. It's very kind of them but I'll let you all judge it for yourselves. Let's just say, my frog wasn't very happy.

A month later it was my son's 1st birthday and his poor rubber duckie cake was a complete let down.

And so, the years went by and I kept on baking novelty cakes for various occasions. There were a couple that were quite disastrous, especially a 3D skull cake I baked for my little brother, but overall they were coming together quite nicely, especially the princess castle I baked for my niece's 4th birthday.

With every bake, I would get more compliments and comments that I should be selling my cakes, but the problem is, when you're the baker, you know where all the cracks are. You might be able to cover them and offer the cake at a different angle for others to view but to a perfectionist like myself, it just wouldn't do. I wasn't confident enough in my work to allow others to pay for it.

Then I baked a Star Wars cake and the response was so overwhelming that I finally allowed myself to start thinking bigger. For once, I was happy with it. It was absolutely not perfect, Yoda for example was bigger than Han Solo and Princess Leia, and Darth Vader was on the short side, but in terms of the actual cake, I was satisfied.

I was ready to move on to the next stage and when a friend asked if she could hire me to bake her daughter's cake, I did not hesitate to say yes. The party isn't for another 2weeks and I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well, but I am truly excited.

Meanwhile, I got the chance to do another 3D cake - Lightning McQueen. I hadn't done a 3D cake in a little while and I was picturing something that looked like McQueen but wasn't quite him. I baked my sponge and set of to mould it and frost it. The following day I had a look and it simply wasn't McQueen. I hesitated a little but then got a knife out and started to hack through the frosting. I was determined to make him perfect, not just something that looks like what it should be. By the time I was ready to add the sugar paste, I was satisfied that it was as good as it could be.

When my son walked in from school, his face lit up and all he could say was "Wow", and we know kids don't lie (maybe sometimes). I had made my best cake ever and I was impressed by my own work. Not only was the finish to my satisfaction, but the structure itself (the sponge) was quite seamless.

It's taken me 4years to finally accept that I can in fact create a cake that others will want to buy and I suddenly realised that it's for that same reason that I am yet to have a script that I am completely satisfied with.

So for now, I'll keep on writing and rewriting and who knows, the day I'm happy enough with my writing and stop giving myself a hard time about it, I'll finally get the professional notes that will help me improve it further.

Meanwhile, if anyone needs cake, it'll be my pleasure :-)

I'll Write Tomorrow, and that's OK

As writers, we love nothing more than to, well, write. Just sit down and let our imagination run wild getting all those thoughts and conversations that we have between our characters in our mind on to paper. As playwright Edward Albee said “A writer is a controlled schizophrenic”. In fact, one of my favourite movies is Girl, Interrupted. The protagonist is a writer who doesn’t conform, and because she is different, she is logically insane and needs to be committed.

We also have to realise though that writing isn’t everything and that we have other needs and responsibilities; and I’m not just talking about the bills that need paying, but mostly about the real characters, not the ones in our minds, but the ones in our lives. They too need love and attention.

Remember when I wrote a script in a month for Scriptfrenzy? Somehow then I managed to juggle a very busy life with writing, and for that month it worked out better than planned, but life isn’t always straight forward and sometimes routine just won’t cut it.

I concluded that if I persisted on writing this week, I would eventually set my house on fire. Fact! Twice in the space of one week I’ve added oil to a pot and left it on the fire for 2secs while checking on the kids. A whole five minutes later I’d either remember or smell it and have to rescue the burnt pot and set it aside knowing that I had been lucky that nothing worse happened. I’ve just done too many silly mistakes this week, things I would normally never do. I have been very distracted and it is as simple as I haven’t had enough sleep.

It’s beautiful outside, but it’s almost too hot, it makes one slow and tired and brain dead. Sun is lethal! Besides that, my children do not like sleeping and at any moment between 4-6am they are wide-awake and ready for the day. By 9am we just need to get out of the house. So this week there’s been splashing, walking, boat rides, scooting, ball kicking, painting, drawing, cleaning, feeding, fighting, crying, watching, splashing, cleaning, reading, playing, laughing. When all calms down and there’s finally sleeping, I sit down and try to write, or end up reading. So when does my brain rest? I suppose it hasn’t and it’s the reason I can’t focus on simple things.

I have finally accepted that this is the only writing happening this week. I’m taking a little coffee break whilst Wall-E entertains my eldest. The princess castle cake I’m making for my niece patiently waits for me to mold it into a castle rather than the big blob it is right now (I took so long to post this the cake is almost ready).

The pressure to write is one I have imposed upon myself and have now declared that it will have to wait until Monday rather than trying to fit in around the busy weekend.

So there you go, tomorrow I’ll write, today I’m going to sleep – and that is absolutely fine!

Wait a minute, I hear cries, nevermind sleep for now.