Break 👏Into👏Three👏
October 2024 & Bake Off Challenge Week Five
Off the top, I have nothing of value to say about what’s happened in the USA except that I’m so sorry for you guys, my friends and neighbours. Things are looking shitty for our next election here in Canada, too and I can’t really tell if what I’m doing these days is authentically leaning into “prefigurative living” or “baking dissociatively.” Either way, a hell of a lot of vegan pastry experiments happening over here, and I swear I’ll share more about that soon, I just need a few more weeks. In other baking news, my latest entry in my Great Canadian Baking Show But Vegan challenge is tucked into this post in the Eating section below.
I haven’t done one of these Writing, Reading, and Eating updates since June because I’ve had so much to say about food. Many of you have joined me since then, and maybe you weren’t even aware that my intention with this newsletter is to write about all of those passions. Sometimes it feels like cooking and writing are my two daughters — the boisterous loud one who can chew up all the attention if I let her; and the shy, weird one who hides behind my legs, but in many ways is actually my favourite, the true apple of my eye. (It’s okay to say that because they’re not actual children, right?) Anyway, it’s been a minute since I wrote anything about writing, and yet the whole time I was foraging and fermenting and tripping out on summer produce, I was also slowly but surely chipping away at my fabulist novel about marine mammals. So I’m going to give that daughter pride of place today.
Writing:
As I work through this draft of my novel, which I’ll call draft 1.5, I’m loosely using two story models as guardrails — novelist and writing coach Heidi Reimer’s integrated story model from her excellent first-draft-in-three-months program and good old Save the Cat! Both models recommend a three act structure, with each act divided into beats — basically sections wherein certain shifts happen to your protagonist.
In Heidi’s model, the final beat of Act Two is called “Letting Go,” and I spent much of the summer on that. In Save the Cat!, the beat that bridges Act Two and Three is called the “Break Into Three.” In the Break Into Three, a new piece of information is discovered and the hero realizes what they must do to solve all the problems that have been created in Act Two. Sounds pretty blissful, right? For me, too, the words themselves felt so exciting. I just couldn’t wait to get there, to Break the hell Into Three, at long last. As I typed through the final throes of “Letting Go,” this image was never far from my mind:
In many of the craft books I’ve read, Act Two is characterized as the hardest one, sometimes nicknamed the Messy Middle. You’re done with Act One’s introductions and set-up, you’re nowhere near resolution, yet somehow you have to do something to keep your reader turning the page till you get there. Messy.
When I wrote my first novel, I didn’t consider structure at all but still ended up with a three act book. While writing the Messy Middle, I got stuck so many times and took to my bed to weep, convinced the project — and therefore I, as a human — had failed. My solution to this problem was to lay around in a horrible depression while I unconsciously let my unconscious pull me through to the next section of the book. Sometimes this process took weeks. These days, thankfully, I have neither time nor desire to employ this approach. I have a bunch of tricks to ensure I just. Keep. Going. All the same, by mid-July when I was writing “Letting Go,” I had already spent a year and two months fleshing out Act Two when I had projected six months. I was so ready to bust through that wall.
When I finally wrapped up “Letting Go” on August 2nd, it was literally one of the best days of my entire life. I not only felt accomplished, I also really let myself feel it. I went so far as to film the moment I finished on my PhotoBooth app, not really knowing why I wanted to do that. After my day job that afternoon, I took myself out for a nice cocktail and fancy olives and literally just watched Simone Biles videos alone, buzzing with triumphal energy and fatigue, allowing myself a bit of fellow feeling with the greatest gymnast of all time? Okay, Julia. The point is, I felt good.
The plan was to take the rest of August off writing, rest my ragged brain, and come September I would Break Into Three. Alas, September came and covid got me, so while I dabbled a little, I didn’t fully bust through until this past month. And guess what? It’s been hard! Look, I’ve been writing long enough to have known it wouldn’t be easy. But the hardness had a different quality than I expected or was used to. I procrastinated wildly getting to the work every morning, which I admit is somewhat typical. Usually once I get there these days, though, I can get into the zone. Not so in early October. Every time I opened the document I was beset by a sinking feeling. Even when I stuck with it and the day’s work went okay, there was a heavy, gluey feeling hanging over the whole affair.
I reminded myself that transitioning from the fast-paced work of finishing a section to starting up a new one is sometimes jarring; that it’s good to do lots of physical things in between writing bouts to let my unconscious lead the way (this works better and faster than weeping in bed deriding oneself turns out!) And so, believe it or not, I decided to commit myself to my Bake Off challenge in service of my book. I made a rule that I had to do the day’s writing first. Then I could bake with whatever remained of my “creative hours” before reporting to work (my day job is blessedly part-time, mostly work-from-home). While this is actually working pretty well now, the first three weeks I let baking eat my writing time alive. A disaster. I couldn’t stop doing it and I couldn’t understand! Why was I doing this to myself now? When I could finally Break Into Three? Race toward the finish line? Possibly finish the draft before the end of the year?
Finally, after a week spent obsessing over my pear cookies in a way that could only be described as pathological, I took a long hard look at what was going on with me. And I realized that part of me didn’t want to finish this novel at all. After achieving a slightly better balance of writing and baking during Wellington week, I came to understand that there were two reasons for this.
First: the more familiar, basic, maladaptive one: once the book was done, I would have to let people see. And what if it was bad? Who did I think I was writing fabulism? I’d never done such a thing before! Surely it was embarrassing, hackneyed, entirely dumb. Guaranteed my plot had holes so gaping and ragged they’d be impossible to sew. Better to not finish at all, but rather stay in the perfecting process forever, the zone in which I can still believe I can nail it 100%. I have learned this lesson before. Still, it’s tempting to just stay in the space of possibility for life.
The second reason was new to me. Part of the grave heaviness I felt every time I pulled up to the page was sadness. If you’re currently having a horrible time with your writing, I’d like to offer a trigger warning here: don’t read the next bit because you’ll hate my guts forever and fling your phone across the room. But the truth is, I didn’t want to finish because I’ve been having so much fun. It’s not that it hasn’t been frustrating or difficult or that I’ve lived in a never-ending flow-state. But looking back, I’m reminded of one of my favourite passages from Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, when her protagonist describes his memories of his journey over The Ice:
I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn’t happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time: I mean joy.
I haven’t read LeGuin’s whole novel in a long time, but I remember the first time I read it I felt convinced that her characters’ traversing The Ice was a metaphor for creative process. And I’m sticking to it! In contrast to my grad school days, I found working through the messy bits pretty engaging if not enjoyable. And yeah, sometimes I didn’t recognize it at the time. But even when I’ve been stuck as hell these last few years, something pleasant and sustaining happened in my brain every time I sat down to chip away at the thing.
I’ve also had my fair share of conscious, “Omg, this is so fun, I’m cracking myself up!” times with this book. I love my characters and their predicament so much. I wrote a lot of “Letting Go” out at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, and for a few blissful days, it really didn’t feel like work at all. I just had to transcribe all these weirdos in my brain talking to each other, telling me the plot. When the talk dried up, I’d take a quick walk down the beach, and they’d start up again. I was dead sober, but felt high as a kite.
Act Three will be my final time to hang out in this particular way with this crew. There will be loads of revisions, yes, but this draft feels like the one in which I’m actually “creating” the characters, deciding their fates. And it’s the first time I’ve ever felt confident enough to let myself enjoy that process. Revelatory, truly. It’s no wonder, I suppose, that the prospect of this phase ending was making a part of me sad. I wonder if I’ve partly been drawn to document myself writing this year because I want to remember. Maybe when I’m 85, it’ll be nice to look back at my dear old exhausted self, cutting and pasting and lip-syncing along. (I’m sniffing and touching my nose so much in this vid because I’m on the verge of tears the whole time fyi).
All that to say I’ve now mostly pulled it together. I write before I bake, train a light brain-eye on the scene at hand as I do my kneading and rolling, and keep things moving along. Because as much as writing is my favourite child, I don’t actually want to keep her at home forever, lurking behind my legs. One day, she has to leave home. And I am excited to let her.
Reading:
Long Division by Kiese Laymon: I have zero clue why it took me so long to read this given that Laymon’s Heavy is one of my favourite books of all time. Maybe I was scared it wouldn’t be as good? But it is. It kills. Sometimes I get frustrated by off-reality type stuff, things that make me feel a bit sick, like I’m in a bad dream. But this book made me feel like that in such a good, profound way. It’s about race in America, history, love, and so much more, all powered by Laymon’s protatonist, City’s hilarious, poetic voice. I didn’t always know what was going on in my brain, but I did in my body; I felt this one hard.
Reckon True Stories: After I read Long Division, I was googling Laymon to see what else I might have missed, and came upon this podcast (sorry there’s a podcast in the Reading section, but it’s relevant). Hosted by Laymon and Deesha Philyaw, the podcast is about nonfiction and features guests from Dr. Imani Perry to Roxane Gay to Alexander Chee, and wow, it is so, so good. I often listen to bookish podcasts while doing data entry-type stuff for my day job, and often I’ll cringe through the host’s questions and pontificating in hopes of catching a gem or two from the author’s answers. Not so with this one. I could listen to Laymon and Philyaw chat all day. They clearly enjoy each other’s company and have such voracious passion for books in general, their fellow Black authors, and just trying to make sense of all the heavy, heavy shit in this world. Huge recommend.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw: After listening to Reckon True Stories, of course I had to read Philyaw’s debut book of stories next. She is unsurprisingly just as moving and insightful a fiction writer as she is a host. Her complicated mother characters are especially well-drawn. “Peach Cobbler” and “When Eddie Levert Comes” ruined me in that regard. In my own work, I’ve been thinking about the extent to which conflict is central to western storytelling. Though I braced myself the whole time I read it, there is a story in this book that centres something other than conflict to delightful effect. I’m not naming the story so as not to spoil, you’ll have to read it yourself.
Eating:
This week’s Signature Bake was a focaccia painting. I’m not doing a whole post about it because it’s just not that interesting? I had made focaccia before, it’s already vegan. Sure, I hadn’t attempted the “painting” thing before, and that part was fun, but again it was a vegan’s dream: make a picture out of vegetables! Anyway, here’s my final product. Can you tell what it is??
If you guessed the Toronto skyline at sunset, you win! Should it not be obvious, we’ve got a butternut squash sun, leek and mushroom CN tower (with a last minute olive added to bridge a gap), onion birds, daikon SkyDome, zucchini and eggplant buildings, tofu “feta” clouds, and the sunset is coloured with a turmeric and smoked paprika “paint” — just the spice mixed with a little hot water and olive oil and salt.
I’ve been into ChainBaker’s channel these days, and I wanted to give a pre-ferment a go, so I used this recipe that employs a poolish. I thought it tasted great, personally, and my judges concurred that it was “perfectly crispy on the edges” and “the skyline veggies were tasty!” David and I especially liked the “feta” which I made differently than any tofu feta I’ve done before, inspired by a half-pack of silken tofu I had left over from another recipe. Here’s the quick and dirty: I salted the silken tofu which was broken into a few chunks in a container, then drained off the water that accumulated after 30 minutes or so. Then I mashed in one cube of fermented beancurd — which you’ve all bought by now to make delicious Chinese and Taiwanese greens, and to make vegan ricotta and anchovy paste, right?? — and also added a sprinkle of nutritional yeast and garlic powder. I mashed till it was all combined but still, like, curdy? Then I used it to form the clouds, and once it was baked it was salty and pretty great imo. Would do again!
Thank you forever for reading! If you like it, please feel free to share! Okay, bye!
Love you, Julia! Can't wait to read your beautiful brainchild!
“Because as much as writing is my favourite child, I don’t actually want to keep her at home forever, lurking behind my legs. One day, she has to leave home. And I am excited to let her.” Oh, bless, I relate to all of this so much (not just that passage but all the writing related stuff), and I love the way you illuminate the experience and the feelings.