OK, kind of long title, and a bit silly, but I had a thought tonight while I was making bread at 1am in the morning.  Yes, I know that is an odd time to be baking, but I work third, and well, my days off are usually wonky because of it.

So, as I was adding ingredients into the bowl, I was thinking about writing fiction.  Fiction writing is much like baking. You have the main ingredients that you must put in – A main character, a plot, and a twist to make people interested.  In baking bread you need flour, sugar, salt and yeast. (At least for all of my bread baking experiences.) If you don’t add the right ingredients you end up with a brick. (I had a brick tonight, if you are interested. Still trying to bake that bread RIGHT.) If you add the right ingredients in the right way, the result is a light, fluffy, wonderful loaf of bread. If you don’t write carefully, and work at your craft, you land with a story that no one wants to read. If you write well, check your grammar, make sure you have the important ingredients to a story – you get a winner that people want to read, review and talk about.

Tonight, I failed at my bread. That’s OK though, I can dump it in the garbage and start over. Fiction writing is much like that – you might fail a lot at first, but it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to write. It just means that you trash it, or parts of it, and start over.  It takes time to let a good loaf of bread rise, and it takes time for a good plot to develop.

I might have failed at my bread attempt tonight… but I developed a catchy plot that I can’t wait to delve into. Some would say I should have been paying more attention to my bread, but since I live, breath and think about words all the time – I’d rather come away with the good plot.

Besides, when the bread failed, I baked cookies instead…. Mmmm.  Cookies.

When fiction fails I turn it into something else… Mmm.  Short stories, drabbles, flash fiction.

Note the comparison?  Now, grab yourself a cookie, and go write something!