Gone Hunting (and Pecking)

If I were of the Michael Pollan school of drafting, I'd have been polishing the previous 500 words of manuscript with every new 500 words I wrote—every day. If I were of the Gustav Flaubert school of drafting, I'd put down a word one day, then cross it out the next. I'm striving, instead, to be Thomas Wolfe, who wrote thousands of words a day—although dozens of pages were often reduced to a single paragraph by his editor.

We all have our own writing styles. Mine was to niggle over nouns and verbs, revise each sentence before I'd written the next, switch paragraphs before a third was written. I'm trying to unlearn that style. You don't get much accomplished each day, even though it saves editing time later.

My job, this semester, thanks to mentor Joe Mackall (buy his book!), was to write and write and write, everything and anything pertaining to cake.

From mid-February until now, barely the middle of April, barely three months, I've finished 75 fresh, new pages. It's a lot of words! Add to that the 20 well-researched pages on one aspect of craft (mine, the rough draft, or embracing the mess), and you see that it's been a busy—and prolific—semester for me, despite the lack of activity here at the old blogstead.

Now comes the niggling part. Think of me as you enjoy the first of spring, and I hunt and peck my way through a total of 110 pages, all of which have some change or another, all of which will undergo some kind of positive transformation.

And I hope to undergo another. Because in between sections, I'll be running around the block with my headphones on, mouthing the words to something from Pie (not Cake just now, please).

And when I'm not doing that, I'll be cutting glass for my HGTV demo. The crew will be filming me at my sister's house on Friday, as I attempt to recreate, for six long hours, a portion of her buffet.

It will be a busy week for the dogfaceboy, which includes, I hope, some very serious fun: Bob Schneider at the 8x10 and a Thursday night spell on The Stoop.


Happy Passover, Happy Easter, Happy spring, and happy-ness to you all.