Ideas and Kumquats

A writer friend of mine once said, “About 75% of what I do all day involves staring out the window.”

When asked, “When do you write?” at a conference many years ago, another writer I know responded, “All the time. I’m writing right now.”

Both of these are, in my experience, quite accurate descriptions of the writing process. So much of writing involves actively not writing. This sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t. Being able to write anything effectively involves getting oneself (or at least this self) into whatever it is one is writing. Which often means staring into space or out the window or walking down the street or standing at a podium and letting the pieces of the story settle and coalesce. There is more staring into space at the beginning of any project, because while that is perhaps the most fertile time—so much fresh soil in which the story can take root—it is also the moment where the world one is creating is still vague and fuzzy around the edges. One has to look hard and wait patiently for the shapes of characters and plot to emerge.

There is a temptation—always—to go do something else while one is waiting. Compulsively check email for example. Color code the linen closet. Fold laundry. Facebook.

Or make cake.

Maybe not make cake. Because cake, for me, is its own form of writing. I use the same process for planning cake as I do for writing but in a contracted and three-dimensional form. And like writing, I sometimes have too many cake ideas for my own good. (I almost always come up with an absolutely brilliant idea for a new writing project as soon as I’ve committed to another one.) The logjam of ideas can be exciting but also paralyzing.

Right now, for example, I have two cakes that I’m planning; a Mother’s Day cake and a graduation cake for my son. I have a pretty good handle on what I’m going to do for the graduation cake and it has almost fully taken shape in my imagination, but I’m a bit concerned about how I’m going to pull it off (it’s going to require some technique and also working around gravity). But the Mother’s Day cake is first and up until yesterday I thought I knew what I was going to make (simple but elegant; involving chocolate ganache and edible flowers). But then, this morning, as I was pondering how much marzipan I’d need for the graduation cake, it occurred to me to make the flower pot cake for Mother’s Day. This cake has been popping up all over the place lately—totes adorbs, as they say—and I’ve been wanting to try my own version. Dilemma. It’s awfully cute but not quite as elegant as the other I had in mind and besides, is it special if everyone’s doing it? (We never take my mother out to a restaurant on Mother’s Day for this very reason. Well, that and the fact that almost all of us have spent years working Mother’s Day brunch in various restaurants and know the unique hellishness of it on a visceral level.)

So now I’m stuck. The ideas have jammed.

But instead of staring into space and waiting for the vision to come, I stared into the refrigerator. And that is when I saw and remembered the 1.5 pounds of kumquats I bought at Trader Joe’s a few days ago. (Because whenever I see kumquats, which I love beyond all reason, I buy them. They are like freesia that way for me. The season is short and suddenly they’re gone.) The kumquats had been hiding behind the extra pirate buttercream and leftover cake. But now here they are and they have to be eaten. I can’t eat 1.5 pounds of straight kumquats because I will become ill (ask me how I know).

So now I have another dilemma.

I need to make a kumquat cake. 

I found and modified a recipe for just such a cake a few weeks (or was it months?) ago and it was very, very good. I don’t usually eat my own cakes (other than to taste test them) and try to get them consumed and/or out of the house before I can be tempted by them, but the kumquat cake was an exception. I couldn’t stop eating it. It's a very dangerous cake that way. The kumquats (which are in both the glaze and the cake itself) gave a little chewiness to the cake along with the unique bitter/sweetness of the rind. It’s citrusy and bright and not too sweet. At first it doesn’t even seem like cake, but then the richness of it sneaks up on you and by then you’ve eaten four “just one more small” slices.

I really want some of that kumquat cake right now.

And yet here I sit. Waiting for it to come to me.