The House of Cards Moment

For each of my novels I've reached a point in the writing where I step back, horrified, convinced that I will never be able to make it work. It is at this point that I see the whole thing - plot, characters, concept - as a house of cards trembling in a strengthening breeze. I curse myself for having created a plot even more complicated than the last novel I wrote even though I'd sworn at the time to make the next one easier. There is anguish. And then the inevitable question; Why did I think I could do this? This has never happened to me with any of my memoirs. In a way, ownership of the memoir doesn't belong with me. Memoirs are, for me, an interpretation of reality. I didn't create the plot or the characters. I am therefore not responsible for what happens to them. But the novels are something else. You got us into this mess, my characters seem to be saying (and always, I see them standing in a frozen scene, their arms crossed, and looks of annoyance on their faces), now get us out of it. 
It's an awful moment. And by moment, I mean days and sometimes weeks.
This "house of cards moment" usually happens toward the end of a novel when I should be coasting along, not panicking about how it's all going to work out. I say should but I've never coasted along. I don't find the writing process easy - and that goes for all of it; memoirs, novels, book reviews, even this blog - so I don't know that I've ever experienced a cruise to the finish line. Perhaps, though, the moment of stark terror I experience during the novels is necessary. After seriously contemplating what I can do to figuratively bite my arm off so that I can escape from the trap I've built for myself, I start to edit. Madly, I might add. What can go? What has to stay? Where are the links that tie it all together? This is usually the most fevered and frantic part of the whole process but in the end it gets done. And after it does, I tell myself - again - that I will be better prepared next time.
Not.
I realized yesterday that I go through the same type of process with cake, albeit for a much shorter period of time. Unless it's a simple cake (and they never are anymore), I plot it out in the same way I would a novel. This is really the most fun part of the process in either cake or writing because there is so much possibility - so much potential ahead. I research a cake in the same way I research a novel and then I gather what I need. I had - have, actually - a good plan for the pirate cake. I made marzipan and modeling chocolate and set aside a bit of fondant. I bought Black Jack, a molasses candy billed as the "first candy to be made in the United States and a favorite of pirates" and a bag of chocolate doubloons. I made a sketch of the cake so that I wouldn't forget any of the elements. And then I got to work. I made the treasure chest first, bending the modeling chocolate into something I hoped was trunk-shaped and bolstering it with pieces of the pirate candy. I'll admit, I'm not 100% thrilled with how it turned out. It isn't perfect. But it will taste good and sometimes that's more important.

Then I turned my attention to the skull and crossbones. I used fondant for this because I knew my marzipan wasn't going to be firm (or white) enough to hold the shape I wanted. This part of the process was deceptively easy. Even though I wished I had a better knowledge of human anatomy, it looked convincingly skull-like after only about a half hour of molding.

Next, I took on what I thought would be the most difficult element; the parrot. Here again I went for the fondant so that it would hold its shape. I also did a bit of painting with food coloring. I perched him on the side of my kitchen counter as I worked on him and he stayed. The best part was getting to finally use the sugar googly eyes I bought long ago as they were exactly the right size.

I'm not sure how long I spent on the parrot, but after I perched him somewhere safe and dry, things began to get a bit difficult. The palm trees, which I'd thought would be the easiest element, gave me a great deal of trouble. I used marzipan for the fronds - because with the skull and crossbones and parrot both being made out of fondant, I really wanted to have some delicious elements on the cake - and they refused to stay upright. My Cadbury Flake trunks kept tipping over. Everything started to get very sticky. Time to move on, I told myself, but I could feel the anxiety setting in.

It was late afternoon at this point and I'd been at it for hours. My feet were hurting and I had a headache from squinting at the details. Things were melting and I'd forgotten to eat both breakfast and lunch. I made myself a cup of tea but then used it as a prop. Because of all these reasons, the map turned out to be the most difficult element of all. The marzipan kept sticking. I rolled and rerolled and rolled again. In the end I would up with something close to but not really what I wanted. So I started thinking about how I would redo the cake to accommodate the new map.

Oh, right. The cake. I really needed to make the cake. Cakes, actually. My plan was a rum cake (of course) with coconut buttercream frosting. I cleaned up part of my mess. I could tell things were getting out of control by how much powdered sugar there was on my person and the state of the kitchen floor. I whipped up the batter for the first cake and turned on the oven. F8. That's right, my oven gave me an error message. This has happened once before; the oven kept beeping F8 at us and refused to go on. The oven service/repairman explained that the oven's computer panel is sensitive to heat.
Of course.
So here it was, F8-ing at me again and that's when I had my house of cards moment. None of it was going to work. I had bitten off way more than I could chew. It was hopeless. 
I turned the oven off. Turned it on again. It decided to pre-heat.  I sent up a small prayer to the gods of cake and in it went.
By the time the cakes were done and the kitchen cleaned up it was 9 PM and I had to stop. But once again I'd made it through the house of cards moment. I'm off to make the buttercream now, which will be its own trial (because, as everyone knows, no matter how much frosting you make, there is never enough frosting), but I am in the home stretch.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
Avast Ye!