Bologna Cake and the Writing Process
How 1950s foods turned my stomach and taught me something about my writing.
I’m not the writer I want to be. NaNoWriMo is teaching me that. I want to be organized, thought-out, structured, so I can begin with word one and end at word 80,000 with characters, theme, and plot all fully developed. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t expect my first draft to be my only one. Far from it! But when I do complete it, I’d prefer it be cohesive.
Here’s the thing; I’m now 15,000 words into my work-in-progress. And that dream of creating a cohesive draft went out the window in chapter two. While I did decide on somewhat short notice that I was going to join National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and challenge myself to write 50,000 words during the month of November, I already had a concept in place. I even had a decent amount of research done. I had worked through brainstorming and blueprints and story structure guides.
But then I moved from concepting to drafting.
My brain tried to recall the prep work I had done, but as my fingers began to make contact with the keyboard, I quickly learned that the words do not flow out of me in a cohesive first draft. Let’s just say I’m having to embrace the idea of a messy first draft. A very, very, Pig-Pen-style, mess of a manuscript.
I’ve come to realize that my writing style is one of layering.
That term came to me as I was doing a bit of research this weekend. While I’m not ready to share many details about this work in progress, I will say that it’s about a 1950s housewife whose sanity is called into question when she dares to push back on the American Dream. I needed to write a scene about a dinner party, which meant I needed to research foods from the 1950s. And, wow, did I come across some interesting concoctions. It seems that forming foods into molds and loaves was a common practice in that day. (The English major in me can’t help but wonder if the carefully molded food is a symbol of conformity in post-war suburbia…but I digress).
I happened upon multiple items that made my stomach turn. So, naturally, I want to share some with you:
Ham and Bananas Hollandaise
Bananas wrapped in ham and doused in hollandaise sauce.
Perfection Salad
A pile of various vegetables molded together in Jello.
Monterey Souffle Salad
A mixture of lemon, gelatin, olives, and…oh my word…tuna.
Spaghetti Os and Weiners
Spaghetti Os and gelatin molded in a ring with hot dogs in the center.
But then I found the one that represents how I write:
Bologna Cake
From the outside, it looks like a cake with white and orange frosting. But slice in to it and you soon realize the frosting is covering layer after layer of cream cheese and…wait for it…bologna.
And sadly, this concoction reminds me of my writing process. As I have typed my 1,700 words a day to meet my NaNoWriMo goal, I have realized how my writing process is all about layering. With each draft, every round of revisions, every pass I take of a manuscript, I am building layer after layer after layer.
I learned in high school that I hate outlining and my perspective has not changed. I avoid the Roman-numeraled process and prefer to get into the flow of the text and find the narrative voice through trial and error. My novels deeply focus on character and perspective, so I want to be in the mindset of my main character to feel out the story and better understand where it’s going. So, my first draft is a sort of outline, full of prose and free of Roman numerals, and also very, very messy.
Once I make it through this draft, I’ll go back and add another layer. I’ll clean up sentence structure. Remove repetition. Fill in all those highlighted placeholders that require a bit of research. Rewrite early sections that no longer make sense now that I’ve discovered the ending. Move scenes and chapters to better fit the overall pacing.
And then I’ll add another layer, sink deeper into character development and plot structure, before I start working at the sentence level to make sure the text has the voice and flow that I hear in my head.
Basically, writing is messy. As messy as I’m assuming it is to make a bologna cake. I get a lot of cream cheese on my fingers as I stack and layer and alternate between feeling the flow and forcing myself to move forward.
In the end, I hope it’s a story that both looks and tastes good, one I can’t wait to share with friends, so we can dig in together.
Bon appetite and happy reading!
My apologies if you’re reading this near mealtime. If you’d like to see more of these 1950s “foods” for yourself (or you think I’m making them up) check out this website. It has pictures for each dish and more, and thankfully no recipes.