Cupcakes and Creativity

Dressed as Julie in Julie and Julia with
Kathy Patrick of the Pulpwood Queens!

I'd like to talk about cupcakes for a while. Rather, cupcakes and writing and how the two go together.

See, there's this place in town where all they sell are cupcakes. I was there today. One cupcake cost me more than three dollars. A three dollar cupcake! Do I need to say more? I split it with a knife into three sections and shared it between my two kids and myself. I had a bit less than a dollar's worth. That was one hefty cupcake.

Seeing as that one was three dollars, it was pretty much out of the question to order 20 cupcakes for my daughter's class tomorrow. She's turning 8 years old over spring break next week, so we're celebrating early with cupcakes in her class. Last year as I was traveling with birthday cupcakes to her class, someone rear-ended my car and the cupcakes went flying, so I'm a little nervous about tomorrow, but that's neither here nor there.

So about these cupcakes...and about my daughter. She cares about people. She likes to please people, but she's not so much interested in pleasing the masses, per se. She's more interested in pleasing those whom she cares about. My daughter told me she wanted cupcakes with no eggs in them since a boy in class is allergic to eggs, which is why we were in this three-dollar-cupcake shop in the first place. Apparently, they make some without eggs. However, the cost is prohibitive.

So while the kids were in the dentist's office, I ran over to the grocery store and bought a cake mix, icing, and applesauce. On the Internet, I read that you could replace the eggs with applesauce and a little vinegar, and something else. The something else is what I couldn't remember because the Internet was down tonight. So I made the cupcakes with oil instead of butter and applesauce with a dash of vinegar instead of eggs. Sounds awful, doesn't it? I was worried. My mother, the baker in the family, said, "How are they going to rise without eggs?" I SO don't know. I write books. I paint pictures. But I don't bake much.

I poured the batter into the cupcake thingies and stuck two pans in the oven. Every few minutes, I checked to see if anything was happening. They rose, ever so slightly, barely a blip, but I saw them. I noticed. After twenty minutes, I pulled them out and saw that they were chocolaty and semi-firm. I let them cool. Later my daughter and I piped on whipped white icing out of a plastic bag, and my daughter insisted on not icing one of them so her other friend who doesn't like icing could have one. Great. An eggless cupcake with no icing. Delicious.

I made two dozen, so the four of us at home could each try one tonight and send in the 20 we needed for school tomorrow. I wrote a note to the teacher assuring her I did not put eggs in the cupcakes (as if she wouldn't notice), and then we tasted. I held my breath. And bit.

Scrumptious, melt-in your mouth, chocolaty goodness, rich, heavenly...yum. Almost like molten chocolate cake. I was very pleased and figure I'll be winning mom-of-the-week around my daughter's class tomorrow. What a surprise. Can't wait to tell my own mother.

So what do these cupcakes have to do with writing, you ask? This is a writing blog after all. Well, I'll tell you.

My daughter did not set out to please the entire second grade with these cupcakes, not even the majority. There were one or two people who had special needs, and she simply wanted to please them. This made her happy. This also made her (read me) take a risk. I have never baked a cupcake without eggs, never even heard of it. Even my mother, the baker, doubted it. But my daughter and I tried something new. Everyone knows a cupcake is made from mix, eggs, butter, and water (unless you're a by-scratch person), but we put it together with oil and applesauce and vinegar, and guess what? Maybe it's not a cupcake for the masses, but sometimes baking--or writing--for an audience of one is more important. And more memorable.

I try to write for an audience of one, for my father in heaven, and when I do, there are no set rules about what order to put things in, no set ingredient list, no mass of people clamoring for eggs and rising batter. Writing for an audience of one means sometimes you'll create an unexpected delicacy, an original idea, a decadent combination that a certain audience will find perfectly palatable.

I love taking risks with my writing. I love doing something I've never done before, something that may not even be doable. I like to write for an audience of one. It makes me happy. And if it flops, at least I got to spend time with my father in the kitchen and lick the batter off the wooden spoon.

___________________
Nicole Seitz is the author and cover illustrator of The Inheritance of Beauty, Saving Cicadas, A Hundred Years of Happiness, Trouble the Water, and The Spirit of Sweetgrass. The Inheritance of Beauty is a Books-a-Million Faithpoint Book Club Selection for May 2011. Nicole teaches art at a local private school in the Charleston, SC area, where she lives with her husband and two children. She is currently editing her sixth novel. http://www.nicoleseitz.com/

SOUTHERN MYSTIC

I was raised by women who believed in Jesus and could tell the future. The Jesus part was easy. It was as expected as heat lightning on a summer night. We were southern and Jesus ran through our blood like pine sap through the trees. You would think the nature of God would draw more questions for the asking. More back-chilling, spine-tingling mystery but this was not to be the case. That was the black and white of it. The cut and dried. Family Bible on the table. Prayers called out over food and footsteps. Sunday go to meeting. Jesus was no mystery. Jesus was real. This future shrouded in forebodings and signs of all kinds, that was the mystery.

Now, the men in the family knew no future other than the day at hand. They were rough and tumble guys. They fished, they hunted, they told lies and alibis. The telling of things to come was not a part of them. Hard work was a part of them. Alcohol was a part of them. They were made up of three parts survival and one part mischief and so while the men stayed grounded to the earth, the women were the mistresses of all manner of things that were a part of food and babies. Of blessings and dinner on the ground. Of signs and wonders. Of dreams and fore-tellings. And the women drank this portion of their cup in without complaint. Carried the burden where it led them. And the men let them carry it on, following from a respectful distance, shuffling on the edge of mystery.

These women of mine could tell things by the weather. By the way wild animals appeared and disappeard. They could call the sex of the unborn by the way a woman walked, cold tell if was a man child or girl child coming. They could find a missing husband cold turkey in the middle of the night three cities away, and in some cases, they could tell fortunes. For them the veil between time and distance and other worlds was thin, more gossamer than brick.

Like the morning that my Grandmother rose from a troubled sleep and announced at the buttering of the biscuits, "Last night I had a dream of muddy water." She paused, took a sip of her coffee, slid the biscuit through tomato gravy and looked up. "Go on, " Aunt Leaner said and so she did. "I was standing on a bridge looking for something, looking up and down that creek. The wind was dead and silent. The water was full of mud and sorrow. Barely moving." She looked up at each of them, her eyes passing over my head that barely cleared the table's edge. "I never found what I was looking for." Then the circle of aunts shook their heads, went tsking with their tongues, and picking up worry. What would come next? A sick child? Dead animals? A husband hurt or worse? And the worry would continue until, sure enough, the dream would fulfill itself. Bad times, once on the distant, foggy horizon would land.

On the frequent nights that I went to visit I slept with my Grandmother. Tiny thing lying in that big iron bed with the sound of old fans stirring the hot air. Eyes open, I'd look out the window across the dark field and into the woods. As I lay there, unable to sleep, the sole survivor of the day, still wakeful, still watching, I'd see thunderstorms move across that field towards us until thunder shook the house. Until lighting was upon us. Until the air hissed, cracked, and rolled. Until I thought we were going to die. And on my Grandmother slept, breathing in and out, exhaling sights unseen over me until I finally drifted off into a southern, mystical sleep of my own.

These days people ask me about where my inspiration comes from. About how it can be steeped in signs and wonders and yet have characters and settings so real readers tell me they can pull up a chair by the fire, and be right there. Well, just look at me. No, look closer. See the little kid? Yes, that one. The quiet child moving through the shadows of whispers and skirts. See the long fingers of women weaving through my hair, hear those low tones being spoken over my head. Those are stories being told. Visions being cast. Layers of life being laid down through my skin, grafted to my bones. That quiet child so still, so silent, taking it all in. And now, the writer in me lays it down again one simple word at a time. What you see running through those pages, those words that pull like an undertow, that's a generation of women touched by mystery, of men grafted to the earth by hard work, raw life and strong love. These are my people and this is what they've give me. And, I am so very, thankful. (Live link to audio podcast)

River Jordan is storyteller of the southern variety and has been cast most frequently in the company of Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee. Jordan's writing career began as a playwright where she spent over ten years with the founders of the Loblolly Threatre group. Her second novel, The Messenger of Magnolia Street, (Harper Collins, Harper One) was published in January 2006. Kirkus Reviews describes the novel as a "beautifully written atmospheric tale." The Messenger of Magnolia Street was applauded as "a tale of wonder" by Southern Living Magazine who chose it as their Selects feature for March 2006.

Ms. Jordan teaches and speaks on 'The Power of Story' around the country and produces and hosts the radio program, Backstory, on WRFN, 98.9 FM, Nashville every Saturday at 4:00 - 6:00 CST. She has just completed a new work of fiction and lives with her husband in Nashville, Tn. You may visit the author at www.riverjordan.us