Hello all! Welcome to our Thursday night diary on writing. Whether fiction, memoir, or something else, pull up a chair and join us.
It’s Thursday night, and I’ve got food on the brain. It’s not quite the weekend, and the cats have been fed, and the kiddo has homework again, and dinner is just not happening. At least, not tonight.
I’m a fan of Catherynne Valente, who’s been having a bit of a rough time lately according to her Substack. And so, having learned recently she’s having carpal tunnel surgery (yikes, get well soon, pls!), she and some of her work have been percolating in my mental stew.
I used to have trouble reading her work, because her turns of phrase or unique perspectives would send my brain off on rabbit trails of stories I’d like to write myself. Less so now, mostly because I don’t have that much time for recreational reading. Or writing, sadly. But things stick with you.
September, from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, gets to return to Fairyland every year, under the Persephone Clause — the food of Fairyland is irresistible, despite the lack of fairies (at least in this book — the fairies do, eventually make appearance). The spread in the Autumn Provinces is criminally delicious. Do not read in/near a bakery/coffee shop.
I’m cheating here, because “The Difference Between Love and Time” doesn’t really deal directly with food, even though the space/time continuum does admit to eating the leftovers after a fight. I just love that twisty story so much.
But the story I adore so much, that dances with food as much as it does fire and New England and Puritanism and old women in cottages in the forest is “The Bread We Eat in Dreams,” (which is also a title of one of Valente’s anthologies). It is long, and I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll just say you should read it sometime, and maybe it will feed a little of your soul too.
Do you have authors who inspire you to write? What about someone whose work is guaranteed to send you to the kitchen? What sort of scenes surrounding food preparation do you include in your work?
Since tonight’s diary isn’t discussing technique, let’s just do some simple prompts:
Do with these what you will:
- pomegranate seeds
- tacos
- bread so good its sinful
In:
- a New England forest
- Washington state, coastline
- a fairyland, of your choosing
200-300 words, characters of your choosing
For those of you sharing longer form work: find this week's *WriteOn Fiction Works-In-Progress diary at this link.
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