You're the most important thing you bring to the table

If you’ve read anything I’ve written before—oh, hi, if you haven’t and this is your introduction to me somehow??—you can guess that I love food and cooking. I’m fascinated by recipes, nostalgic about the memories and atmosphere they create, and often know what a character I’m writing has for breakfast before I fully understand all of their motivations.

I think food can tell us a great deal about someone, especially if we’re looking at the things they turn to when they need comfort or to connect with those around them. My life hasn’t been centered around food, although there have been times where I had an awful relationship with assigning ethics to the very nature of it (thank you, millennial-era propaganda for telling me I was fat).

But I love food and different recipes for the way they nurture us, comfort us, inspire us, and allow us to come together.

When I’m stressed or sick, I reach for recipes from my childhood. I crave the way my mom cooked a casserole. I wish my granny was still alive to cook biscuits and gravy for breakfast. I love that my grandmother used to keep fresh bread and real butter (no margarine) in her kitchen when I came for a visit for us to have together with hot tea.

I find comfort in cooking for my family, in watching others cook, and reading recipes to give me ideas that I’m convinced will come to me in a pinch later (spoiler alert: they definitely have).

So, I guess I wasn’t surprised recently when I ran into an old, forgotten church cookbook from my childhood on my shelf —and inspiration struck again.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, the church or community cookbook has a long history. They began during the Civil War (1861-1865) as fundraisers to benefit Union soldiers. Families would volunteer their prized recipes for anything from stews, bread, jellies, pies, and laundry detergent to be sold in a handy book. Over the years, communities or churches would often sell advertisements or take donations to help pay for the printing cost, but there were also businesses that advertised directly to churches to help them design and print the cookbooks in exchange for a portion of the proceeds from their fundraiser.

In my family, the church cookbook was a heavily guarded item. Once sold-out during a fundraising period, the only way to obtain a copy was to inherit one or hope that someone would sell it at a yard sale. The one I currently have on my shelf is my mom’s least favorite of the three she has. I have been informed that I will receive the other two “one day”.

Recently looking over the one in my possession, I was struck by the unhinged and delightful nature of the contents—Really Margie?? Twelve cans of crushed pineapple for ONE bowl of “Baby Shower Punch”?? Really? I have to use the Orange Sherbet from the Piggly Wiggly??

There are recipes from women I remember fondly, women who have long passed—my granny included. There are simple punches and spritzers, cakes and icebox pies. There are meals made entirely of canned ingredients. Some that illustrate the frugality of the chef in the kitchen. There are recipes I remember the women in my church highly coveting and being thrilled to have in their possession to be able to cook at home.

There are also TEN separately listed recipes for the exact same broccoli casserole.

This struck me in particular. I messaged my mom to share. Years after the one in my possession was produced, it was her job to head this particular project for the church, and she told me that when the same recipe was submitted, they would simply list multiple names by that recipe.

I read through each broccoli casserole recipe to see if I spotted any differences, but honestly the biggest difference were the women who made them. One or two added extra butter or included a “mushroom-free” option, but for the majority, it was the women cooking the recipes that added something new.

It was their kitchens, their personalities, their tables, and their families that made it different.

It made me reflect on my writing a great deal and what makes creating different for each of us.

In my journey to experiment and learn as much as possible while writing fan fiction, I’ve always taken it upon myself to try different things, whether it’s a different POV or paying more attention to pacing. I wrote one fic where I wanted to focus more on their first kiss than anything else. I wrote another where I—desperately—tried to keep each chapter under a certain length to see how it would affect the story. In another, I switched the POVS from First to Third while juggling dual POV.

That type of flexibility and thinking has been helpful as I’ve drafted manuscripts and essentially taught myself how to write a book. There’s so much advice out there for seasoned and unseasoned writers alike. Options for how to structure a story that work for some and not others. It becomes clear, as I guess it always has been, that you have to find your own path. I’m often thrilled to hear writers that have been in it for the long haul say their process still changes and grows with them as their life changes shape, because sometimes after you start to follow all the advice, drafting and honing things in a way that you can only hope is acceptable for an agent that will want to sell it to a publishing house that will want to sell it to the general public, it all starts to feel like the same recipe of broccoli casserole.

The joke about the broccoli casserole got a lot of mileage that day. I messaged my mom of course, then my partner. I messed my bestie and another writing friend with the contents of another recipe that I at first thought was a drink and then realized was for a floor cleaner. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how important it was to have the perspective of the chef or the author of a recipe.

Of those ten recipes, I can remember eating at the tables of five of those women. I can’t say that I’ve had broccoli casserole with every single one, but I know I’ve tasted the one that belonged to my mom’s best friend: a single mom who worked hard and made some of the best field peas and rice I’ve ever eaten. I’m sure I had my aunt’s a time or two, someone who didn’t cook much but excelled in the few things she did like to cook. I definitely had a few at a church event, or when they cooked for our family and brought casserole after casserole to our home when my granny passed away.

Each one similar ingredients, the same basic recipe, but so much more because it came from a different person every time. I have to remind myself of this when I start to wonder if I’m constructing something that will meet a reader’s needs—yes, yes, I’m trusting my instinct and writing the story I want to tell. But part of doing that is reminding yourself of why YOU are the one telling the story and not someone else.

Your kitchen, my kitchen. The tools we use, where we pull ingredients from.

All of those things affect our recipe.

My goal in starting this newsletter was to have a space outside of fiction to share my journey, and even now in writing this particular post, I’m thinking… what exactly do I have to offer? This is easily Creating 101 for some of you. Maybe it is, but I need reminders. I’m not always at my strongest or most resilient, and it’s hard to feel that what you’re doing is important when those times come.

It’s good to know where you’ve come from, even on the good days.

Maybe you’re working from a similar recipe as others (romance, pop art, comics, fantasy, line art, digital, various tropes that are evident since the beginning of time that have been repeated, etc).

Your tools are still like no one else’s.

Your kitchen matters.