Joan Bauer's Journal

The Cupcake Whisperer

The other day I was making coconut cupcakes and they were taking longer to bake than I'd expected. I kept opening the oven, smiling at them, and saying things like, "Hi, guys. How's everybody doing in there?" I admit, it had been a long week, and I want to clearly state that I do not talk to just any kind of food. I have never spoken to meatloaf or pie, although I have grumbled while rolling out pie crust. I've never said a word to pasta or muffins. But there's something exceptionally engaging about a cupcake. My new novel, Close to Famous, hits the stores on February 3rd complete with cupcakes on the cover, so I've been thinking about cupcakes and baking them, lots of them, throughout the last year. I set out on a quest -- not the most important of my life, but a quest nonetheless, of being able to turn out a moist cupcake every time. It was a lofty goal, and I went through lots of dry, unacceptable prototypes before I perfected things. I learned the supremacy of cake flour as opposed to regular flour. I learned that when you are testing cupcake recipes in your kitchen -- recipes that you will share with others -- recipes that your publisher will share with others as well -- you would mislead yourself (as did I) by thinking that you alone could do this. Oh, certainly, you could bake all by yourself, but you cannot be the sole taster. I have attempted this and failed.  Believe me, by the time you've eaten three cupcakes in a row, you are in dense sugar shock and unable to discern any subtleties that might make the recipe better.  

My husband would come home from work and I would be slouched in a chair with an empty bowl of frosting before me, declaring I could not get the recipe right. I tried two different batches! "How many did you eat?" he'd ask and I would round down the number. So eventually, Evan took the cupcakes to his office on Long Island where he instructed his colleagues to be brutally honest about the cupcakes.  I wanted the truth. And I got raves, but I didn't quite believe it. So when my daughter was here over the holidays, she and I worked in the kitchen together and Jean seemed to be able to improve on a recipe without going into emotional apoplexy. The young are strong.   

Two of these recipes are on my website and I can tell you that I killed myself over them and my daughter figured out some lovely distinctions to make them sing.  Yes, they sing.  Cupcakes do remarkable things when you coax them. The world is a mess, the weather has been grotesque in so many places. and here comes a little cupcake to cheer us. Is that possible?  Oh yes. They do that, you know; cheer us up.  It's an important attribute in a baked good.  "So, kids, are you cool yet?" I asked this of the coconut cupcakes. They didn't reply. If they had, believe me, we would be on the talk show circuit. This is a long way of saying, if you'd like to read a story that takes a cupcake further than you ever thought it could go, take a look at my new novel, Close to Famous.

 

Thanks, Mom

I can remember a cupcake materializing in the midst of a rotten day. A candle being lit despite the darkness. A birthday party planned even though it had been too tough a season to really think about that. My mother, sister, and I made Pilgrim dolls and decorated the house one Thanksgiving, even though our father hadn't been seen or heard from for weeks. 

My mother's great gift was knowing how to celebrate life no matter what the circumstances. In my new novel, Close to Famous, I gave that gift to my 12 year-old protagonist, Foster McFee. When I began writing this story, I had, like a good baker, all the ingredients out on the counter:  Fear; danger; humor; celebration; change; resilience; denial; over-coming; vanilla cupcakes; secrets; loss; learning challenges; chocolate chip muffins; raw courage; brown sugar brownies; moist chocolate cupcakes; chocolate malt cupcakes; milk chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting; all out despair; and banana cupcakes with fudge frosting. And I thought, OK, Joan, this time, you've done yourself in. This stuff doesn't go together. But of course it did. That's how I grew up. 

My mom died a year ago.  I have many of her belongings, but the ones I cherish most are her casserole dishes. When I use one, as I did recently to make baked apples, the warmth of her in the kitchen is so real to me. My mother knew that cooking unleashes a special power. She would have loved Foster's great dream to be a famous kid cook on television. 

Close to Famous is the first book I've written that my mother never read. But, the lessons she taught me are baked into the pages. Thanks, Mom. This one's for you.

Close to Famous is available in stores February 3rd.  To learn more, visit joanbauer.com.

The Joan Bauer Chicken

Sometimes a chicken just has your name on it.  People like Frank Purdue and Murray Bresky of Murray's organic chickens know this.  But I hadn't known this until recently when I received an email from Wendy Thomas of New Hampshire asking if I would like to have a chicken named after me.  I can say truthfully, I'd never once thought of that.  I've had people name their pets after some of the characters in my books, but this was different.  A few other authors, like Meg Cabot, Judy Blume, Jody Piccault, and Laurie Halse Anderson had chickens named after them.  I was deeply honored and said yes.  Then I began to worry about my chicken because I felt we had, you know, bonded somehow.  I felt guilty that I didn't know much about chickens other than the egg part and the roasting part, and I felt guilty especially when I went to the grocery story and stood by the poultry section.  But the Joan Bauer chicken, I was assured, would never be eaten.  And with that news, I did buy a Murray's organic chicken and threw it into my cart, but I averted my eyes when I sprinkled it with salt, pepper, fresh herbs and olive oil and put it in the oven.   

I began to wonder if my chicken was getting along with the other chickens, because in school I was a bit of a loner.  I wondered how she was doing in gym, because I didn't know I was athletic until I was thirty.  She is, it turns out a bit camera shy, but when she feels like it she lets loose with a serious peep. It's comforting to know there is another Joan Bauer out there waddling through the literary barnyard, doing her best to be a good egg. 

Here's the interview with photos.  Isn't she cute?  I'm so proud. http://simplethrift.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/project-chickens-before-the-eggs-lesson-140-good-egg-interview-with-joan-bauer/

 

 

On Writing and Cupcakes

I just read a book on being more energetic -- actually, I didn't finish the book; I got a third of the way through it and put it down because the suggestions were making me tired. It used hyphenated words like full-engagement and full-throttle and I realized that I'm not interested in speeding across a lake, metaphorically speaking, in a racing boat, the wind whipping through my hair. I'm a writer, and so I sat at my computer and started fiddling with a new idea. In a few minutes I was feeling fully alive, so alive, that I realized I was hungry. I went downstairs and decided to eat something fun, and there were these cupcakes I'd made the day before -- maple pecan cupcakes with maple frosting. I am here to tell you that there are few things more fun than maple pecan cupcakes. I felt the old brain really start to perk. Have you noticed how energizing fun is? The book hadn't mentioned this. And then I looked in my living room.  A few days ago we had changed all the furniture around and I loved the new arrangement, so I sat in the chair by the window and felt wholly satisfied and not at all tired. I went back to my desk and played with my idea and  completely forgot what time it was until my husband walked through the door. How was my day, he asked. I brushed cupcake crumbs off my shirt and whispered, "Wonderful."  I didn't tell him the details of my new story because you can't talk about new ideas right away -- they're made of wisps in the beginning and so easily can blow away. I tucked the new idea into my heart. It will be there tomorrow when I sit down to write. The cupcakes will not. We ate them.  

Walking the Path

I finished my new book last week at midnight. There was an energy to finishing that felt like I was completing a race. My daughter was visiting, my husband was fixing our Internet connection so I could send the novel to my editor who was probably asleep. I shouted, I'm done, leaned back in my chair, and looked at the framed picture of the labyrinth walk that I attempted to walk years ago in San Francisco.  I say attempted because when I got to the church, I was rushed. I was supposed to take off my shoes and begin to walk this circuitous path that is symbolic of life -- and as you walk it you're supposed to think about your life -- all the challenges, all the joys, and the unexpected turns. But, I was rushed, you see, and not interested in full scale self examination. Halfway through the walk I was sure I'd taken a wrong turn -- I shrugged, stepped over the lines, and stood at the journey's end feeling really rotten that I'd cheated. I slumped off having flunked the labyrinth. 

Ah, but the next day... I got there early, took off my shoes, and slowly began to walk the turns thinking about my life -- the rough parts, the lovely parts. I walked the path. Then once more round and quite suddenly I reached the end feeling deep satisfaction. 

This is a great deal like writing a novel. The road curls and takes you back where you don't want to go, but you must go back because you have smoothing to do. You must make turns that don't seem right so that you can experience the powerful moments hidden in those odd places. You must think you are almost done and then go all the way around again. And then you step to the end, grinning. Close to Famous is my tenth novel. I always want the process to be easy -- it never is. But the story bursts with baked goods, particularly cupcakes. A cupcake brings comfort when the road gets rough.   

The Writers Flu

I have it.  I'm finishing a book.  

The symptoms:  Total focus, irritability, the need to close my door and do whatever it takes (which is a lot) to finish a novel, interspersed with excitement, joy, and obsession for detail.  Also, from my office certain sounds can be heard -- laughing, crying, shouts directed at certain characters.  

The cure:  Keep my game face on and get the book done.

The duration:  Hopefully, two more weeks.

I'll be back in touch then.

Joan 

Writing Through

When I was fifteen I had close to to the worst year of my life. In the midst of it, I can remember watching an ice skating competition and so wanting to be out there jumping and twirling with freedom. I didn't want to think about the hours, the days, the years of rigid practice; didn't want to think about the sore muscles or the falls. I just wanted to twirl and be free.  

But to really be free and do all we're made to do takes hard work, sacrifice, and injury sometimes before we get it right. When people ask me what's the best advice I can give as a writer, it's this: Write when you feel like it and write when you don't. It's the discipline on the off days that gives power to the on days, and after a while, you're trained to write through the storms and the sunshine. 

The First Candy Bar and Other Stories

One of the things I love about living in Brooklyn is the great stuff you can find on the stoops and steps -- left there by people who just want to pass it on. Yesterday I found an old Bon Appetit magazine from 1999 celebrating "The Century in Food." It's hard for me to think that there was actually a time when a good-hearted person could not buy a candy bar in America, but the first candy bars (specifically, Baby Ruth and O'Henry) didn't appear until 1920. But when they arrived, they caused a sensation. This year, 2010, the American candy bar is 90 years old. Whoo hoo!

It made me wonder about the origins of other things that I take for granted, like writing novels. I doubt the folks who told their stories with hieroglyphics ever did more than one draft because when you're dealing with rock, you'd better be sure you've got all the plot twists in your head before you start carving. But, once upon a time, there was a storyteller who wrote down his or her tale, showed it to another who made some suggestions, and boom, the first writer/editor relationship was born. Then one of them showed it to another person who said, "You know, I can sell this, but I need fifteen percent of the grain I'll get you for the story." And the first agent burst on the scene. Then along came someone else who said, "If I send six friends into the nearby villages to spread the word about your story, we might get some excitement building much quicker than if we sit here and look at each other." And the PR department blasted into being. None of this is helping me finish the next draft of my new novel, but I did feel a compelling urge to leave this on my stoop for those passing by.    

All My Darlings

It occurred to me when I was having a chai latte with my editor, that in the new book I'm writing, I have too many bad guys. Actuallly, this had occurred to my agent a few days before, and when he told me, I decided he was wrong, because I really liked all these bad guys -- they were deliciously rotten of the boo hiss variety. But now, with the bad guys laid out before me on a table at Starbucks, I see that one of them has to go or at the very least be toned down.  There is no doubt who will be the one to get axed, and this means that some funny moments will have to be cut. Cutting a funny moment is excruciatingly hard for me.  I mean, losing a joke -- that's serious.

William Faulkner proclaimed the curse, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings." He's mostly right. I've been writing long enough to know that when we fall in love with the little moments we're heading down a dangerous path. We look for places to put them in, keep them safe, keep them alive with an IV, if necessary. We've fallen in love with them because they are just so fun and delightful.  But do they really add to the story? If they don't, they must go. Nothing will exhaust a good tale more quickly than getting stuck in unnecessary stuff. Ernest Hemingway insisted, "When in doubt, take it out."  All right.  All right.  But I'm putting my bad guy in a file marked "Darlings".  I'm hoping there will be another story where he can jump to life in wretched despicableness and get what's coming to him.  I will cling to that. 

Yawn If You Love Dogs

My dog Max is terrified of garbage trucks. No matter what I do -- talk soothingly, give him his favorite treats, put him in another room of the house -- he acts as though the Evil Death Star has come to suck him into its atmosphere.  

I got a book about calming dogs' fears, and one of the things it mentions is yawning. Seriously. Dogs yawn sometimes when they are trying to calm themselves, so the books suggests that we humans yawn when our dogs are nervous. This is supposed to show the dog there's nothing to worry about.   

I've tried doing this when the garbage truck comes on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I walk casually into the room yawning, trying to be subtle. "I don't know why I'm so tired, but it sure feels good to yawn. Why don't you try it, Max?" But he looks at me and bolts from the room. I follow him yawning, and since it's early in the morning, yawning comes naturally to me. However, have you noticed that the more yawning you do, the more tired you become? So by 7AM, I'm ready to go back to bed while Max is shaking at the top of the stairs, hoping the garbage truck can't find him. I sit on the stairs with Max and move into deep yawning, stretching out my legs and my arms. He looks at me like I'm crazy.  

The garbage truck is backing up now, brakes screeching, and Max tears downstairs to sit in the shower stall. Yes, that's what I said. I go to the window and watch the garbage guys hurl my trash can half way down the street, then they roar off to terrorize more dogs in Brooklyn. So I go to work on my novel and I hit this confusing part in the story. I'm not sure what my character should do. I sit there, yawning a little, stretching, and then it becomes clear what my character needs -- a dog.