What are you baking or “baking” this fall?

I love baking. I get it from my papa.

That might be surprising to those of you who knew me in high school (hi Robin, hi Michael, hi Becca and more!) and rarely saw me in Dad’s Slice of Heaven bakery in the temple kitchen, except for the all-hands-on-deck frenzy of farmers market day.

Sometimes these things are slow to come back around. But nowadays, I bake challah every Friday.

And especially as fall arrives each year, I get in the baking mood. Maybe it’s the leaves crunching underfoot like the crackling of a perfectly browned crust. Maybe it’s the pumpkins everywhere just begging to be mashed and converted into a higher form once Halloween’s over. (Two years ago, I found so many… creative… recipes for my 20 pounds of purée, Danny begged for mercy.) Or maybe it’s something elemental and ancient, a pull to spend more time at the fire or hearth or oven as the air grows colder and the nights longer.

I also love writing. Baking and writing are two of my only regular activities that make me completely lose track of time—that absorb my brain and hands so fully that my buzzing mind and the outside world go temporarily quiet.

On Friday, as I was kneading my challah dough, it occurred to me that baking challah is writing, and writing is baking.

The first step is gathering the ingredients and stirring them up into a messy mass. Getting my hands dirty. Pushing and pulling. The mass expands beyond my control—the dough rises and overflows its mixing bowl, the words balloon into spaces I never planned for them to go. I step away to let it all rest and continue bubbling. I return, punch it down, fold it, begin to shape it. It becomes recognizable, something like its final form: a loaf braided together, an essay woven with a discernible structure. I walk away again, let it breathe, come back, and it looks different: expanded again, the pockmarks and blemishes I hadn’t noticed before grown more pronounced, a loose end come unbraided. I touch it up—plump the dough, egg wash, sprinkle seeds; reorder paragraphs, tighten sentences, swap in the just-right word.

I put it in the oven or turn it over to an editor, trusting that incubation by an external hand will make it come out great.

Sometimes, it does. Usually, good enough. Occasionally, I leave out an essential ingredient, like salt, or emotion. Oh well. Next time.

For me, baking is writing in one other way, too: It doesn’t happen without a deadline.

Shabbat comes every Friday, and if I’m gonna have challah on the table, it has to be out of the oven by dinner time.

But unlike baking, I’ve been struggling lately to find a regular writing rhythm.

I spent much of this weekend laboring over my manuscript—the manuscript I’d barely looked at since April. I was suddenly racing to revise it, because I’d promised my writing group a new draft and the deadline had arrived.

So much of what I want to do comes down to making the time for it, not having the time for it. As I look ahead to a quieter season, a more-time-indoors season, I’m thinking about what I might bake, literally or figuratively, and how I can create the structures and deadlines to do it. What’s the Shabbat dinner-deadline equivalent for my writing?

Maybe it’s more deadlines from my writing group. Maybe it’s texting one of you to say “I’m writing now!” Maybe it’s reserving the hourlong first rise of my challah dough every Friday to sit and type, no excuses. I’m not sure yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

And in the meantime, I’d love to know: What are you baking or “baking”? And how are you making the time for it? (Literally share a recipe if you’ve got something tasty in the works! And also, what’s your equivalent to my writing aspirations?)

Love,

Ari

What else? Literary edition:

• This Thursday, 11/15, 7 – 8:30 pm EDT, I’m emceeing a virtual literary salon featuring short readings from published works by ten amazing essayists and memoirists from the Memoir Incubator alumni community. I’m talking really cool people who’ve published work in places like The New York Times, Huffington Post, HerStry, and public radio. Not to mention full-on books. And you’re invited! Join the Zoom here.
• Boston area, TOMORROW! My friend Aimee is part of an in-person reading of a cool new anthology at Hummingbird Books. Let me know if you’re thinking of going.
• Danny was on a podcast! Called “It’s Lit in Translation,” hosted by a soothing-accented Brit. He’s so smart and I’m so proud. It’s long, but you can give it a (partial) listen here or wherever you podcast.
• Can’t remember who first sent me this video (Brigid? Char?), but it’s worth the rueful chuckle for anyone who’s ever torn out their hair over their multiple drafts.