It's Time to Make the Cookies... I mean Write the Story

This weekend was our annual cookie baking get together. Three families have been getting together for about 15 years now, and baking cookies with the kids. Over time we (the mothers) have learned that the best way to make this productive is to make it easy. Store-bought dough, ready made icing, and lots of decorations to go with it. It's the getting together that's the fun part. And eating the cookies.

And I bet, if I try, I can relate this to writing. The fun part often is the writing - and even better, having written and getting others to read your story. But it takes a lot of work to get to that point.

We can't write a story with store-bought ingredients. We have to make it from scratch. But, if we do a bunch of the work ahead of time, it makes the story-writing go much smoother. This can mean writing an outline or doing character sketches.

Decorating your story comes during revisions. And while doing revisions are generally not as fun as putting icing and sprinkles on cookies, revisions can yield amazing results. A story without revisions is like a cookie without sprinkles.

And in the end, if you put the work in, you can end up with a scrumptious product - whether it be cookie or story.

Happy Holidays everyone!