Making Soup

Today I made soup. I didn't actually want to eat soup, and it was White Bean Provencal Soup—a type of soup nobody in my family (including me) particularly cares for, including my younger brother, who was coming over for dinner. But it suddenly became clear to me that before I could possibly write one word more of my current book—the one I have been struggling to finish—I needed to make White Bean Provencal Soup.

As I chopped and measured, simmered and reduced, I started thinking that making soup is kind of a metaphor for writing a book. Lots of stuff goes in it and you have to keep checking, tasting, changing the proportions to make it work. As you just stand there stirring, you begin to appreciate how the individual ingredients affect one another, the oil and heat sweetening the bite of the onion, the beans thickening the broth as they soften—just as each change in a character's motivation, action, or history affects everything else in the book.

But actually that was mostly a rationalization. I was making soup because I didn't know how to get from where I was stuck to the ending I needed. Though both can make me cry, chopping an onion is much quicker than creating a plot twist.

The problem with soup is that it just sits there simmering for a couple of hours, after the initial burst of action—so I was forced back into my chair, where I belonged, to write again. It's 11:30 P.M. now. What do I have to show for my day's work? Negative fifteen pages, a new subplot that may propel me in a way I didn't see coming through the scene I've been avoiding to the final chapter of my book, and a Tupperware half-full of surprisingly tasty (though perhaps under-salted) White Bean Provencal Soup. Plus, now, a note to you.

All in all, a decent writing day. How about you, my fellow writers? What did you make today?

Rachel Vail
Author of You, Maybe