Writing Cookies

Becoming a children’s author is sort of like opening a bakery… except it’s nothing like it at all. In this strange new world of 21st century publishing, before authors share any of their treasured writings, they need to establish a following online. In other words, before I even bake the cookies (which are a special, secret kind of cookie), I have to start parading around the street with my baker’s hat so people know I make cookies. Even though no one’s allowed to eat any of them yet. Or taste them. Or look at them.

And then when curious people ask me what kind of cookies I make, I have to smile mysteriously and say, “Just you wait. They’ll be amazing! They will taste delicious (I hope)! And the secret recipe has flour, sugar, butter, and some other kind of magic chocolate bean grown in equatorial fairy tales.” 

Because if no one knows I bake, then no one will buy the cookies.

So this is me, telling you that I’m a baker—errr, writer. I love to write. I love to grab my laptop and sit on my couch, on my counter, on my bed, in the sun with a blanket on my favorite patio chair. I love to write (for a few minutes) in a field of grasshoppers that sing woody songs to me while the mosquitos nibble at my legs. In the evening, I love to hug and kiss the little people living in my house, grab my notebooks and hide in the schoolroom with the light turned low, trying to find the most whimsical word that rhymes with “hoot” (because owls) and occasionally yelling up the stairs, “Go back to bed!”

As a musician, my inner song informs the rhythm of the words I write. As an artist, the pictures in my head transform into words and fill the paper, lest they disappear forever into the place where all lost thoughts go, the junction between Wonderland and Never-Never Land.

Writing is the trap door for all the imaginative ideas in my head, the meaningful sentiments of my heart, the pieces that would otherwise stay hidden, unused. And with a finished product, I have a chance to contribute something good and lovely to the world that would otherwise be short one fantastically delicious cookie— I mean, book.