If Writing was like Baking

You're probably wondering...

If writing was like baking?

What kind of blog is this?

Will there be pumpkin bread at the end?

Truly, AI should spend less effort trying to write these blog posts, and more effort into providing baked goods for anyone who does read this.

A girl can dream.

But we live in the real world where we have to bake our own goods.

Speaking of baking, I'm very much team Cooking over Baking because there is way less rigidity in cooking (at least it seems that way to me).

But, the nice thing about baking is when you follow all the steps, and set the timer on the oven, once it goes off, you have a nice finished product that is edible! Which is pretty cool.

It would be really cool if books were that way. If you followed all the steps, did all the work, and then set the metaphorical oven timer, and when it went off you had a finished book.

It sounds so ideal, and honestly so easy to replicate. But, as much as I wish they were both, books are NOT cookies. No timer will magically make a book ready to consume.

Instead, that comes from you. From how you draft, how you edit, how you solve plot problems and character arcs. And all of that takes a lot of time. Way more time than thirty minutes. More like weeks, months, maybe even years.

So, yeah, writing a book is not like baking cookies. But maybe, just maybe, it's a good idea to give yourself a "timer" to step away from your project after pouring your heart, tons of coffee and snacks into it for weeks/months/years.

It's a hard thing for me, because there are always ways to change things and make them better. Or different if not better. And sometimes different feels like better.

This was mostly just a ramble to myself about how to know when to step away, because I've been giving my YA fantasy another pass through. Changing some major things -- Luna's biggest character flaw -- in minor ways to give the book a different feel.

How do you know when it's time to step away from a book you're working on and declare it good enough to eat?