Let's Talk with Lois Winston

One of the mantras of writing is to sit your butt in your chair and just type. That it’s always easier to fix a bad scene or chapter than stare at a blank page and blinking cursor. However, one of the downsides of following that advice is another mantra: sitting is the new smoking. Sit too much every day, and you run the risk of a shortened life.

We’re all advised about the importance of daily exercise. Some people enjoy exercising. I’ve never been one of them. I’m sure it harkens back to some really bad memories of gym class.

For a while, I forced myself to go to the gym every morning, but I hated it. Still, I knew I needed to get my butt out of my chair and do something physical. I bought a treadmill. Not for running, though. Being forced to run a mile around the track in under ten minutes, no matter the temperature, was one of those bad gym class memories that still haunt my dreams.

Instead, I walk. Half an hour mid-morning, another half an hour mid-afternoon, at least five days a week. Briskly enough that I do between a mile and a quarter and a mile and half during each thirty-minute session.

Walking on a treadmill is boring, but for me, reading while walking is as nausea-inducing as reading in a moving car. I’ve tried audio books and podcasts, but my mind tends to wander, and I lose the thread. Instead, I watch TV.

Lately I’ve been binging all the episodes of “The Great British Baking Show.” If you’re not familiar with it, each episode features amateur bakers competing in three timed challenges with one baker eliminated after each show. Every episode has a different theme, such as Bread Week, Cake Week, Pastry Week, etc. throughout the 10-week season.

Watching the Bread Week episode from one season the other day, it occurred to me that there’s a commonality between bread-baking and novel writing. In their simplest forms, both can be reduced to two basic elements. With bread, it’s flour and water. For novel writing, it’s plot and characters.

From there, you add nuance. Yeast, kneading, and proofing to make the bread dough rise before baking. Goals, motivations, and conflicts to create well-rounded characters and an intricate plot.

The title of this blog is “How is Baking Bread Like Writing a Novel?” Perhaps, when you read that, you thought it was the setup for a joke. Now you know it wasn’t.

Meanwhile, once upon a time I baked my own bread. There’s nothing like the smell, the taste, and the comfort produced from a loaf of freshly baked bread. But the problem with baking bread is that you wind up eating it, warm and slathered in butter. And maybe with a hunk of cheese and a glass of wine. All those calories are as bad as sitting at the computer all day. And if I spent as much time on the treadmill as it would take to walk off all those calories, I’d never have time to write. Which is why I no longer bake bread.

What do you do to burn calories? Or are you one of those lucky individuals who can eat anything and never gain an ounce? (If so, I’m insanely jealous!) Post a comment for a chance to win a promo code for a free audiobook of any one of the first fourteen Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries or the first book in my Empty Nest Mystery series.

Want to learn more about our author Lois Winston? Visit her WEBSITE

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