Field notes from the kitchen
This is not a cake and other stories.
The apartment in Palermo is smaller than in the pictures. The listing promised two air conditioners and a fan. There’s only one AC in the bedroom. I booked this Airbnb because it had an office where I could sit and write in the early mornings before my husband wakes up. The heat is oppressive; sweat rolls down my spine, pooling at the small of my back. The air smells like brown bananas and salt. The chair I’m sitting on is peeling. This will not do.
A series of WhatsApp messages, including screenshots of the promised chill factors, makes Alberto take action. We move into his apartment next door. It’s a huge three-bedroom with exposed brick walls and wooden ceiling beams, and most importantly, skylights, windows, and cross-ventilation that rustles the papers on his oversized dining table.
I meant to write at the crack of dawn. Instead, I sit at the long, wooden table with the sun at its sweltering peak, when shops close and people take naps.
Between exploring a city that reminds me of the Little Italy in NYC I grew up in, with people singing Volare on tuk-tuks, and vendors gesturing at us to buy big, bruised eggplants the color of midnight, and eating sour cherry gelato, pistachios, and drinking Chinotto, I write.
Not these field notes, but my first novel.
Six weeks. The longest hiatus I have taken from Atelier After Hours. It’s the summer, but eating ripe nectarines on the Sicilian coast isn’t why I haven’t shared.
I could have siphoned off time for this, but something within pushed me to pour all my energy into the rough draft. More than mental pressure, my body pulled me toward it, like the trembling of an inner divining rod directing me to water. I haven’t experienced anything quite like it before.
When desire feeds discipline, I’m not forcing myself to the desk — I’m drawn to it.
Sitting down most days to write is like chipping marble, sweat rolling down my temple. The shape’s alive inside me, but the translation gives my fingers blisters. The first hour can be the hardest to move through. I tell myself I’m staying in it. Take it step by step. And I keep going.
My intuition tells me the story needs to be kept alive, that the characters are here, crowded on my living room couch, throwing popcorn at each other, waiting for their stories to be told through the lens of my life. I don’t take their presence lightly. The best way to honor them is to sit with them as often as possible. I see them in my mind, a mashup of different actors and characters from my life, until I feel their desires pulsing in my veins.
Being connected to what I want to create, what I’m meant to create, is a gravitational force. It took time to tune into my intuitive creative voice. It required me to get quiet enough to hear, to ask and be asked the right questions, and listen. The more I listened to the hot whispers, the louder they got. They led me to this novel.
I have an idea where the story is heading, and the pit stops along the way, but I’m unsure how it will unfold. I’m trusting my protagonist to show me. When I meditate in the morning, I connect with her and the version of myself who has already written the book. When my thoughts about my pipeline, a quest for certainty, pop up, I bring it back to the book. I’ve captured snippets of heated conversations in my notes app on these redirects.
Creativity is a trust game. You fall backwards knowing the characters and the universe will catch you. The more you let go, play nice with the unknown, the more your creativity ripens. The juicier it gets. My relationship with uncertainty has leveled up since launching Kollektiv Studio five years ago. Entrepreneurship will do that to you. Not knowing when the next paycheck or client will appear, I got to redefine my relationship with life, because it is uncertain. That’s the sweet and heady essence of it.
Life is a creative act. A blend of inner knowing and pitch-black mystery. Together, they unleash creativity, like a hunting dog on the porch, eyeing a pigeon, finally let loose to fucking run.
But you need to listen to what’s asking to be created. You might have no idea what that is exactly. But part of you is chomping at the bit to move in a hazy direction. The step might be clear, but the final landing place might not be.
You’ll have an inkling, barely breathing under the pile of responsibilities, shoulds, and the desire to know exactly what it will be and how it will bring applause and mucho bucks.
The universe will create space for you to find that thing, but it requires you to stay in the open without filling it with things that feel more certain. Trusting it won’t leave you stranded at a Denny’s off some random highway.
Luckily, we don’t have to ride alone. When I run dry, my editor and coach unscrews the cap and passes me the iced tea as I drive. Uncertainty is also along for the ride. When you start crafting it, whether a business or a book, you still won’t know how it will turn out. When we feel its shape in the dark, we need to release it and let it become whatever it needs to be. And remember what it’s not.
Yesterday, while writing, I remembered a story I heard on a podcast about an author who has a neon sign hanging in his studio: THIS IS NOT A CAKE.
Whenever he starts to compare his work to Austen or any of the greats, he reminds himself that his draft is flour, butter, eggs, milk, and sugar. It’s not a cake.
Remembering this is not a finished product keeps me writing. I have the ingredients, but I have no idea what kind of cake I’ll bake.
I’m in the kitchen, sipping on cherry kombucha, with flour on my chin and trembling hands. I know enough to keep cooking.
Fire it up,
P.S. If you’re unsure what you want to create next or where to start, let’s talk. I don’t just do this work for myself, but in creative partnership with phenomenal humans.