The Power of Nooks and Crannies
I first showed up on Substack writing here under the title “Mai Time in the Kitchen.” The newsletter was born out of my love for plant-based cooking and my love for writing. This space was the perfect place to marry the two, especially since I’d recently stepped into a period of time when all of my six children were off to school and I had large swathes of time as my disposal.
But then six months into the union, my husband and I took a Grand Canyon-sized leap of faith and bought ourselves a bookshop in our little city of Lancaster, PA. It just so happens that our bookshop is called Nooks and it just so happens that I spent the last two years of my life as a writing teacher telling my students that you had to fit writing into your life, you had to find the time to get words on paper, even if the only minutes you find are in the nooks and crannies of everyday existence.
Yep, I used those exact words. And then I offered examples.
Do it in the school pick up line! I declared. In the waiting room at the doctor’s office, in the early morning hours before your house wakes up, on the front porch while your dog does her bathroom business in the front yard! There are always minutes, maybe even hours to be found in these in-between spaces of life!
Notice all the exclamation points, all the megaphoned confidence in which I said these words. But the arrival of Nooks in my life threatened to seal up every spare minute that ever existed in my daily schedule and lock writing out of my life permanently.
But here’s the thing: if you are a writer, you have to create. There’s no way around it. At least no healthy way. In the words of Maria Semple in her book Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, “People like you must create. If you don’t create…you will become a menace to society.”
That’s what I’m attempting to do here. The stories might come in the form of a vignette, a poem, a piece of fiction I’m dabbling with, or a good old fashioned rant. Whatever it takes to keep my nose clean.
And for those of you with a soft-spot for cookery and good, healthy eats, there’s plenty from the Mai Time in the Kitchen archives to keep you busy in your own kitchen. And when a cooking cranny presents itself, I might have some new material to offer up. Who knows.
So come along, friend. Let’s keep our menacing to a minimum, shall we.
Let’s tell some stories.
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