Monday, April 25, 2011.
Back To The Wall. Beans Stay The Same After A Week.
My only significant meal of the day was an oversized plate of red beans and rice with the last of the hot sausage from the French Quarter Festival. I thought I ate that sausage last week, but Mary Ann's store of leftovers is always greater than I think. The beans tasted exactly the same as they did last Monday, when MA made this batch. Although I think it's true that beans taste better the day after they're cooked, a point is reached where they begin to head downhill.
The current interruption of some of my longest-running routines convinces me that I should make some big life changes. Problem: I can't think of any goal other than the obvious need to lose weight. (Which I am doing. Everybody who sees me says so.) But that's not much of a life goal. Also, I can't think of what I'd give up, since I enjoy everything I do.
One ambition on my mind for years is a writer's cliche. If I found myself not needing to make as much money as possible, I know exactly what I'd do: I'd cut back my assiduous factual reporting of the New Orleans food scene and replace it with writing novels. They're be about the New Orleans food scene, but would be different from the way I do it now.
A few years ago, I wrote--one day at a time, in the Menu Daily--a serial fiction called "Back To The Wall." I let it go when we ramped up the website tremendously in 2008. Since then, a small but insistent number of reader have asked me to resume it. Others who never read "Back To The Wall" have suggested I write a novel based in the New Orleans dining scene.
I would love to do that. But I'm absolutely positive that the effort wouldn't earn a dime. The payoff would be the enjoyment of the writing. But that won't pay the college tuitions.
Then last week I got so far ahead on my regular assignments that I decided to begin the second book of "Back To The Wall." I stopped the first one just as the owners of a new restaurant were about to open it. (The story of how they got to that point is already book-length.) I will take a lesson from Hemingway and rejoin the story with the restaurant already open.
I thought I would begin that writing today. I hit a snag. It's been so long since I wrote the first book that I can't remember all the characters, places, and forces in motion. I began reading it over. As long as I was doing that, I edited it (less than I thought I would), and posted each day's work on the website. I thought that this could be done in a few days. In fact, at the rate I'm going it's going to be at least a month. But then the whole first book will be available online.
See what I mean? Who would pay me for all this?
It has been over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
