On fudge and fiction

I have assessment reports and an MLA paper to write plus cards to send and a trip to Philadelphia to plan, so how did I spend my weekend?

Making fudge and writing fiction.

Okay, I made more than fudge. We're going light on the Christmas shopping this year so I decided to send home-made goodies to family members: dark chocolate mint fudge, white chocolate peppermint bark, almond caramels, and some other sweet stuff. There's nothing more soothing than sitting in a tall chair stirring fudge and watching the sugary mess bubble and swirl while Christmas music plays in the background, unless the phone rings and you forget that it's a mistake to leave fudge unattended on the stove and you end up with burning sugar spitting at you from stovetop and smoke suffusing the atmosphere. But still, fudge-making is among my favorite holiday activities.

Fiction-writing is less soothing. I've been toying with a particular plotline for weeks but haven't had the time to put it down on paper, and frankly, writing it down wasn't a whole lot of fun. It's just a short piece but I spent most of the day fiddling around with it just to beat a rough draft into shape, and now it'll take eons and lots more fiddling before I'm happy enough with it to send it out somewhere. Don't ask me where. I don't know yet. Let's get the thing finished first.

But who knows when that will be? For the rest of the week I need to focus on more serious pursuits like assessment and MLA, so I'll put the fudge in the mail and the fiction on the back burner while I think about other things. Fortunately, fiction on the burner is unlikely to fill the house with smoke the way fudge does. I do, however, hope it tastes just as sweet going down.