Ok. This isn’t easy to admit. I may—just may—be having a hard time writing my next book. But who could blame me? It’s called The Candymaker’s Son, and my sweet tooth is making it hard to concentrate on writing. The only problem is that my deadline is rapidly approaching. I can clearly picture my editor checking her watch as she waits for the pages. That said, here’s a peek into my day today. You can decide for yourself how well I did.
1. Drive to library. Pick up book on candy making. Pay huge library fine. Drive to another library. Pick up book on history of candy and jobs in the candy industry. Pay even huger library fine. Joke about sending the librarian’s kid to college with my fines. While driving to third library, keep mini tape recorder by my side to record any sudden bursts of inspiration. Fill it up with reminder to buy flip-flops for the gym shower, eggs because you’re supposed to be able to stand them upright on the first day of Spring, and to revise the opening scene of Chapter Three. Hey, at least the book got in there somewhere.
2. Eat PB&J sandwich, drink V-8 in parking lot of third library while listening to audiobook of New Moon by Stephenie Meyer. Wonder if Bella is ever going to be turned into a vampire. Bemoan the fact that it’s noon already and I haven’t started working yet.
3. Enter third library. Hand in the winning poems for the 8th grade county-wide poetry contest I judge each year. Chat with children’s librarian who has become a friend. This is new for me since growing up I got shushed a lot in libraries. Pay fine.
4. Set up laptop in my usual spot by the library fireplace. Fix window shade so sun isn’t on screen. Cover air vents on floor blowing cold air. Switch chairs due to original one having a spider on it.
5. Type notes about history of candy into file marked RESEARCH FOR THE CANDYMAKER’S SON. Answer three emails. Read AOL article on foods for a flat belly. Watch preview for new Indiana Jones movie. Return to note-taking and promise myself not to look up for an hour.
6. Ten minutes later, search frantically through my bag for something sweet. Find a packet of Rolo’s with one Rolo left. Grin. Unwrap. Eat. Go back to work with new, sugar-charged vigor. Learn that chocolate grows on trees and that corn syrup is really just the pulp of corn, and how bad could that really be for you? Learn that candy has been around for 4,000 years, and our abiding love for it has to do with the fond memories of our favorite childhood candies.
7. Daydream about favorite childhood candies–Fun Dip, Volcano Rocks (discontinued), Good ’n Fruity (discontinued), Circus Peanuts, Pine Bros Cherry Cough Drops (not officially candy but should have been. Also discontinued.) Shake myself out of daydream. Return to candy books. Learn that 16 BILLION jelly beans are eaten at Easter time, along with 90 million chocolate bunnies. Wish I had a chocolate bunny right now. Or jelly beans.
8. Revise opening of Chapter Three. Begin Chapter Four, a scene that takes place inside the cotton candy room of my main character’s candy factory. Yes, they have a whole room just for cotton candy. Mind wanders back to childhood favorites. Curiosity gets the best of me. Embark on an internet search for Good ’n Fruity, the candy whose disappearance has been the hardest for me to deal with. Find a petition with over two thousand names calling on Hershey to bring them back. Eagerly sign petition. Then discover that unbelievably, GOOD ’N FRUITY ARE RETURNING TO THE MARKETPLACE! Now! This Very Month! Heart leaps. Mind races. Will they be as good as I remember? The slightly crunchy outside, the chewy fruity inside? Would the box have the black background of my earliest years, the pink one of my adolescence, or the purple one which graced the final box before it was yanked with no warning?
9. With much effort, force myself to go back to work. Keep researching stuff for the book. More I learn about candy, its ingredients, the history of the candymakers who brought it lovingly to this country, the more I can’t stop thinking about that darn Good ’n Fruity.
10. Can’t take it anymore. Pack up my stuff and tell myself that somehow my quest to rediscover this candy of my childhood will put me in a clearer state of mind to write this book.
11. Search the candy shelves of 7-11, CVS, and Shop Rite. Do not find Good ’n Fruity there, but do pick up eggs, flip flops, and a lottery ticket.
12. Pass Best Buy on the way home. Do a u-turn as recall they have candy there by the check-out aisle. No Good ’n Fruity, but I do find a new candy that is pretty much blue goo inside a red tube. The red tube is licorice, and the blue goo has Nerds mixed into it. Cannot pass this up. Wait until I’m in the car to sample it. Nice consistency and sweetness, slightly soapy aftertaste though. Doubt I’ll purchase it again, as it’s really not a candy a grown-up can eat without pretending it’s their kid’s, but it does take the edge off the disappointment of my failed mission.
13. In the interest of my impending deadline and the high price of gas, turn to the Internet after dinner. Track down the illusive Good ’n Fruity at candywarehouse.com. To my surprise, the new incarnation is now called: Good & Fruity. No more “’n” in the middle. I do not think this bodes well. Still, I have to try, and candywarehouse promises to have a box at my doorstep in 5-8 business days. More precisely, they promise to have TWELVE boxes at my doorstep, since I had to buy them in bulk.
14. Quest now behind me, I can return to writing my book. In an office across the Hudson River, my worried editor breathes a sigh of relief.