#124: Perseverance in 30 Pies

A guest post by author and friend Amy Wallen about her new book, baking 30 pies in 30 days, and the importance of perseverance.

After the dream that left me feeling somewhat alone, I can’t thank you enough for the wonderful words you sent in comments and emails. They were truly a balm to my soul. The pandemic years, both during and post, have shown me that meaningful and valued relationships can be made through the virtual world, something I never thought possible. I am grateful that you are here with me.

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Today, I’m sharing a piece by Amy Wallen who I met when she came to Pie Cottage for an in-person workshop back in 2017. When I pivoted to virtual teaching she tuned in for a session on Lemon Meringue Pie, a favorite in my family and one that she writes about in her new book How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies. Whether you are writing a novel or not, Amy’s new book is a most enjoyable, light-hearted read about the perseverance it takes to write a book and after writing three of my own I can tell you that you need a lot of that!

Now on to Amy…

Amy Wallen (Photo Credit: Daniella Devarney)

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When Kate asked me to write a guest blog post I immediately knew I wanted to write about perseverance. I call it pie-severance. It’s what my most recent book, How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies is all about. My book encourages keeping at it, writing and finishing a book, by baking pies. It’s about finding a way around, through, over, and under all obstacles to reach your goals—with pie as the reward. I didn’t realize to what extent I would be applying pie-severance the weeks before I wrote this post.

I’m three weeks in on my self-imposed challenge 30 Pies in 30 Days. I do this every November for the past four years as a fundraiser for a nonprofit where I work. This year’s pie challenge met all the usual suspect obstacles, mostly related to time and other obligations. What I didn’t expect was this year a whole bunch of other stuff would get in my way.

A challenge like this brings up all sorts of emotions and thoughts and memories that make a person feel a bit insane. Maybe that’s why I do it because I want to prove I’m sane the rest of the year. Or maybe I just like the high of the adrenaline. There are lots of reasons, actually, and the main one is what I learn about myself and about the world.

The other night I woke up around 2am having a panic attack about so many things that had nothing to do with pie, but other things in my life—my car is acting up, termites have invaded the upstairs, and my husband lost his job. Any normal year the stress of the pie challenge pushes everything to the top. This year with its additional challenges, I was “on the verge” as they say, and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I picked up my iPhone and thought, I’ll look at a little Facebook to cheer me up. Facebook is never where one should go for cheering up. Every other post was someone’s pet that was ill, being put down, or dead. I fell into one of those long ugly cries. It lasted a couple of hours. The cry was a cathartic one, but puffy-eyed nonetheless. My entire life flashed before my swollen eyes as I remembered every single thing that I wish I had done differently. Why did dead pets take me down the long dark dangerous alley of regrets? Who knows. Blame 20 days of 20 pies and 10 more still to go. In the morning, I was lighter, albeit still weepy.

A couple of days later, Kate and I had a Zoom to talk about my new book. I only know Kate from one visit to her Pie Cottage to take her class, a Zoom class, and I interviewed her for her book, PIE CAMP. I wouldn’t say we know each other well, other than pie. Until now. The entire interview we spent talking about letting go of things in life. From couches to regrets. Or maybe getting rid of the couch is symbolic of letting go, of moving on. The conversation continued as though we had known each other for years. Instead of an interview it felt more like we were reminiscing, as though we had known each other so long that our stories were the repeated ones we both still laugh at every time they’re told. Maybe it’s a pie baker thing—where we put a filling filled with all our most soulful moments into a pastry and pass it along to someone else and they eat it up with delight not knowing what all went in it, just trusting it was made with love. Maybe life is filled not with regrets, but with friends who we don’t even know are there.

We can never know exactly how things will turn out. Even if we do everything right to our dough, add all the freshest ingredients, and bake at the right temperature, we can still trip on the sidewalk like I did the other night when delivering a pie, and yes the blueberry slab pie went flying. Pie-severance is trusting that you’ll reach that pie-in-the-sky. You have to pass through the dark to get to the light. And, there will always be more pie. And friends. People show up even if you haven’t screamed for help. Somehow they know, and maybe they don’t even know they know.

—Amy Wallen

Learn more about Amy, her books, and NaNoPIEMo at her website.

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