Cafe Carolina & Bakery

Image @ pinterest.com/pin/327003622915346032/

Cafe Carolina & Bakery in Cary, NC, is best known for its Carolina Blue cupcakes! The chocolate ones are rich brownies with a decadent, sky blue frosting on top that never ceases to make my mouth water. This is one of my favorite places in North Carolina to eat lunch, especially because their salads are top notch so you don't feel as guilty indulging in their sweet treats for dessert!  Now it's become special to me in an entirely different way. Today I had lunch there with Author Bethany Lopez, my first "business lunch" related to my writing career! Our conversation flowed easily, our lunch was delicious, and I have a page full of great tips to help guide my budding new career! Meeting Mrs. Lopez was an inspiration for me, as I admire greatly the woman behind the pen. She recently retired from serving in the United States Air Force (*thank you for your service), is raising five children with her husband, and managing a very successful writing career! I asked her how on earth she manages to write novels with such a busy household, and she said, "I've learned to write with the noise."

That statement is going to stick with me for a long time because I can relate, only I write because of the noise. It's not just the cacophony happening outside and around me that compels me, but also what bangs around from within. Often when the noise is approaching deafening, I HAVE to write in order to find my quiet again. Those times are usually when the words flow out of me so fast, my fingers can barely keep up! That is also what happens with a story that wants to "get out"...it just takes over and I become the conduit through which it is born. Writing is a part of who I am, one of the deepest parts, where the most potent emotions live and breathe, burn, and bubble, and hurt. Turning that "out", i.e. into a career, is a bit like taking my skin and peeling it away so that all the things living beneath are raw and on display. Paul Gallico nailed it when he penned, "It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader." (--from his 1946 book Confessions of a Story Writer) While writing and sharing it with the world is utterly frightening, it is also one of the most rewarding things I've ever done! Now, I'm going to sit here and indulge in cupcake Heaven to celebrate this momentous occasion!

*Note: Thank you Bethany Lopez for taking time to help me today and for making me feel welcome in the writing community! I'd forgotten just how good it feels to 'belong'!

---