Month: October 2015

Food is many things to me: I grew up in New Orleans, which is shorthand for I love food, I love to cook, I love to eat, everybody I grew up with cooks, oh the dinners, the parties, the crab boils, the restaurants, Uncle Henry’s gumbo. … We used to go to restaurants and, while eating a great meal, talk about other great meals past and planned.

Now that I don’t live in New Orleans, much of my homesickness centers on the food.

Around the holidays — which to me include Mardi Gras — I cook up a storm. My homesick cuisine, of course, is Louisiana fare, Cajun and Creole. Oyster dressing for Thanksgiving, gumbo for Christmas, pork roast with Creole mustard and bourbon orange sauce for New Year’s, oh my god, talk about good! One day I’ll get the hang of king cake, but in the meantime, I’m  close to perfecting a hurricane that passes for a fine punch with or without the rum.

In between holidays, when homesickness is at bay if not (ever) gone, food is there for me. The food, the eating, the cooking … all there. It’s entertainment, hobby, pastime, meditation, comfort, story. I talk about cooking and trade ideas with cooking friends (sadly, outside of Louisiana, not all friends are cooking friends). I have Opinions with a capital O about the meals I get in restaurants. I try something new and want to crack the mystery and go one better. I scan multiple recipes for a dish and combine ideas to come up with my own.

I’ve invented a Louisiana recipe or two, inspired by the mantra I heard as often as any nursery rhyme: Well, cher, you start with a roux. … Those inventions are just as nostalgic for me as the old standbys I recapture during and between holidays. I have no doubt that if I told my Louisiana friends I’ve created something I call Cajun meatballs, some would swear, truthfully, that they’ve done the same.

And then we’d talk about it over dinner.

My name is Wanda Freeman, and I am a writer. Writing is my calling, my passion, my profession, my hobby … my identity.

I discovered I wanted to be a writer in high school when I took a creative writing course. I can still remember (admittedly faintly) a couple of pieces I wrote during that time. There was a humorous tale with a twist about a Wild West-era gambler, a vignette about a lonely hermit … and then there was the one that changed my direction (or gave me one) forever.

We were assigned to write a story in class that began with some line like “It was a dark and stormy night.” I wrote in first person in the character of a young man who has car trouble out in the country and knocks on a door for help. A woman answers, invites him in … and — as I suspect many stories by many teenagers go — she turns out to be off her rocker. She attacks the young man with a knife, and he barely escapes to tell the harrowing tale.

I turned in my story, sat at my desk and watched my teacher read … and I knew exactly when he reached the end: He looked up me and bugged his eyes in mock horror. Of course, I collected an A.

From that day on, I knew I was going to be a writer. The University of New Orleans didn’t offer a creative writing major at the time, so I majored in English literature. Some time into my freshman or sophomore year, I read an article in Newsweek (remember them?) about first-time authors getting published without the help of agents. Writers who submitted over-the-transom manuscripts might stand out in the crowd if they had already developed a credible reputation as writers for newspapers, the article suggested.

Well, that was that: I decided to go to work for the newspaper — The Times-Picayune. I loved working there so much that I fantasized about becoming one of the old guard one day, reminiscing with ink-stained editors at the neighborhood bar. I happily turned my attentions to being a forever journalist and forgot about writing the great American novel.

Until I left the paper, that is. I worked there for about seven years, and when I left and began freelancing as a business writer, the fiction bug returned. By this time, UNO was offering creative writing classes, and I took a couple. Thus began a long period of writing fiction on my own time while freelancing, then later working at jobs that often had nothing to do with writing, until I finally fulfilled a new dream: graduate school.

I earned my master’s in creative writing from Eastern Michigan University, after which I found myself rather miserable trying to complete the novel that was my graduate project. Back to journalism I went, nostalgic for the camaraderie of the newsroom, the delicious, worldly humor of journalists, the dream of recapturing a future as part of the old guard.

But as we all know — especially those of us who have actually worked in journalism — the future I once envisioned had evaporated. Newspaper reporting had become incredibly stressful, punishing work, and the writing was not joyful for me. I worked at two newspapers in Arkansas, where I live now, and both were much smaller than the Times-Picayune in its heyday. Newspapers everywhere were shrinking, and opportunities for fulfillment were vanishing. I found myself wanting to return to more joyful writing, both on and off the job.

During my last year at my last paper, I entered NaNoWriMo — National  Novel Writing Month — and wrote with abandon, as I hadn’t done in years. I chose a humorous storyline, with the working title “Ha!” to remind myself to have fun, and I wrote in madcap two-hour increments as fast as I could type. The experience jump-started my dormant creative side, reintroduced a spirit of joy in my writing, and helped me get through the waiting and watching for a job where I would be surrounded by people who were as smart and creative as journalists and perhaps a lot happier.

Today I work as the marketing editor at a university. I get to make my living doing what writers do to make a living. I’m surrounded by delightful, funny, smart, creative people. And I get to go home and write fiction, poetry, songs, movies, reviews, recipes … and a blog!

I have lots of ideas for future posts, but for now I’m working behind the curtain. I’ll be back soon!