Biscuits

I'm working my way through Ursula Le Guin's Steering the Craft, an oldie but goodie. I owned this and used it way back during my creative writing classes in college, but that was a long time ago, and I thought it would be good to revisit it as part of my writing journey.

The first chapter of the book discusses the sound of writing—the rhythm and melody we hear in our minds as we write and read. "A good writer, like a good reader, has a mind's ear," Le Guin says. The book's first exercise, called "Being Gorgeous," instructs:

Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that's meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect—any kind of sound effect you like—but NOT rhyme or meter.

The piece I wrote describes how my grandmother (decades before she was my grandmother) awoke each morning to make homemade biscuits from scratch for her family and their farmhands. Here's my draft:

Biscuits

In predawn she is the first to step into the dark and chilly kitchen, the first to extinguish the musty midnight and bring on the light. But she is not the only one awake here. Across the farm’s broad yard a lantern glows, casting shadows and wisps of gentle light around the close and cozy barn, where her husband and two oldest sons dutifully prepare for the morning milking. 

She won’t think now about the feather tick mattress and snug swaddle she unwound herself from minutes ago; can’t think about that when she has a dozen laboring fieldhands to bake for and the ceaseless daylight won’t stop coming at her fast. But she quietly envies her menfolk the serenity of a close and cozy candlelit stall, the motherly warmth of cows, the sweet mingling smells of hay and brand-new milk, the flanneled familiarity of each other. She by contrast prowls alone, her every movement outsized and echoing through this hard-surfaced room. 

She lifts the heavy tin from the shelf, the metal cold under her palms. By rote she scoops the pillowy flour into a glass bowl, each cup landing with a soft and unserious poof, sending up spirits of flour-smoke that swirl and waft away. From smaller canisters she adds teaspoons of baking powder and salt, freckling the mountain of flour with fresh snowfall. She pulls sticks of butter from the icebox; they are a jolly yellow but regimented in their fastidious rectangularity, formed as they were with uncompromising discipline in rigid copper molds with sharp edges that can slice a careless finger. With her dull knife she cleaves these into neat, even cubes, diminished but multiplied, then releases this tiny army to infiltrate the flour. She dives in after them with strong and weathered hands, sifts the soft and hard together through her fingers to create a raggedy bundle. She pours in milk, which settles the matter. The mountain caves to her flat wooden spoon.  

All her strength goes into lifting the unwieldy rolling pin and plowing the dough across the Formica surface of her work table. She leans down and forward onto the mass, pushes with her short, muscular arms but powers the work from her hips and pelvis, the center from which eight miraculous times her body willed new, bouncing life into the world. She shoves and pulls, maneuvers and caresses, entreats and supplicates, until the obstinate dough conforms to her master plan and carpets the worktop flawlessly. After pushing her thumb into the plump edges to smooth them, she efficiently sets about plugging the tin ring into the immaculate expanse, each cut satisfying and absolute. If she has calculated correctly—and she always calculates correctly—three dozen perfect rounds will form when she has finished her work. 

Twelve at a time, they will bask in the inferno of her wood-burning cook stove, blooming into biscuits: crisp on the top and bottom, flaky and soft in the middle, hearty and warm. They will circle the rim of her best blue and white platter, around a steaming bowl of pork gravy. They will be the center of attention, as they are every morning; eight ravenous men will eye and exclaim over them as they impatiently wash their hands in the mudroom sink. By nine-thirty, the biscuits will have vanished.

She will wash away their crumbs. Tomorrow, she will start again.