Meeting Molly

I left class early (on the very first day, no less) to make the hour-long drive to Capitola to see Molly of Orangette read from her new book at the Capitola Book Cafe. I went because her blog is one of the handful I read fairly regularly. I also went because I was hoping to find inspiration. I wanted to meet someone who had started a blog and was writing about food and had managed to find her way to writing for magazines and then to writing a book. Kind of like what I hope to do.

Her writing is very real, and what I mean by that is that you can actually envision someone — an actual person — who is sitting down at her computer, thinking about the food she makes and writing it all down for others to read. Molly as a person is very real, too. Just a woman in jeans and a ponytail. Maybe she's the person who you walk by on your way to the mail box. Maybe she works down the street from you and takes the same bus. I know it sounds silly, but I always think of authors as super people, like they have special abilities that elevate them above all of us normal humans.

So it was inspirational to go and meet her, to have her tell me to keep writing and keep blogging. That even though I feel, as she described, "like I'm just shouting into an empty room," it's good practice to write about what interests me and to keep at it.

So here I am, writing. And having a fine time of it, too. Thanks, Molly.