by Beth K. Vogt, @bethvogt
I’ve gotten hooked on a variety of TV baking shows.
This is surprising for several reasons.
- I’m gluten-free out of necessity and most of these bakers are concocting items I can’t indulge in.
- I don’t bake. I joke that I gave up cooking when my youngest child was born 19 years ago. Baking things like elaborate cupcakes and five-tier cakes was never part of my skillset.
Despite being a gluten-free non-baker, these shows fascinate me. How do people create culinary masterpieces under so much time pressure, not to mention the curveballs thrown in, such as being told to incorporate hot cocoa mix or fruitcake ingredients into their recipes halfway through the allotted time? I don’t even like planning dinner on a daily basis.
Here’s the other thing I’ve realized: These baking competitions teach vital life lessons applicable to anyone, including writers. Here’s a significant one I’ve seen play out time and time again:
Don’t quit.
It’s as simple and as profound as that.
Don’t quit.
I watched the finale of the most recent season of the Holiday Baking Championship with my daughter Amy. There were three finalists making cakes fashioned after wintery plaid blankets – yes, you read that right – competing for $25,000 and the title of champion.
When the winner was named, Amy reminded me that this woman had almost been eliminated in the very first episode. She’d also struggled throughout the entire competition. And yet, here she was, soaking her apron with happy tears because she’d won and was planning on using the prize money to plan her dream wedding.
This underdog scenario has happened over and over again on these baking shows. The contestant who struggles – who almost gets eliminated – fights back and wins.
I’ll admit there have been times I’ve been discouraged by how things are going in my writing life. Yes, I’ve been tempted to quit.
But then I’m encouraged by other writers who didn’t quit … even other bakers who didn’t quit.
Not to quit. It’s a choice we make, day by day.
Only by not quitting can we ever achieve any of our writing dreams.
- “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), American abolitionist
- “You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.” Babe Ruth (1895-1948), American professional baseball player
- “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist
Moments We Forget by Beth K. Vogt
Jillian Thatcher has spent most of her life playing the family peacemaker, caught in the middle between her driven, talented older sister and her younger, spotlight-stealing twin sisters. Then on the night of her engagement party, a cancer diagnosis threatens to once again steal her chance to shine.
Now, Jillian’s on the road to recovery after finally finishing chemo and radiation, but residual effects of the treatment keep her from reclaiming her life as she’d hoped. And just when her dreams might be falling into place, a life-altering revelation from her husband sends her reeling again.
Will Jillian ever achieve her own dreams, or will she always be “just Jillian,” the less-than Thatcher sister? Can she count on her sisters as she tries to step into a stronger place, or are they stuck in their childhood roles forever?
Beth K. Vogt
Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author and editor who said she’d never write fiction. She’s the wife of an Air Force family physician (now in solo practice) who said she’d never marry a doctor—or anyone in the military. She’s a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Now Beth believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” The Best We’ve Been, the final book in Beth’s Thatcher Sisters Series with Tyndale House Publishers, releases May 2020. Other books in the series include Things I Never Told You, which one the 2019 AWSA Award for Contemporary Novel of the Year, and Moments We Forget.
Beth is a 2016 Christy Award winner, a 2016 ACFW Carol Award winner, and a 2015 RITA® finalist. Her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. A November Bride was part of the Year of Wedding Series by Zondervan. Having authored nine contemporary romance novels or novellas, Beth believes there’s more to happily-ever-after than the fairy tales tell us.
An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International, Beth blogs for Learn How to Write a Novel and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers group and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.