A little bit is more than nothing

All that talk of chocolate yesterday on the blog -- not to mention a near red-alert status when I was down to my last Reese's Peanut Butter Cup -- put me in the mood for brownies. Luckily, The Kiddo asked for candy and I could offer brownies instead, so that it appeared that it was all her idea.

Why, yes, I am devious that way.

What I am not is much for forethought, apparently. I opened my big box of Hershey's Cocoa to find a scant three tablespoons. That was a red alert situation all in and of itself, as it was very late in the evening, past time when the sidewalks are deflated and rolled up in My Neck of the Woods.

For a bare moment, I considered tossing in the towel and saying, "Whoops, Kiddo, no brownies tonight." But then I thought, Hmm, three tablespoons. That's half a brownie recipe's quota of chocolate. Maybe I could make half a batch of brownies."

I double-checked the recipe, and sure enough it called for two eggs -- which is good, because I've yet to figure out how you half an egg when you half a recipe. Are you supposed to put the whole egg in? Because it sure won't taste the same if you round DOWN.

But as I mentioned, the recipe fortunately skirted the whole half/whole egg issue (dadgummit, now I've got this image of half an egg in my head), and The Kiddo and I proceeded with our brownie making endeavor. To make sure that we had a pan small enough to hold half a batch of brownies, I suggested that we use her mini-cupcake pan she got for Christmas from The Sister. The Sister is a Good Cook (who would know how to half an egg), and she hopes her niece will turn out to be as well.

The brownies turned out loverly, if I do say so myself. Each one was bite-sized, with a crispy little crust around the top, with a sinkhole of chewy goodness in the middle. I could have eaten about a dozen of them all by myself, had the little suckers been unguarded.

As I enjoyed the small tastes of heaven (three, just three), I thought about how I give up sometimes on writing, when I don't think I have a block of time, say an hour, to give to the effort.

The brownies made me realize how foolish I am. True, fifteen or twenty minutes of writing or editing time won't be as productive as an hour would be. There's the two minutes while I wait for the computer to whir and gig, and the 30 seconds it takes me to find the document in question, and the two minutes I stare at that blasted blinking cursor, afraid that this time it WILL outlast me. (It's a phobia of mine.)

But fifteen or twenty minutes might get me a paragraph. And a paragraph is better than no words at all.

So how about you? Can you write or edit in concentrated bite-sized moments of time?