After just one pottery class, I already have information that will affect the book I’m working on with a character who’s a potter. Last week, we were doing hand building, working without the wheel. We made bowls using molds and “slab clay,” a sheet of clay sent through a wringer-like device to flatten it out. Then we made vases using coils of clay.

One thing I learned was that this takes a lot of upper-body effort. I was more sore the next day from the pottery work than I was from the eight-mile hike I did later in the day. You’re bending over a work bench, so your back gets stiff if you aren’t careful. You have to “wedge” the clay to work out any air pockets and make sure the moisture is evenly distributed. It’s a lot like kneading bread, but the clay is much stiffer than bread dough, so it takes more force and strength. Then there’s a lot of control while doing the shaping.

I also learned that working with clay really dries out your hands. My hands were so rough and dry after the class. I had to keep slathering my hands with lotion the rest of the weekend. They finally started to get back to normal in the middle of the week. It looks like I’ve got a scene with Elwyn I can add, where she comes up with a balm for the potter to use.

I’m having to adjust the timeline of the book based on something else I’ve learned. It’s important to the plot that my potter makes a certain piece that has to be done before the end of the book, but pottery is a slow process. A piece has to be completely dry before it can go into the kiln, and that can take weeks, especially if the piece is thick. The pieces we make during this class won’t be fired until about 2-3 weeks after we made them. We’re doing the glazing in the last class, so they’ll have gone through a preliminary firing by then. If there’s any moisture in the clay when it goes into the kiln, it will boil and make the piece explode. Today’s kilns have some temperature controls, so they can raise the temperature gradually and reduce the risk of explosion, but I’m dealing with a wood or charcoal-fired kiln in the book, so there’s a lot less control. That means I had to find a way to insert at least a week into the timeline so that the item the character makes early in the book is ready by the time it’s needed.

I did learn from the instructor how clay can be recycled and revived, so my scenario of the person trained as a potter coming across an abandoned workshop and being able to use the clay that’s been dried out is viable (I told her what I was writing and gave her the specific scenario, and she told me how it would work). I have to play with the timeline a bit on that, but I found a way to do what was needed more rapidly.

This week, we’re working on the pottery wheel. I had a toy pottery wheel as a kid that used air-dry clay, and I never managed to make anything viable, so I’m a little anxious about how big of a disaster this can be. I keep telling myself that it’s about the process of learning and getting information and I don’t need to make a pro-level piece my first time. I just don’t want to send any clay flying across the room.