I ask a few friends to eat leftover birthday cake on a cold afternoon. But my house is warm, or at least in the living room with the woodstove toasty and the sun streaming in and my two cats stretched out on the rug, appreciative of company.

While we talk, I remember that, a year ago, I was in a rotten funk, after another hospital stay, a chemo infusion delayed, and a growing fear-bordering-terror that I might never escape the cancer patient status. I did. Hallelujah—and again, hallelujah. In those sleepless nights, I read the New York Times, including a great deal of NYT cooking.

My parents taught me to cook, and I’ve been preparing meals my entire life, raised two kids on homemade bread, stirfrys, shepherd’s pie, focaccia with handfuls of herbs from my garden, but I couldn’t bake a cake worth the four-letter name. A year ago, I could eat about six things, including Saltines and hard-boiled egg yolks and broth. While my body was, actually, starving, I read about cooking, a variation of trapped in a tent on a polar exploration while a months-long storm raged.

It was clear to me that I couldn’t bake a cake because I didn’t follow the directions, but here I was, following to a precise T my oncologist’s directions, or as best I could. The upshot is that, weirdly, having cancer taught me to read the pesky directions and bake a decent cake. This does not translate to the whole of my life; I’ve saved my patience for writing and enduring long walks in the cold. But for baking the occasional cake? Read the directions, choose a decent recipe, and don’t rush.

“When it comes to most skills, failure is the only way to become better at something. Knitting teaches you that. You may have to unwind all of your stitches and start anew. That doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time. You learn from every stitch, even those that don’t amount to anything. All writers should be made to knit a hat before they start writing a novel. It would help with understanding the importance of revision, and that the process is what can bring you the most joy.”

~Alice Hoffman