Now this--this is summer. Blue sky all the way across and warm enough to wear shorts. I am so grateful.
I think quiche works well in summer; it's relatively easy and light and quite tasty. I made this version on a Friday night, so it is meat-free, but you can fill it with just about anything.
Basic Quiche
1 recipe tart pastry (this looks similar to the one I used... I don't want to break copyright by posting Fannie Farmer's here)
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 bell pepper, any color, diced
A couple of tablespoons of diced onion
1 tbsp butter
about 1/4 cup cooking sherry
Garlic salt
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
Parmesan cheese, grated for topping
Saute the vegetables in the butter and sherry; season with garlic salt to taste. Drain for several minutes in a colander.
Press the tart pastry into a pie shell and put the vegetables on the bottom.
Mix the eggs and heavy cream and pour over the vegetables.
Sprinkle with grated Parmesan and bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower heat to 300 degrees and bake for half an hour more.
I used the Fannie Farmer cookbook to get the amount of eggs and cream and for the baking times. Fannie Farmer has never let me down yet. :) Enjoy!
Since Mr. Pond and I have been dialoguing, I've seen at least three articles on industry pro blogs challenging some common truisms:
1. One of Jessica Faust's clients, Erin Kellison (book due out this month), shares her experience of sticking to her own vision for the story, not letting even contest judges convince her to change what she believed was the right direction for her book. My favorite line, referencing the tension between her ideas and the suggestions given her: "I think this tug-of-war can be illuminating, but it can also be deadly to a manuscript."
3. Rachelle Gardner tells her readers that while she watches trends, she doesn't put a lot of stock in them. After all, as we know from Professors McGonagall and Firenze, not to mention the average weather report, predicting the future is an imprecise branch of magic. :)
Also, I read a book this week that broke some of the style rules that have been tormenting me, yet managed to get published just last year. It might have helped that its author or publisher somehow got Stephenie Meyer's endorsement on the front cover, but it still made me feel better.
In his last post, Mr Pond says: "As artists and as storytellers, we are called to break the structures of the surrounding world—even of our own industry—to challenge those truisms that everyone in our generation just accepts without thinking." I have mixed feelings about this. In my opinion, some truisms and structures really need challenging and shattering, and others need building up and strengthening. The trick, for me at least, is in knowing which is which.
However we may differ on the subject, Mr. Pond and I agree that rulebreaking is part of the artistic experience. If for no other reason, this is true because the rules don't always agree amongst themselves, and we writers have to do our best and hope to find agents and editors whose preferences are reasonably aligned with our own.
To add to the conundrum: In art as in life, the rules are layered. Even if we disagree on certain principles, most of us agree that there may be contradiction between the laws of a nation and the greater laws of right and wrong on which the earth and humanity are founded. In art, the laws may not have a moral basis (no one's life, liberty or pursuit of happiness is endangered by sentences that start with conjunctions and end with prepositions) but they are still layered. The publishing industry has rules, and storytelling itself has rules.
Setting aside the literary elite's attempted break with the traditional laws of art, which is another issue, the industry's rules may be—not necessarily arbitrary, but formed of inconsistent things like taste and trend. There's nothing wrong with that; the industry has to sell books to exist, and who knows better what will sell than those who make their living selling? Not usually the new author, whose emotional investment, self-interest, ignorance of the market and sheer closeness to the work can all affect his perceptions.
But art has rules, too, and I'm pretty sure that practically every publishing professional would say that the rules of telling a good story are vastly more important than whether you sometimes use one-sentence paragraphs or whether your book contains vampires. Stephenie Meyer broke rules of plotting, pacing, length and style, but whatever you think about Twilight, a book that sells that many copies is feeding a central human hunger (and probably a spiritual one.) She succeeded at the great end goal of storytelling.
Her success doesn't mean I can get away with breaking all the same rules; it just means that I can read her books and hope that whatever fed me is something that I can grow in myself and my own work, for the sake of feeding others. And if I succeed at that, I might get away with not being of the Hemingway school of sentence structure.
As to what storytelling's key rules are, I'm not sure anyone has explained better than George MacDonald in his short essay The Fantastic Imagination. And I'll quote him, because I am wholly with him in this sentiment: "If any strain of my 'broken music' make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain."
Coming up Wednesday, in response to another part of Mr. Pond's last post: one of my favorite rules to break, and the whys and hows thereof.
The third full revision of a novel is fun, but not quite as fun as the second. Most of the good parts get to be typed through without much touch-up, which leaves me spending the majority of my time struggling with all the hard parts. The first three chapters were the worst, I hope. I'm still not quite happy with them.
But I love being close to the story again, knowing the characters and feeling what they feel. Sometimes I just close my eyes and let myself walk through a scene in one character's head, trying to understand what they're sensing.
* * *
I am officially tired of renaming characters. With a couple of very important exceptions, almost everyone in my book has had at least one name change, sometimes two. Today I've wrestled with the fact that in my first drafts, one character didn't have a name--I referred to him as "the head of the council," which proved understandably annoying for the beta readers.
He has a name now, but giving it out too easily takes away from his mystique, the distance and authority of his character, and it doesn't work well with the proper forms of introduction and address. So I'm trying out different titles, and cannot seem to get used to any of the various possibilities. The one I like best causes some first-letter issues (too many capital P's on the page) but I'm tempted to let that slide or make it uncapsed. Hmm. At least it doesn't start with A.
* * *
Mr. Pond doesn't like my new word, but I've got to admit--well, first, that the word blog does sound like a horrible squelching noise in a swamp, but also that diablogue is kind of ugly. It sounds devilish, maybe because it has "diablo" in it. Mr. Pond's brother Eric suggests "blogalogue" for the advantage of assonance, which makes sense although I'm not sure I would have pulled the base word out of that just by looking. Which do you like better?
Either way, I hope to have another installment on Monday and you can read Mr. Pond's latest at the above link. I'm having fun with this; it gives me something to write about. Would you like to have a blog-conversation with A Light Inside? If you respond to one of my posts with a post of your own, and link it in the comments to the post you're responding to, I'll check it out and see if I can respond. Please, no hot-button politics, but anything else goes. I think. :)
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A lot of things have been written about being childless. This is one of the most beautiful I've ever found. I've never been much of a poet, but sometimes there need to be less words, not more, to express something.
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Most awesome line I've read this week: "Instead of drugs I just went to my “happy place,” which is currently the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando."--Jon Acuff. (Note: by drugs, he means novocaine.)
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Other best line, all over Twitter but coming to you courtesy of @theknightshift: "Twilight is like World Cup soccer. They run around for 2 hours, nobody scores, and a billion fans insist that 'you just don't understand.' "
Seriously, people, you just don't understand. :)
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Helpful line for writers: "The second best cure for writer’s block is other creative endeavors. Most writers I know are accomplished in other arts as well. I used to think it was “cheating” to draw or dance when I “should” be writing. Now I understand: The arts all nourish one another."--Jan Underwood
This is true. Music helps me a lot. And I'm not sure anyone can call my dancing "art", but after a long day of writing Thursday, I rocked out to Ministry of Magic for awhile. I'm pretty sure I pulled every muscle in the back of my right leg, but it was fun and it cleared my mind.
I clicked on this video simply because after a couple of weeks of seeing the word everywhere, I wanted to know what a vuvuzela was. Now I know.
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After all my complaining about the weather yesterday, and a morning cold and damp enough that I actually ran the heat, this afternoon the clouds have parted, the sun is out, and I took a walk and am now sitting with the door open. Life is good.
Happy Fourth of July, everybody, and enjoy the rest of the weekend too. America, I love you!
Well, that and the usual daily duties... and vacuuming... and complaining about the weather. The first of July, and it's raining? I could be okay with that if we'd had anything in the way of sunshine, but our nicest day this year might have barely scraped 74 degrees. Nothing will dry out, and I still have to sit under a blanket to stay warm in the living room. Please, God. We need summer.
Her head cocked up when she heard my voice. "Jessica, did you read A Midsummer Night's Dream?"
"Yes," I stammered.
"Well, you're apparently the only one in the class who did then. The other students think it's a play about Lysol-ander, Queen Hippo, and Puke."
Author: Janette Rallison
Mini-synopsis: Aspiring high-school actress Jessica wants to win her ex-boyfriend back -- until she winds up coaching Jordan, a famous actor's son, on the part of Romeo. Jordan doesn't want much to do with drama as his father spent too much time putting acting before family, and Jessica will have to decide whether she cares more for him or the stage.
Confession: I checked this book out a couple of weeks ago merely because author Janette Rallison's answer to Shannon Hale's question about morals in fiction made me want to cheer. Sometimes it's just nice to read something by someone whose presentation of their belief system isn't going to feel like a personal attack upon me and mine.
Every now and then I pick up a book just wanting fun and nothing else. (Being me, I tend to look in the YA and kids' lit departments--adults always seem to have to put a sting in there somewhere.) This one was successfully that: lighthearted, humorous, and very clean. It wasn't a deep read and it probably won't change my life in any grandiose ways, but it made me relax and feel cheery and sometimes that's good enough.
Tasty Tuesday is still on hiatus at City Wife, Country Life and will return next week. But if you really want a recipe, here is one that I have every intention of trying out soon. I love tzatziki.
I meant to try it out today with a beef roast, but at 3:30 I discovered that it takes more than 2 1/2 hours to get a beef roast slow-cooked to perfection. Then I found out that my cucumber was moldy anyway. Tonight we're having chicken instead of beef, and I'll have to wait on my tzatziki until I can hop over to the grocery and get a new cucumber.
[This post is part of a continued blog-conversation (diablogue? I love nonsensical new Internet words) that Mr. Pond and I have going on around the topic of writing and editing. I'm taking it a step further, and talking about reading.]
All publishing industry advice blogs contain one unifying piece of wisdom: Read widely in the genre in which you intend to write.
As arrogant as it feels to say so, it's a piece of advice that has always raised a warning in my mind. I'm not quite crazy enough to oppose the successful publishing world and call the truism false. It makes sense to be well acquainted with the sort of book, similar to my own, that gets published nowadays.
And I do read in my genres. I look for books that have been published in the last ten years, especially authors' debuts. I try to do so regularly--but I'm picky, and when hunting through the bookstore or the library, there are specific things I look for (authors whose names I recognize, strong narrative voice, and/or a story that immediately draws me in. Note: "immediately draws me in" is not the same as "kicks me in the face with a mean first sentence." The advice to write an attention-grabbing first line has helped to make opening novels in bookstores an exhausting experience.)
I'm picky, and therefore do not necessarily read widely. I admit new books into my life like an introvert admits new friends (and I should know): slowly, with careful consideration of the necessary commitment, and usually one at a time.
And there's one thing that seems to me at least as important as keeping current with the newly published. For myself, I consider it more important and feel compelled to give the majority of my reading time to it, even when--especially when--I am absorbed in the writing process. That one crucial need is to re-read, repeatedly and obsessively, the stories that have mattered the most to me.
If I become a published novelist, this will be my secret to success: that I've lost count of the number of times I've read Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, Austen's books, Narnia and That Hideous Strength, Little White Horse, and Speaker for the Dead. I've read them until I can almost play back whole sections of the text in my mind, till the worlds are my homes-away-from-home and the characters are my close friends and the authors' voices have irreversibly influenced my own.
My primary reason for prioritizing the Stories That Mattered Most is that those books did for me what I want mine to do for others. I believe that core magic to be more important than trends of subject or style--not out of a need to protest industry standards like 250,000 words is too long or to "believe in myself" or my book in disregard of my own writing weaknesses, but to devote my very limited time and energy to the thing that makes me want to write in the first place, that makes a book re-readable and therefore especially desirable.
I could also put it this way: I'm not just aiming at getting a spot on bookstore shelves. I'm aiming at Harry Potter. I'm aiming at Narnia. Don't get me wrong--no one can guarantee a bestseller, or even a seller. But what I can do, or at least, what I can do my very best to do, is write a book with a life and love that speak to the reader.
Reading from the new releases is wise from a business perspective, and I'm not under any poetic high that could cost me my understanding of writing for publication as a business. Likewise, as someone who hopes for success as a writer, I think it right to support other writers.
But I think it's of limited value. Most of what I need to know about current standards, I've gotten from helpful industry bloggers. Get plot and conflict on every page. Make your protagonist and your genre obvious immediately. Keep your manuscript in conventional word count ranges. All of that is important for giving my story the best possible chance of getting read. For how to tell the story, though, what I need to know most comes from the books I already love.
This subject just begs for its own post, but for now: If you were offended yesterday by my recommendation of a book that is obviously not clean, please go read the comment thread and feel free to add further thoughts or questions. Mr. Pond made some good points and in response I tried to explain how I got through John Green's book when revulsion stopped me fifteen pages into Lolita, and to clarify what I found worthwhile.
Do you live in or write about northwest Washington State? You might consider submitting to Loose Leaf Journal, the brain child of one of my good writing and editing friends/beta readers. Annie's ideas for the project are quite intriguing and I can't wait to see what it becomes.
When possible, the link is to a video of my favorite song from the band/artist. My favorite of the lot is probably Carrie Pazdziora, who reminds me of Norah Jones but with a clearer voice--there's not much I like more in music than a good soprano or mezzo with a high, pure tone.
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New favorite writing/artistic quote, courtesy of Marybeth Whalen: "A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God."--Sidney Sheldon
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As for writing, this has not been a good week--I've hardly looked at my book in days, allowing myself to get distracted by anything and everything. But while that's given me some frustration, in one sense it may be good. After the midnight battle with it last weekend, I think I just needed a break from it.
So I've read three books, and gotten some other work done, and decided at the last minute to go ahead and take CreateSpace up on their offer of a free proof copy for NaNoWriMo winners (while I have no intention of self-publishing this book, I'd at least like to see how CreateSpace does things.) The week hasn't been entirely unprofitable.
* * *
New favorite funny site: SoMuchPun.com. Of all I've seen so far, this one just might be my favorite. Or this one. Or ... aw, I can't choose. I laughed at a lot of them.
Later, I walked toward the dorm circle beside Alaska. The cicadas hummed their one-note song, just as they had at home in Florida. She turned to me as we made our way through the darkness and said, "When you're walking at night, do you ever get creeped out and even though it's silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?"
It seemed too secret and personal to admit to a virtual stranger, but I told her, "Yeah, totally."
For a moment, she was quiet. Then she grabbed my hand, whispered, "Run run run run run," and took off, pulling me behind her.
Author: John Green
Mini-synopsis: Miles Halter, having gone to boarding school looking for a Great Perhaps, wants but can never quite attain the wild and wildly attractive Alaska Young. In searching for the part of her that is more than "her genetic code and her life experiences and her relationships and the size and shape of her body" [quote edited for spoilers], he learns of failure and forgiveness and what it really means to know and to love.
Notes: All right, I'm going to get this out of the way.
I don't like disclaimers, but sometimes, what else can you do? This book is not for children; besides containing a fair amount of profanity, it is told from the perspective of a high school boy confronted with "the hottest girl in all of human history," and neither of them have the least notion of chastity. I skipped several pages, myself, because 1. I have a really clean mind, and 2. I like it that way, and 3. in a couple of places these teenagers were doing things I've never even done, even though I'm happily married, which amounts to 4. sometimes I just don't need to know.
That said, I read the rest of the book. I figured that it's a bit nonsensical of me to want to be a YA writer without having read John Green, and I'd looked into one of his books in a bookstore recently and been absolutely captivated from page 1 by the voice. Besides, having made it all the way through Catcher in the Rye--of which I only liked one paragraph--I thought I could handle Miles Halter's mind.
And I loved the book. I loved the characters--Miles, the Colonel, the Eagle, Takumi, and especially Alaska. I loved the World Religions teacher and his class and the final things Miles writes about and the bittersweet ending that I almost couldn't read because of the tears in my eyes. There is one line in the last few pages that I've never yet managed to read without my throat catching and my eyes welling up.
It is not a Christian book with a Christian solution to the "labyrinth of suffering," but the solutions were of the sort that I as a Christian could identify with, at least in part. As someone for whom agnostic sensibilities are likely to provide a lifetime of struggle, the thoughts were even helpful. And as someone who admittedly has a hard time letting go of either my own mistakes or others', the book also made me think about failure and forgiveness in meaningful ways. Sometimes, you just have to "love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart."
That might be telling you more about me than about the book--but I can't say much more about the book without giving out major spoilers. Or rather, major spoiler. On that topic, I knew going in what the "before" was counting down to, and I'm actually kind of glad I did. But as most people will probably want to remain spoiler-free, I'll go no further here. I won't say 'Read the book'--I know too many people who would be offended--but I will say the book is worth reading.
Today I intended to do up a Currently Reading post. I've read three books this week, and the one I planned to write about first made me laugh and it made me cry and it hurt to read and I really, really don't want to cheat the post by trying to write it between now (6:59) and 7:50, when I have to leave for book club. I will try to write it up for tomorrow.
In the mean time, the comments on my post at The Hog's Head contain some great thought and I responded to all of them with some of my own ideas this afternoon.
Also, Mr. Pond dialogues with Monday's post on his own blog, talking about the shadow of Hemingway and "respecting the language of music in the idiosyncrasy of voice." (Which would probably be my favorite line in the piece, except that he also said "Too much good advice is bad advice." I heartily concur. But please don't stop giving advice, O wise publishing people, because the wealth of information is ultimately far more positive than negative.)
One more thing: If you were looking for a recipe yesterday, I apologize! The hostess of Tasty Tuesdays, Farmer's City Wife, is too busy harvesting cherries to blog this week. And if you prayed for cherry harvest, thank you (and thank God!) It sounds like they're actually getting one.
Today's post went to The Hog's Head. I had originally intended to post it here, but decided it belonged at least as well there. Referencing Shannon Hale's aggregation of thoughts from various YA writers and M.T. Anderson's excellent essay, "On Ideology and Chickens with Blankets," I'm hoping for a good discussion on the relationship between morals/worldview/ideology and storytelling.
You're welcome to check it out and join the conversation at this link.
It might be time for me to take a break from reading some of the how-to writing blogs I read.
Don't get me wrong: those blogs are immensely helpful most of the time. I've learned a lot about what kinds of things are valued and what kinds of things drive agents and editors crazy, and I'm certainly not giving up reading the blogs entirely.
But the new tips that hit my Google Reader almost daily have me paralyzed over my first chapter. I've been over every line till it hurts to look any more, twisting, rewording, restructuring, trying to kill this or that potential problem. I'll think I've got a paragraph or a page or a scene in order, and a day or two later I'm back, fixing something else--and then if I give it a little space and come back, I'll notice that in my desperate attempts to alternate sentence structure within paragraphs and on the page as a whole, I've started five paragraphs in a row exactly the same way.
Among the positive feedback given me by my beta readers were comments on the strength of the story's voice. I don't want to lose that voice, especially not to over-scrupulous self-editing. How do I know it's over-scrupulous? I don't. But I'm the sort of person who can lose reason to obsession over detail--the sort of person to wind up on the verge of tears at 1 AM on a Saturday night, trying to rotate paragraph beginnings and number of commas, wondering how to cut any more conjunctions without sounding like Ernest Hemingway, no longer confident that the scenes and mood accomplish what they set out to do.
Getting published, as I understand it, requires skill and competitiveness roughly equivalent to Olympic-level sport. I'm a good writer, even--I believe--a good enough writer, but there are a lot of good enough writers and no guarantees for anyone. At some point, I've got to accept the fact that it is impossible to please all readers, even all professional readers (like agents and editors).
Am I still going to work on things like repetition issues? Of course. But there's a huge difference between controlling a character's tendency to half-smile at everything and counting the number of ands in every paragraph. I want that sane sense of balance where the goal of perfection doesn't degenerate into perfectionism.
Send me an email with your address, David, and I'll have the CD sent to you. You'll have to let me know how you like it.
To all of you, thanks so much for participating! This was A Light Inside's first giveaway, but I don't plan on it being the last. I loved hearing from you of your favorite music, and spent a fun half hour rummaging around YouTube and other corners of the internet turning up the artists I didn't already know. I must say, you all rock. :)
If you didn't win and still want to get a copy of Gurrumul's CD, it is available for sale on Amazon and elsewhere!
Happy weekend, everybody.
* In case anyone wonders: to keep from confusing myself in the counting, I went ahead and used 9 for the top number, figuring I could reconfigure it if it landed on 3. Which, in fact, it did the first time. Haha.
You've got less than 24 hours to enter for your chance to win some free music! Friday afternoon I'm coming with the random number generator and will announce the winner.
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Awhile back, agent Nathan Bransford asked about our "gap books": in his words, "those books that everyone in the world has read and talks about all the time and look we are really meaning to read them but we're all very busy and there are a lot of books to read and no one could possibly be expected to read them all and why do I have to defend myself aha;sldkjf;aj"
(For me: Moby Dick, anything by Kafka, The Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, The Lord of the Flies... okay, hopefully I've embarrassed myself enough now. I don't like depressing stuff--does that show?)
I reference this owing to a question in yesterday's comments that I couldn't resist making into a blog post; the answer attempted to become a full-fledged essay as I typed in the combox. It's the best question I've been asked all week. Here it is: "For someone who has never read Jane Austen, where do you recommend starting?"
To George (who generally puts me to shame in the reading department): I'm so glad these are your gap books, because now I get to answer this question!
Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and Emma are--in my opinion--Austen's strongest works, and I recommend beginning with one of those three. Persuasion is probably the easiest and most relatable read for a modern American, although if said American has read other English classics, this might not matter. It meanders less, clearly values intelligence and integrity over rank, celebrates some degree of informality, and combines vivid portrayals of setting and character with a strong pensive mood.
On the other hand, Pride and Prejudice is the most popular; for several good reasons, I think. It includes lifelike characters who undergo excellent personal and relational growth, loads of the sly social mockery for which Austen is renowned, and brilliant voice and wit. It makes me laugh every time I read it, sometimes at things I'd never noticed before. I started with this one, and I've got no regrets over that.
Emma is a solid, well-plotted tale with exquisite character development and a true hero. It's also one of J. K. Rowling's favorite books; according to Rowling, "The best twist ever in literature is in Jane Austen's Emma. To me she is the target of perfection at which we shoot in vain."
My suggestion, then, for George and anyone else meeting Jane for the first time, is to pick whichever of those three appeals most to you from the outside and start there. Afterward, however, if you decide you like Austen, I highly recommend Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility as well. The former moves slower than the others, but has a very pure-minded heroine, and with its strong themes of faith and virtue, I find it a refreshing read. The latter, with sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood as personifications of the title attributes, is a fascinating character study and moving tale, despite rambling a little (it was Austen's first published novel, after all.)
I liked Northanger Abbey, but its heroine is on the childish side and therefore not quite as relatable.
The short epistolary story Lady Susan portrays a truly awful woman, which is interesting, but I found it less engaging than any of the others and have read it only once.
I hope that helps! If any of you reading this have suggestions of your own, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I can talk Austen like Harry Potter--the fandom just isn't as well organized. (Maybe I should write some Austen-themed songs? A little pianoforte accompaniment would do, if only I would give myself the trouble of practicing...)
Have you entered for the music giveaway yet? The winner will be chosen Friday!
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I've no idea how many times and partial times I've read this book. A lot. And since I've already once done this book's quote/synopsis/notes thing as per my standard for Currently Reading posts, here I'll just add further notes.
This edition, with the cover shown, contains editorial notes by Linda Bree. Editorial notes can get in the way of the story when reading, but they've proved really handy this time in finding out which poems Austen pulled her random quotes from, who the heck Miss Larolles is (maybe I should go read Cecilia now), etc.
The story itself never gets old--beautiful writing, beautiful emotion, and it just might be the easiest of Austen's books to read. Lyme Regis and Bath come alive as settings, more so than Meryton or Highbury, and there are a number of very lovable characters.
Sometimes I think this book should have scored higher on my Fifty Favorite Books list (it came in at #8, as I have a lot of most-favorite books.) After all, I identify with Anne Elliot more than any other of Austen's heroines. I'm not as good as she is, and Elinor Dashwood makes a close second, but still.
I've made pizza a lot of times lately. I love homemade pizza like college boys love Domino's--and with olives and mushrooms and artichoke hearts and such things, it's healthy, too.
The best thing about this pizza crust is that it doesn't have to rise, meaning that if I forget to start dinner till 4:30, it's no big deal. I'll start it at 5 and take the pizza out of the oven at 6. That's hard to beat. It works perfectly well as thick or thin crust, and I usually split the difference and make it a medium.
It tastes good, too.
No-Rise Pizza Crust
1 pkg yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
2 1/2 cups flour
Stir the yeast, oil, and sugar into the warm water and let sit for a few minutes (here I usually ready all the toppings, grate the cheese, etc.) Mix the flour and salt well, add the yeast mixture, and stir till well blended. Press into an oiled pan, top as desired, and bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees.
Thanks to his very kind publicist, I have the chance to offer a free copy of his upcoming album to one happy winner!
The album is beautiful, mellow and sweet like the above song (which is one of the tracks); it's the sort of thing you can listen to with your eyes closed, put into your child's lullaby mix, or turn on during a dinner party. He sings mostly in Yolngu Matha, his native language, with a little English thrown in, and backs himself with guitar. And I just love his voice.
Want a copy of the CD? To enter the contest, leave me a comment on this post including:
your name or some kind of handle by which I can address you if you win (i.e., anything but "Anonymous"), and
the name of a band or musician you like to listen to. Because I'm curious. :)
You can enter multiple times; just make sure you've got the above information in each post, so I don't accidentally think you're spamming and disqualify you.
You have until Friday morning! Sometime that afternoon, I will go find a Random Number Generator and get it to pick a number between 1 and the number of comments. The winner will then have a few days to email me their address, so be prepared to check back in case you win. (Blogger doesn't give me your contact information.)
As a continuation of last week's saying no, I am forcing myself to walk away from online debates more often. About once every month or two, someone somewhere manages to write up something really awful and I find myself wanting to get in there and defend what I believe to be truth, or at least common sense. It usually derails my day, and sometimes my week.
But I realized the other day that none of us can correct all the wrongheadedness on the internet. I can't even promise to never be wrongheaded myself. But I can write a decent novel, and my time is generally much better spent doing that.
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As for novels, I have started revision again--a brand new draft in a brand new Word document. Right now I'm not setting a deadline, but I'd like to be submitting to agents in the fall. Might need to speed up, though--this first page has had me deadlocked for hours.
Maybe I'm doing something right? At any rate, I loved what Heath Gibson has to say in the linked article. He talks about wanting to write a great story instead of just a good one. I am with him on every word of that.
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So... Lou and I, having run out of comedic movies to watch, have taken to renting and watching seasons of The Office (again, not clean, but funny...) Michael Scott is incredibly painful to watch, but the Jim/Dwight rivalry makes up for it in hilarity. When it comes to Jim and Pam, though, I keep finding myself wanting to yell "ONE OF YOU PLEASE ASK THE OTHER ONE OUT YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY PRETENDING YOU DON'T LIKE EACH OTHER!!!" But I suppose it would have made bad television to start things out all happy for them.
What I really don't get about The Office is Angela. Seriously, I have lived my entire life around Christians. Almost all of my friends and even my coworkers have been Christians, and while I'm used to seeing horrible stereotypes from Hollywood that might bring to mind one or two religious people I've known, I can't think of anyone who she reminds me of.
* * *
To my delight, we've had two nights this week when the clouds backed off and let the stars come out. I found Antares the first night and wanted to go out where I could look for Saturn and Vega but--well, I'm afraid of the dark. (I have a good imagination. There could be anything in those shadows!) Lou came out with me the next night, and if my calculations were correct, we found Vega over the house.
I still haven't found the Pleiades, but they're in Taurus, which appears to be only up during sunlight this time of year. Maybe in the fall.
* * *
I'm in Victoria for a couple of days with my schola, so I'll stop writing now. For those of you who have any experience in graphic design or layout or text development or breaking the chain on email forwards, this made me laugh and laugh. Thanks to Travis for the link.
And if you find humor in Michael and Dwight and the others, there's always Bryan Allain's Exodus According to The Office (possibly blasphemous, but funny...)
Bravd and Weasel looked at the figure, now hopping across the road with one foot in a stirrup.
"Fire-raiser, is he?" said Bravd at last.
"No," said Rincewind. "Not precisely. Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All gods are bastards.' Got any food?"
Author: Terry Pratchett
Mini-synopsis: These are tales from a flat circular planet carried by four elephants on the back of a giant space turtle, and it only gets weirder from there.
Notes: I hadn't realized before picking up a Discworld book that the series is parody, but it didn't take me long to figure that out. From using 8 instead of 7 as the most magical number to making the protagonist an utter coward, from the gods playing something like chess with human lives to the inclusion of Death as a character (he talks in SMALL CAPS and likes card games--it's hilarious), the books are a twist on just about every known twistable feature of tales told.
Of course, parody isn't generally my thing. It doesn't let me suspend disbelief naturally. It took a little getting used to, then, despite the clever humor; also, it wasn't until part way through the second book that I realized I actually cared whether Rincewind (the main character) stuck around for future installments. He's such a heel in the first book. But once that connection hit me, I started really enjoying the story. After that it made me laugh a lot more... and now I just might go looking for book 3 one of these days.
The above quote had me snickering at random moments for days after I first read it.
Lately Anne Mini has been talking about one of my biggest problems as a writer. As I understand it, repetition leaps off the page and shouts in the face of a person trained to read for a living, and it doesn't bother me at all.
Until I see someone reusing whole phrases, or using the same descriptor multiple times in a paragraph, or overusing swear words--one may be an attention-grabbing slap, but curse-littered speech feels like a verbal fistfight--I'm not going to be offended by a few repeats. Consequently, my otherwise strict inner editor has to see a word many times before irritation begins to register.
In order to make myself catch the problems, then, I made a word cloud of my novel yesterday and then transformed the most-used words--excluding names--into capitals. There's nothing that annoys me more than unnecessary use of all caps (I make an exception for the super-fun band ALL CAPS); it's like having someone yell the word in a stream of quiet conversation. But even I can't miss the problem when I read a paragraph in which the word TOOK appears very loudly three times, none of them referring to hobbits or Canadian knit caps. Ack.
This is one of my favorite recipes. I promise, however, that when you take it out of the oven, it will not look like me.
Veggie Lasagna
2 cans tomato sauce
2 small zucchini, sliced
6-8 oz sliced mushrooms
Fresh spinach leaves
1 pkg lasagna noodles, uncooked
1 lb mozzarella or Monterey jack cheese, grated
Parmesan cheese for topping
1 lg or 2 sm containers of ricotta cheese
3 eggs
Basil, oregano, garlic powder, chili powder
Olive oil
Water
Put a little olive oil in a large skillet and add zucchini; cook till zucchini is nearly tender, add mushrooms, and cook a little longer. Add the tomato sauce and season to taste with basil, oregano, garlic powder and chili powder. Thin the sauce with about 1 1/2 cans of water (I just use a tomato sauce can).
Mix the ricotta cheese and eggs in a bowl until well blended.
Layer the lasagna in a 9x13 pan: a little sauce on the bottom, pasta, ricotta mixture, spinach leaves, mozzarella, sauce. Usually three complete layers will fill the pan. Pour as much leftover sauce as will fit over the top and finish with grated parmesan.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes or until noodles are tender when pierced. I recommend setting your 9x13 in a cookie sheet or on some foil as the sauce tends to boil over in the oven.
The vegetables can be varied according to your choice, and if you prefer meat, I make my meat lasagna the same way--just leaving out all the vegetables and browning a pound of Italian sausage for the sauce. That's also tasty. Of course, sausage, pasta, lots of cheese--that would be pretty hard to kill. :)
Keeping in mind the thoughts several of you gave me on my Sunday troubles a couple of weeks ago, for the last two Sundays I've made an effort to prioritize rest and yet allow creativity as it comes. I like the general concept. If the computer comes up, which happens when creativity strikes, it gets harder not to overdo--but that's just something I'll have to be careful of.
And now... after almost a month off thanks to essay, the time has come to revise my novel again. I'm doing a shorter version of my original novel revision process, focusing in on steps four, five, and six (all of which will be less thorough, since much less needs ripping up and replacing.) My new, short-form scene summary is nearly complete. I'm excited.
P.S. For those of you praying for Washington farmers, thank you! My cousin informs us that the cherry growers are still in business as of this afternoon; the forecasted rain has held off. They need another couple of weeks, so don't stop. :)
First off, if you're the praying sort, some of our family and other farmers on the east side of the Cascades need it. They're getting too much rain. The weeks of downpour here have attempted to drown my tomato plants and drive me bonkers, but over there the rain is actually threatening the cherry harvest, which is a lot of people's livelihood.
* * *
This year the Great Annual Memorial Day Street Hockey Game got rained into a covered playground again, but Lou and I joined the other players in the eleventh celebration of the event. I started attending the Bible study that became the G.A.M.D.S.H.G. back when I was nineteen (we started playing a couple years later) and now I'm thirty-two. People fly in for this--Joel set the record for distance traveled by coming from Korea this year. We bring the spouses and children acquired over those years.
Some of us are starting to feel our age on the asphalt rink, but almost everyone plays at least for awhile. Some things never get old.
* * *
I loved this post by Mike Duran on crafting a writing routine. Though I have more available time now, I remember what it was like to "carve writing time from the corners of exhaustion." And my routine-of-sorts still needs work.
Like Mr. Duran, I've also had to decide not to write the way Dean Koontz does. Props to Mr. Koontz, but I'd never finish a story his way. I needed NaNoWriMo.
* * *
I've theoretically taken the week off writing work. And by "theoretically" I mean I never pushed myself to work on actual story. I did, however, spend half of Thursday turning my brain into a frittering snarl over my query letter because inspiration hit and then ran away.
Right now I just can't wait to get good and going on the story again. I'll probably pull out my half-finished new scene summary tonight.
* * *
Of all the words that can be said, No is sometimes the hardest. I said it twice yesterday.
* * *
For your end-of-week cheer, I give you whoisthecutest.com. Also, in case you needed to know, there's always isithursday.org. Happy weekend!
... to Mr. Pond, regular commenter on this blog, who has gotten an original fairy tale published! The story is a sweet little piece, a short read, and if any of you readers like fairy tales, you should definitely check out that journal.
After several weeks of burying myself too deep in essay to get much else done, I'm back at The Hog's Head today posting about seeing fictional characters everywhere. That is something I do--seeing fictional characters around, I mean; sometimes they're even people from my own books. There's a toddling boy at church that looks so much like I'd imagine my main character's brother at that age that if I ever spoke to him it would require conscious thought to not call him the wrong name. And the Lily Evans I spotted recently was married to a guy who from the side looked a lot like another of my characters. I had a very hard time not staring.
Want to know who else I've seen? Click here to find out. And I'd love to hear if you have stories about fictional character sightings.
I hope all of you had an enjoyable day off from work, and for those of you who spent the day remembering someone you loved who died in war, my thoughts and prayers are with you and yours.
* * *
Tuesday means recipes, so here are two. The soup calls for taco seasoning, and I don't tend to keep that in stock around the house; besides, the seasoning is so easy to make that it's hardly worth buying the packets.
This might well be the easiest thing I ever make for dinner, not counting phone calls to Little Caesar's. :P
My variations on the soup: I use about a half-cup of Ranch dressing instead of the mix. Also, I usually cook it for about three hours on high, rather than six on low, but either way should work.
We usually chop corn chips into our bowls of soup and put grated cheddar cheese on top. That might be a little weird. Oh well. It tastes good.
If you're interested in the meaning of story and don't have some compelling reason to avoid Lost spoilers, you should totally read Travis Prinzi's post on the series finale. Having seen only about four episodes, I went ahead and read it, spoilers and all, and it nearly made me cry. My favorite part is what he said about happy endings--well, that or the part about the vindication of imagination and faith and spiritual reality, which was a lot of what Harry Potter did for me. Great stuff.
* * *
My friend and fellow writer Jana has begun a blog series about being single. It's the most real stuff on singleness I've ever read, and her posts lack the bitter taste that "being real" sometimes carries. The most recent, I'm Okay, Right?, is beautiful. How very well I remember that question.
* * *
Writers, do you know your perfect writing method? I prefer to focus on one project till it's done. My natural tendency is--once I get good and started on something--to resent leaving the computer even to get food, let alone to get the housecleaning done in a timely manner. That might not be exactly what that post was talking about, though.
* * *
I put that method to full use this morning with my essay. That piece has required a lot of my time in the last few days, but at this point I'm mostly happy with the first draft (as a first draft--I do want to give it some serious polish before it's set down for posterity.) My writers' group read the first few sections and gave me a lot of helpful feedback; Lou read all of it and upped my confidence significantly by telling me that almost all of my arguments made sense. Today has belonged mostly to fixing the parts that did not.
* * *
...of course, I got distracted around midafternoon by reading something on my late lunch break that talked about how critical agents and editors are of first pages. I had to go read the first scene of my novel, and got completely caught in a weird vacillation between "I love this, it's beautiful" and "This is awful--it doesn't give out enough information." Hmmm.
* * *
“If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars" (Arthur Hugh Clough). I should think of that now and then.
[Sorry, friends, about not blogging yesterday. Styling citations takes a lot longer than I thought it would ... or maybe it's just that I'm a writer and therefore I like quotes. Lots and lots of them.]
Alan Lastufka has vindicated all those of us who spend time reading our own words and listening to our own music. I've always felt a little weird about how much of that I do. After all, Chesterton said in the introduction to Orthodoxy that "there is in everything a fair division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it." Maybe that's how Chesterton was able to write so much.
But I've never been able to stop the compulsory returns to my own work. I have two reasons for this: first, it helps me improve my craft, and second, I write what I love and therefore tend to like the resulting product.
Regarding the first, I'll find myself listening to or re-reading what worked--songs where the harmonies and rhythms came together; places in a story where a character revealed part of his or her emotional depth, or where the plot got especially interesting. That strengthens my understanding of what parts are succeeding and what needs work.
As for the second, well--as Alan put it, "why would you bother investing that much time and energy and love into a product that you yourself don’t enjoy spending time with?" I love replaying songs where it seems to me that despite the weaknesses of my amateur performance, the music is actually beautiful and meaningful. Even more than that, I love my story. It draws from so much that I admire and adore: passion, peace, love, life, light and innocence. I love getting close to the people I wrote into being, reliving the moments that shaped them, that took them and sometimes even me by surprise, that made their story something I think I could share with the world and not feel ashamed.
Pardon the rhapsody! Perhaps you can sympathize through your own creations. Either way ... hopefully I'm not a total narcissist. Of course, I also re-read old blog-posts, usually just to make sure I didn't say anything stupid. You can make of that what you will.
P.S. While you're checking out Alan's blog, his latest CD--Erase This, with Luke Conard (vocals) and a lot of other gifted musicians--rocks. And it's not even techno. Or popera. :)
Mm, Tasty Tuesday. I even had a recipe picked out. But today I did all the week's laundry, made a double batch of lasagna, and wrote essay. That is all.
I finished the essay. And by "finished" I mean it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It looks a lot like a NaNoWriMo manuscript, though. Flow of thought? Patchwork. Section headings? Still the original outline. Citation style? Pffft. We won't talk about how many times I may have repeated myself. I don't know, and I don't intend to figure that out until tomorrow. But I do have a few days for polishing now, and the first draft is always by far my hardest.
Many thanks to those of you responding to my question about rest! I'll try and jump into the comments before bed. I've been enjoying the thoughts from afar.
As I wrote awhile back, days of rest are necessary. I believe pretty strongly in taking one per week, and commenter David (newmaldon) recently gave me a link to a guest post on Chip MacGregor's blog that reinforced that thought beautifully.
But I'm lately finding rest days a challenge. The problem comes on a Sunday afternoon, when I'm supposed to find something to do with myself. If a book has my attention, great. Sometimes Lou and I make it a home-date night, with a nice dinner and a movie or Scrabble; also great. But time to myself almost always means turning to the internet or writing, both of which I consider--to some extent--work. [The internet qualifies as work because participating in the great online conversation is, for an introvert and obsessive self-editor, something that requires a fair amount of effort.]
The writing side of my mind doesn't stop on Sundays, anyway. Creative process has no sense of reverence; it'll hit at church, right in the middle of the Eucharistic prayer if it gets the chance. It's also happy to really get going at 10 PM, making it ever so likely to drive away sleep. Hey, I'm not complaining--at least it comes to me. It's just ... like one of those people who, with the best intentions, always seem to call or arrive at an awkward time.
There's not much to be done about that (at least, I haven't come up with anything yet.) As for Sunday afternoons, maybe I just need to pull out my guitar more often. Somehow that hardly ever feels like work.
Most of you who come by this blog regularly are writers or artists/photographers or parents or otherwise busy people for whom "a day off" doesn't necessarily mean rest and relaxation. If you have thoughts on what making time to rest means for you, I'd love to hear them. :)
Thanks to a late night, my brain is pretty shot today, and if it can manage anything in the next couple of hours, it needs to work on essay. The last couple of sections still need writing--1500 words or so--and I might put a little time into it and then try and take the rest of the evening off.
Allow me to leave you for the weekend with something funny, something that will be understood by every writer, everyone who has ever worked in an office, and ... well, pretty much everyone who has ever used a printer. [Disclaimer: This is not quite squeaky clean. But it really is funny.]
According to the video notes on YouTube, this gentleman reversed the strings on a right-handed guitar so he could play it left-handed (as a left-hander, maybe I should've tried that when I was learning to play!) He's also blind. And while he's originally from Australia--the Galpu nation--he's touring America.
Wind and rain, go away! I want to stargaze. And start on my garden.
I think I post pictures of my plants the way some people do of their children.
You know those little $1 and $2 baby plants you can get in stores? I can never resist those. Anyway, my neighbors and I are about to start a joint raised-bed garden, and Haggen had these adorable mini herbs, and Wal-Mart had everything else. All told, the box holds a bell pepper, cucumbers, dill, savory, chives, orange balsam thyme, and regular thyme which I got on accident thinking I'd picked up oregano. Now I still have to get oregano. Oh well.
I've never been much of a gardener--or at least, never much of a shovel-wielder or a weeder--but I do love taking care of things. Sure, a plant is not quite a small dog or cat, let alone a small human, but give it a little tender care and it'll grow and love you back. :)
I think that to be true shepherd's pie, this recipe ought to use ground lamb. Ground beef is just so much more widely available here, though, not to mention cheaper; you could, of course, substitute lamb for beef as you choose.
Today's is a quick recipe, one I make--like spaghetti--when I want dinner in 45 minutes or less. (It's also one I thought I could write up quickly. I have got to get back to my essay.)
Easy Shepherd's Pie
1 lb ground beef
1 can green beans
2 cans mushroom soup
1/2 small/medium onion, chopped
Thyme
Garlic powder
Mashed potatoes, prepared however you like them
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Season the ground beef with thyme and garlic powder and brown over medium heat on stove. Add onions and continue cooking till the onions begin to turn clear.
Remove from heat and stir in mushroom soup (do not add water.) Drain the green beans and stir those into the beef and soup mixture.
Top with dollops of mashed potatoes and sprinkle cheese over everything. Bake about 15 minutes or until cheese and soup bubble.
Gratitude brought me into the Church and that gratitude grows, and the first word my heart will utter, when I face my God is "Thanks." And that goes, with the help of God, for the gift of free will even though it entails sin, evil, suffering and death.
Author: Dorothy Day
Synopsis: The author, a former Communist, addresses her brother with the story of her conversion to the Catholic faith.
Notes: This is a horribly un-PC thing to say, but my first emotional response to the words "social justice" is usually frustration. Not that I don't care about justice for the poor and the oppressed, not that I'm unwilling to work for it, but I feel like the words have been too often commandeered by political ideologies with which they have little in common.
Dorothy Day, however, set such a stunning example of love and compassion for suffering people that she got those words past me. She came out of Communism holding on to its right ideals--concern for human need--and renouncing its wrong ones, like violent means and hatred of religion. As a Christian, she did not try to find a platitude answer for the question of suffering, but worked to ease the pain of others.
Her story gave me a lot to think about. I'm interested to hear what my fellow book club girls have to say when we discuss it next week.
I am feeling grouchy today, owing to waking up with some of those nobody-likes-me-everybody-hates-me-guess-I'll-go-eat-worms dreams after a rough evening. Blech.
But ... it's still sunny. I have six tomato plants to care for instead of two now, and the original two are starting to look like they might live and be well again. Lou came home early from work, so I get a whole afternoon with him, and we're off to visit the godson & family and hit up two birthday parties on Saturday.
I made an investment in my writing career this week and bought Microsoft Word. (Of course, in order to do that I had to buy the whole Office package ... really, Microsoft? Why is Office Home & Student $117 on Amazon, and Word by itself is never cheaper than $230? I just don't understand.)
Open Office has been a great program, especially for freeware, but it was almost worth buying Word just to have curved single quotes that don't have to be added by means of regular expressions and don't break words. All over my manuscript file, "I'm" and "don't" and all other contractions and possessives have a curvy red underline. Maybe I should send their development team a suggestion.
The thing I miss most about Open Office is that it isn't quite so jumpy with the auto-correct. Also, I wish Google Docs worked with the .docx files.
Anyway, I've heard that Word is necessary for going back and forth with agents and editors, so I have it now--not that I used it today. We had warmth and sunshine, and I spent the day in a friend's garden. Sometimes the mind just needs a holiday.
Quick interjection for writers: Chip MacGregor's annual Bad Poetry competition is open for another couple of days, I think, if you want to join the fun. I haven't time to try and participate, but I did laugh till I cried at some of the entries.
* * *
The original of this recipe came through family friend Sharyn Sowell (who says she didn't originate the recipe either, but her blog is too neat to skip linking). I love it so much that I make it regularly, especially in the winter.
Of course, because I almost never actually use a recipe, I've tended to make this from memory, with the result that it never turns out exactly the same twice. It's great, though, in whatever form. This is one of those "make with what you have" kind of recipes, so I'll post the recipe in steps rather than the standard form. I've highlighted the ingredients; hopefully that helps.
Tortellini Soup
Chop about a pound of stew meat and put it on to boil in salted water. [Alternately, you can start with beef or chicken broth.] Throw in a couple of bay leaves.
Brown a pound of Italian sausage with a few cloves of minced garlic and, if you wish, a chopped onion.
Add the sausage, garlic and onion to the boiling beef and lower the heat to a simmering level.
Add a cup of red wine and a teaspoon of oregano.
About 20 minutes before serving, add any vegetables you wish: my usual minimum standards are quartered mushrooms and a can of green beans, but Sharyn's list of suggestions also includes zucchini, carrots, celery, bell peppers, canned tomatoes, canned kidney beans, and broccoli.
At around the same time (check package directions): add a package of tortellini or other pasta.
The result is tasty and hearty, and I serve it with the rest of the red wine and a loaf of French bread which we shamelessly dip in the broth. It is a great dish for company as the recipe makes a very large pot of soup, and in a pinch I've even made it in the crock-pot (brown the beef right in with the sausage until nearly done, turn the crock-pot on high when you add the vegetables, and allow a longer cooking time for the vegetables and pasta. You might want to add beef broth or boullion for stronger flavor, but I didn't.) Enjoy!
Awhile back, I ordered a veggie lasagna at a great little Italian restaurant. The guy behind the counter said "You look like a veggie lasagna."
Last night, our schola director brought chocolate bars for all the members--lovely treat, and we were all grateful. He let us pick which ones we wanted, and I took milk chocolate. I like milk chocolate. I don't mean to have bad taste, I just like the flavor. He said "I can see the personality coming out here."
... seriously, guys?
If you think I'm bland, it's only because you've never attempted to really cross me. Ha. :D
* * *
In other news, I've looked back over my blog posts this week and realized that I've talked about myself a lot (yeah, I know I just did it again.) To make up for that, here are some things that you might find interesting or helpful or humorous. At least, I did....
Normally I hate things that open up in pdf, but I loved loved loved Stratford Caldecott's piece on children's fantasy literature, Landscapes with Dragons and Angels, which John Granger linked awhile back. It's worth dealing with the frustrating format. In fact, I just read the whole thing again in outright defiance of other demands upon my time.
For all my writing friends, Rachelle Gardner is asking what we've given up to pursue our dreams. Reading her post and the comments is a great way to realize that you're not alone in your insanity. I haven't commented yet, but I would have to say that my sacrifices currently include all television and most movies, a lot of sleep, any kind of regular relaxation, and trying to pretend I'm not an introvert.
Tyler Stanton has been making me laugh all week. Among my favorites: Electronic Laughter: A Definitive Guide (although I've got enough teenage girl in me that it's really hard to stop myself from responding to funny stuff with "ahahahahaha! xD") and the Hate List. "If I made gift baskets for my enemies, I'd fill them with Mounds, Almond Joys and Zero Bars." Ahahahaha. xD
This also made me laugh. Classify yourself! I'm either a nerd or a dork. How about you?
* * *
I'm going to go clean house and enjoy some of the beautiful and very welcome sunshine before getting back to work. Have a happy weekend, everyone!
That's me, pretending to be very hard at work. If you look closely into the picture, you can see the parsley hanging upside down on our refrigerator. Hopefully you can't see the cord spaghetti in the study, though. :)
I have a writing project to finish, due the end of May, and there's no way I'll be able to put my novel aside until the other project is complete.
This means that I need to cut back on Internet time. Blogging can't take more than half an hour or so per piece. Twitter needs to be something that I click into only on breaks and only long enough to scan the feed and perhaps tweet or retweet something. Google Reader needs similar treatment. This is where social media and the writer can really get into trouble: as good as Twitter and Facebook and Blogger are, they can't take the place of actually writing the things I most need to write.
But I am going to try not to disappear.
For the next little while, my writing time gets divided into two segments: one for essay, and one to be shared between novel and blog. Much like Lent, I'm allowing myself no Internet for non-research purposes during work hours. There's plenty of time on lunch and breaks.
... oh, and I'm supposed to be learning new polyphony pieces, too. Eek.
If I miss blogging a few days between here and the end of May, I'm sorry. And if I forget something I should have said or done, or someplace I was supposed to show up, or my own name ... forgive me!
The huckleberry pie turned out tasty, if a little soupy, and my beta readers stayed till 9:30 talking over the tale. I took three and a half pages of notes. Then I stayed up until 3 AM thinking over what they said, and naturally I can't concentrate upon much else today. The new ideas have kept my mind busy separating concepts into categories and plans.
Having people read and give critical feedback on any work that you put this much effort into is an emotional experience, and no two ways about it. As important as the input is, it's hard to listen to others' opinions on it, knowing that at any moment someone could challenge your own vision for the story. I knew I'd be a little overwhelmed by the end, and I was, but it was both necessary and worthwhile.
Short of hiring actual professional editors, I probably had the best beta readers imaginable for my kind of novel. They're four intelligent, gifted writers who read a lot and all have at least some familiarity with the children's/young adult and fantasy genres. Each of them brought a unique perspective that I found helpful.
They drew my attention to several holes that I could immediately respond to with "Oh, duh" because the sense was so obvious it could only have been missed by the cross-eyed stare of a writer absorbed in her own work. Other points of criticism are really making me think. They also brought up excellent suggestions that I never would have thought about, that gave me a new understanding of different aspects of the story--a kick-start to the creative process; I'm always startled by the new ideas that readers have for expanding upon the details. Of course, the single biggest criticism was "Not enough detail"; apparently I'm a little over-the-top with the "unexplained vistas" thing. :P
I'm looking forward to playing with their ideas, strengthening the weaker sections and giving the mythology more depth. And the fact that all of them said they liked or loved the story itself--its heart, its concept, plot and characters, themes and voice--gave me encouragement to make the further revisions.
Many, many thanks to beta readers Annie, Jana, Katrina, and Heather; also to alpha readers Mom, Beth, and Briana. Also to my first reader, Lou. And by thanks, I mean: seriously, you people are wonderful and I can't tell you what it meant to me to have you care enough about my little book to talk it over with me the way you did.
My beta readers arrive at 6:30 tonight to discuss my novel and cash in on the huckleberry pie promise I made. I'd post the recipe for Tasty Tuesday, but I'm following Betty Crocker for the filling and Fannie Farmer for the crust and those might have copyright restrictions. Also, I'm short on time.
If agents are going to see this book, I want it as perfect as I can make it from one end to the other. Therefore, I am looking forward to the feedback, even the criticism. But I can't quite keep down the nerves. How much will need changing? What places failed to hold their interest, or challenged their suspension of disbelief? If they had been agents hunting for a book worth selling, would the first five pages have caught their attention? Was anything awkward or confusing or unsatisfactory or cliche? Would they want to re-read the book, or wish for a sequel?
I'll find out tonight. In the mean time, I'm going to go make a pie.
Last Saturday the sun came out, after several weeks of rarely-broken spring rain. I borrowed a shovel from my in-laws, turned up some sod alongside the house--I haven't turned sod in years, it was harder than I remembered--and very carefully planted my two flopping tomato plants, both of which had well outgrown their pots.
Then we got a rainstorm with a lot of wind. And of all things, there's no gutter on that section of roof. Did I check that? Nope. It didn't even occur to me to look.
Now I feel guilty. Poor little things ... I'm not sure what to do for them except pray for sunshine. A couple of warm sunny days would make them all better.
12:02 AM. Oops. I did hope to get my Friday post up before midnight.... hello, Saturday!
Quick note: The other day I gave in at last and put up the Google Followers widget. It's in the sidebar, so if you want to be my Google Friend, feel free!
I've had a completely distracting day, but a fun one. This morning, after working on an essay project for awhile, I decided to time myself at getting through Google Reader and Twitter and all my email. Social media is drowning me a little; I've got to figure out a way to manage it. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong morning; email and Twitter direct messages kept me working well past noon and then I discovered a bit of a problem with one of my Myspaces. Fixing that got halted in the middle for a coffee date with my sister, and upon returning I had to clean house and make dinner, so I put on some wrock and got busy. Or, at least, mostly busy--I kept putting down the housework long enough to belt out the chorus to The Butterbeer Experience's song for the Whomping Willow or harmonize with Zoe from Split Seven Ways on a Marauders-era piece.
Then, after dinner, Lou and I walked up to WWU and saw Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. It's a lot of fun seeing a show in your own town because you actually know people on the stage. A friend from church sang in the chorale and Chris from the WWU Harry Potter Club was in the university choir and one of our former coworkers played French horn in the orchestra. The performance was absolutely splendid, and then Lou and I had a beautiful walk home in the rain. Afterward we drove up to Wendy's and got Frosties and ... then it was nearly midnight, and here I am half an hour later, rambling off a sugar buzz.
Ah well. After a week of focused writing about revising novels, my Friday post was bound to be a bit rambly and useless, right? Oh wait, it's Saturday. Maybe I should go to bed.
Now this--this is summer. Blue sky all the way across and warm enough to wear shorts. I am so grateful.
