Summer Writing Goals

Well, hello, again! This last semester was kind of an intense one. And next spring semester is going to be as well, with my internship and all (unless something goes horribly wrong). I tend to fall into some pretty bad writing habits in times like this, which is why I haven’t been doing much fun writing for the entire time I’ve been in grad school. However! This summer and next fall, I’m only looking at one three-credit class each. So that opens up some possibilities.

As we all know, Jill doesn’t do nothin’ unless she has a goal and a consequence. So I thought this might be a good moment to take a look at what I’ve got coming up and make some realistic goals. I’ll be traveling this summer, which will definitely complicate things, but I really think I’ll be able to get some writing in before work starts again in the fall. Let’s figure out how that might look.

First off, I want a redo on Camp NaNoWriMo. I’m not yet totally sure that I can manage that, since I will be out of the country in July, but I want to try. What I might do is string the re-read part of it out in June and then lower my editing expectations for the month of July. But I do want to get myself through this revision of Sweets that is a bit overdue, and I think I can manage it this summer. In some form. I’m still making decisions on this one.

Overall, though, I just want to focus on more regular writing habits. I’ve gotten preeeetty sloppy lately—including here on the blog—and it’s shown in my absolutely dismal output of absolutely no stories so far this year. Not even a short. I can do better than that.

Now in the midst of all these big plans, it may be time for a little health check in. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last few months with various medical professionals, trying to keep my joints from disintegrating quite so quickly. It’s been… kind of a mixed bag, really. The physical therapy has definitely helped with some things. My shoulders are relatively solid right now, as well as my hips, knees, and ankles. The ribs are honestly about the same as before, despite all the work, which is frustrating. And my hands and wrists are currently in the quickest decline, followed closely by—terrifyingly—my neck. Trash hands makes it tricky to really commit to high word output stories, but I am working right now to find ways to strengthen things up so that I can hopefully get back to that point by November. (I mean, I’ll take good hands as quickly and as long as possible, but having November as a time-bound makes things easier for my goal-oriented brain.) So that’s kind of where I’m at right now.

With that in mind, I think committing to weekly goals rather than daily goals gives me the flexibility to fudge the bad days and make up on the good days. I’ll have three writing activities I want to be working on each week:

Schoolwork This is going to vary week to week, and I have no way of knowing what the workload is going to be like week to week, but I am guessing about 3-5 hours per week. However much time it takes, this is top priority. If I have to bump back graduation by a year because I didn’t do my homework, I will scream.

Blog No surprises here. Each week, I want to have a 750-1k word blog (or a comic) up on the site Monday or Tuesday. As we’ve seen recently, that isn’t aways possible, but I want to renew my vows to that because it’s important to me and the accountability keeps me going.

Fiction This might be writing or editing, depending on where I am and what month it is. When in writing mode, I think around 5k per week is a small but manageable goal that I can get behind. And when in editing mode, about 2-3 hours of editing per week seems doable.

Nothing fancy, nothing heroic. I just need to get into habits of plodding forward and making progress, even if it’s a little bit slower than I have historically managed. I tend to beat myself up for not being at the peak levels of bygone eras, but my reality is that I will probably never reach peak levels of anything ever again that requires the use of any joints. And I just need to be okay with that. I was doing my best way back when. As long as I continue to be doing my best, whatever that looks like, I can be just as proud of myself. (I say that now; we’ll see if it sticks.)

As for consequences… I haven’t really decided yet! But I do want to keep it positive, since I’ve got some pretty big extenuating circumstances that aren’t exactly in my control. So I’ll probably mull it over, chat abotu it with friends and hubby, see what I come up with. If it isn’t totally boring, I’ll share with the group, haha.

So until next week, happy writing!

Microbe Farts Sourdough Recipe

I don’t really bake much in the summer. It’s hot outside, and I’m busy, and I don’t want to be running my oven, and I’d really rather be eating a bazillion salads instead. There are a hundred reasons why baking is too hard in the summer.

But then autumn rolls around. The birch leaves yellow, the nights get cold, the honeybees hunker down in their hive, and I start baking again. (And then, apparently, the snow immediately blankets the earth and the trees all go, “what the heck, man” and there’s a confused sloughing of leaves and everybody scrambles for snowpants while peering anxiously at the sky and nobody knows what season it is anymore. [It came early this year, right? I’m not crazy?])

But baking! Right! We’re talking about baking!

I have about a hundred thousand writing projects, but one of them is a creative nonfiction picture book for kids called Microbe Farts: The Weird World of Fermentation. In it, a boy named Liam explores fermentation with his mom as they nurse a little microbe colony from sourdough starter to levain to loaf.

And in case you were wanting to do that, too, I give you a recipe! Since I assume most of my blog followers are adults, this version of the recipe is written for you in all your mature glory, but it definitely tastes best when an immature, smallish human is helping. (Scientific fact, seriously!) Also, the recipe calls for an already established starter, but there are  p l e n t y  of tutorials on how to do that if you don’t have access to a starter.

Also, also, lot of sourdough recipes call for specialized equipment like kitchen scales, Dutch ovens, Banneton baskets, lame knives, etc. If you have those things, excellent! You probably also know how to use them. This recipe is adapted for folks who don’t have those things and don’t know how to use them. The process is less precise, and therefore the results more variable, but it’s a good recipe for people not yet ready to invest in those items.

Enjoy!

1/4 c starter (stir bubbles out before measuring)

2 1/2 c warm water

2 tsp salt

5 c whole wheat flour (for a lighter loaf, try 2 c whole wheat bread and 4 c white flour)

Combine starter and water. (Then feed the rest of your starter for next time and put it away.) Add five cups of flour and salt, changing from spoon to hand once the dough becomes too stiff to stir. Scoop your hand down between the side of the bowl and the dough and grab a big handful of dough, pulling it up and folding it over on top of itself. Be careful not to tear the dough. Squish it all down together and then turn the bowl slightly and repeat. (Sprinkle in additional flour as needed until the dough comes away from the side of the bowl as a single unit. Alternatively, sprinkle in a few tablespoons of water at a time if the dough is too dry to stay together.) Knead for ten minutes and then allow the dough to rest while you prepare for the next step.

Grease a bowl or container that is large enough for the dough to double in size. Dust flour on tabletop or other clean flat surface. Dump the dough out onto the floured surface and knead it until smooth and uniform in texture. Place the dough in the greased bowl and cover with an inverted plate. Set your covered dough on the countertop to raise for 6-12 hours.

After 6-12 hours, dust your working surface with flour and dump the dough onto it. Using a serrated knife, cut the dough in half and set aside. Grease two loaf pans. (These loaves can also be baked as artisan loaves on a baking stone or cookie sheet.) Shape each loaf and set in the pan to raise in a warm place for another 2 to 2 1/2 hours or until doubled in size.

Twenty minutes before baking, slash each loaf about a quarter inch deep. Place oven racks in the oven, one on the lowermost level and the other in the middle. Place a heavy, oven-safe pan on the bottom rack and preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Set a small pan of water to boil. Just before putting the loaves in the oven, pour boiling water into the heavy pan on the bottom rack of the oven to create steam, place the loaves on the upper rack, and close the oven door. (Steam is especially important if you are making artisan loaves.) Bake for 25 minutes until well browned and bread sounds hollow when tapped. (You can check it with a thermometer as well. The internal temperature should read 190 degrees.)

Remove the loaves from the pans and, to allow the center of the loaf to finish cooking, allow the loaf to rest for at least fifteen minutes before cutting.

Fairy Tale Retellings (and Why I Cannot Stop Writing Them)

I keep doing this. I keep reading creepy old fairy tales and then completely warping them in my head so that they are somehow more horrible than ever before. But also awesome? I hope?

I have now written:

Blood and Ebony, a Snow White retelling, but Snow White is the bad guy and the stepmother is the hero trying to save the kingdom from a fae plot (but she kind of gets her foot cooked off in the process);

A Cinder’s Tale, a Cinderella retelling, but Cinderella is a veteran explosives expert on the lam who crashes a party mainly for the pastries but stays for the coup d’état plotting (at least until she kinda accidentally sets the palace on fire [just kidding—it was totally intentional);

Sacrifice, a Little Mermaid retelling, but the prince is a sacrificial priest and the rest of the clergy (and the little mermaid’s family) are trying to kill them both and the mermaid is having some serious culture shock the entire time but at least the food is good;

And Anathema, a Bluebeard retelling, but the unlucky oldest sister is the hapless hero determined to break the centuries old curse on her family and defeat the wizard that her dumb little sister married (and there is a rabbit who may or may not be magical, nobody is sure.).

There is no end to these in sight. I keep reading more stories and thinking of more ways to weird them out and someone please help me I cannot stop. Not that I want to stop. I just would like to be able to at least pretend that I could if I wanted to.

Fairy tale retellings are not a new thing. And I would argue that they will never really be an old thing either. As a group, fairy tale retellings are some of the most highly versatile chimeras in the literary world. Their adaptability is what makes them so evergreen. They never get old because they are constantly changing. This adaptability really shines in at least four ways:

Genre Flexibility Fairy tale retellings are kind of their own category, but they can pop up in any genre imaginable. Just think of Cinderella. I’ve seen Cinderella retellings written as everything from high fantasy to contemporary thrillers to sci-fi dystopias. These old stories are endlessly morphable in the molds they can fit into.

Constant Modernization Just like their genre flexibility, retellings have the benefit of constant updates to match the stories we and our grannies grew up with to broader societal changes. Because your children are not your punching bags and sexism is just less cool than it used to be. This means that deeply uncomfortable stories glorifying truly horrible things don’t have to quietly slide into the Never Touch This Again list, but can morph so completely that they can openly defy and reject those nasty elements. Fairy tales are usually meant to teach us a lesson. Updating the lessons is just part of the territory.

Boundless Wiggle Room Fairy tale characters and settings tend to be super flat in the originals. Not a whole lot of personality. And that makes them regular contortionists for rewrites. Characters can morph into anyone with an endless array of possible motivations and backgrounds. Likewise, as much as we all love a good castle in the woods, why not turn that castle into a spaceport junk yard? Or a high-end red light district? Or the nation’s Capital building? Or a labyrinthine riverside market? Or a condemned meat packing factory? Such charm and fun!

The Element of Surprise One of the mostest funnest things about fairy tale retellings is how instantly recognizable they are. Just a few key elements are all it takes for readers to know what this is all about. Which is what makes it so easy to yank the rug out from under them. But it’s okay! Readers expect this rug-yankery. In fact, they’ll probably be more upset if it doesn’t happen. Retellings aren’t blow-by-blow hash-outs of the stories we already know; that’s just a telling. And that. is. BORING. Retellings step out in bold new directions—with the occasional knowing nod to the originals.

So, yeah, I don’t think I’ll quite writing fairy tale retellings any time soon. In fact, I’m currently planning on yet another one, a Hansel and Gretel retelling called Sweets, to be first drafted in next month’s Camp NaNo. As quickly as that’s coming up, I should probably get to work on outlining this thing, huh? *gulps*

How about you readers? What do you think about fairy tale retellings? What do they do well, and what annoys you about them? Do you write retellings? Tell me all about it in the comments below!

And until next week, happy writing!

An Audience of One

A few months ago, I was reading CM Schofield’s awesome blog and one of their posts, A Waffle About Anxiety and Pitches, caught my attention. They wrote about Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which is one of my head monsters too, and they pitched a novel (*chortles*) idea for dealing with it: writing a fun story just for yourself, without the intention of eventually cleaning it up and showing it to other people. They called the umbrella those stories fell under the “fluff folder”, which is adorable.

I’ve always written with the intention for there to be an audience of more than just me. Sometimes, I would decide after the fact that it wasn’t going to work out. Usually, I’d get a good chunk of the way through, or just power through the entire story, and then decide afterward that it wasn’t marketable, or figure the plot was nonexistant, or realize I was a white middle class American female writing about not one of those things, or find some other issue that was too profound for me to simply ‘fix’. It was disappointing, but oh well. You move on. But I have never tried writing without a broader audience from the outset.

Writing is widely recognized for its therapeutic properties. Whether it’s journaling, or dream recording, or even jotting to-do lists, I’ve always felt like any kind of writing helps to ground me and steady me out when I’m feeling off the wall in one way or another. And fiction writing helps too—who doesn’t love revenge-writing a dastardly backstabbing or an epic fight scene that leaves your character coughing blood? (Oh, is that just me? Um.) But you know what doesn’t help my anxiety? Pitching. Querying. Anything of this nature. Submissions are my crucible of the soul and I am yet to come out of a round of subs without feeling like I’ve just had a piece of my heart excised and my chest put back together by a bear with an industrial staple gun. I imagine that, even if I do ever manage to get published, getting a steaming pile of lackluster sales would feel pretty similar. Opening up something you’ve worked so hard on for so long to the world—and then getting a whole lot of stony silence in return—just aches.

So what would happen if I just… didn’t do that bit? Just skipped the whole anyone-else-ever-might-see-this-some-day part?

My mental health has been pretty fragile over the last year. I’m on the mend (fingers crossed!) but still not in great shape. So I figure, why not? I still keep my massive Ideas List and quite a few of those stories are… questionable, at best. A new session of Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up in July, so I think I might sort some of the wackiest story ideas into my own Fluff Folder and have a crack at one of them next month. And I have a new story idea about a desperate young man going into a magic-steeped human remains market looking to make a deal that just might fit the too-wacky-to-share bill.

How about you fine readers? Do you ever write just for you, or is there always a wider audience in mind? Have you ever had a story swing camps—switching from marketable to private, or from the fluff folder to the great wide world? Let me know in the comments below!

And until next week, happy writing!

PS- Don’t forget to check out CM Schofield’s blog for art, stories, and the progress of an in-the-trenches writer! Do iiiiit!

Packing for Camp (NaNoWriMo)

As mentioned earlier, April marks another month of Camp NaNoWriMo, and I’m not feeling super ready for it. A week and a half isn’t a lot of time for a 50k word race to the finish line and I’m starting to sweat a little bit. I only just settled on a project two days ago and, while it’s a second draft so I already have some groundwork there, I’m not at all confident that makes me any more ready. I haven’t read the thing since I finished the first draft years ago. I honestly couldn’t even remember the main characters’ names until I went back and read my description from the NaNo session wherein I wrote the first draft. It’s, uh… it’s been a while. So I have no clue what needs working on and no idea how to go about that work.

Sounds like a normal NaNo month for me, right?

I’m really not alone in this position, I’m sure. Writers—especially the ones that willingly do these madcap month-long stress-bombs—generally fall into three camps along the writer spectrum.

Plotters have got it all planned out. They have the timelines of important events, the world encyclopedias detailing the minutiae of the natural, social, and political climates, the comprehensive character profiles with everything from childhood traumas to eye colors to favorite breakfast foods. This is all on top of a color-coded blow-by-blow diagram of all the events within the story undertaken by every single character. I’ve approached drafts like this before, and it is so nice having it all planned out. But I was also tragically born with the brain of a squirrel. In addition to an unreasonable love of almonds, I also have basically no attention span. Once I know the story’s end, I lose interest. (This is probably also what makes editing so hard for me.) Also, my stories have a tendency to wander from the nice, neat water channels I’ve crafted for them and flow all over the countryside. So straight plotting doesn’t work the best for me.

Pantsers don’t go in for all that preparing business. Booooring! It’s way more interesting to dive into a project with absolutely no idea where it’s going. Imagine a vacation where you go to the airport and jump on the first flight you stumble across without even looking at the destination. Fun, right?? Buuut it’s hard to know what to pack. Or what language to study. Etc. True pantsing can be really fun, but it’s also risky and you’re basically guaranteeing yourself a ton of editing on the back end. I’ve had stories that I dove into with no idea where they were going, only to discover that they were going absolutely nowhere. And when you’re on a timeline, whether your deadlines are externally mandated or self-imposed, not knowing where the story is heading can be pretty stressful. Pantsing can be great, but again, I don’t cleanly fall into this category either.

Plantsers are the hybridized Frankenstein monsters of the writing world and I am definitely one of them. I’d wager that most writers are, falling somewhere between the two extremes of pure plotters and absolute pantsers. Plantsers take the best of both worlds and weld them together into their own janky story tanks to plow through the project in.

When I’m planning a totally new project, I usually give myself a rough outline, with a little more detail toward the start of things, but neglect to fill in the last couple chapters at all. This gives me the freedom to let the conclusion evolve more naturally throughout the story and gives my little squirrel brain something to chew on all the way to the end.

But this month is going to be a little different, because I’m not writing a totally new project. I’m editing a story I’ve already written, but more or less forgotten. So it’s time to figure out how I’m going to tackle this tiger.

First, I have to reread the thing. Reading (while taking detailed notes, of course!) it will give me a sense of what needs doing. Refining the magic system, finding all the foreshadowing that ending up foreshadowing nothing at all, remembering the bits that came out of nowhere, etc., will all become apparent once I’ve given it a read.

Once I’ve read through the book, organizing my to-do notes chronologically through the book will be easy. I’ll know what hints need to be placed earlier and have a sense of where I can start seeding them. I’ll figure out what needs deleting. I’ll understand the plot points that need a better lead up, the characters that need a stronger arc, and the bits that need more research for historical accuracy. And I’ll have a better sense of the hundred other problems that I’m not aware of yet but are surely there.

By the time I get this far, I doubt I’ll have much time left before the start of the month (assuming I have any at all, haha), but I’ll feel a lot better about it. The thing is, I’ve never really been uncomfortable straying from my writing plans. It’s gonna happen, no question about it. But I’ll know my story better by then, and just by virtue of that fact, I’ll be able to shape it better moving forward.

How about you fine readers? What degree of preparation do you like to achieve before starting a project? Do you have any projects coming up? I’d love to chat about it in the comments!

And until next week, happy writing!

A House of Order

Well, I’ve done it again. What started as a short story is now quickly ballooning into a feature-length novel. (This is probably some kind of moral failing on my part, I’m sure.) I’m not usually one to bounce around between projects, but there’s been a bit of that lately and I have—somehow and without my quite realizing what was happening—promised to have a first draft of this new story completed by the end of the year.

Sooo… yeah. Things are starting to stack up a bit. I have two short stories I’m picking at, as well as a picture book idea that needs drafting. I’m midstream on editing passes on two nonfiction books as well as a novel; I haven’t quite finished any of them, but I really truly should have by now. And now this. It’s quite a bit more than I normally have on my plate. I try to stay more of a one-project-at-a-time kind of person. But I don’t want to drop any of these projects. I love them all! So now what?

The ever-fantastic CM Schofield has recently inspired me to get myself organized. My system isn’t nearly as glorious as theirs, but I feel waaaaay better for having straightened my stuff out instead of just helplessly letting everything pile up while I stand paralyzed.

The first thing I did was to list out every project that I want to work on, and then to break each down into parts. For example, I have a haunted campsite longish short story idea that I would like to eventually finish. (Ha.) It’s long enough that I should outline it first. And then draft. After that, I’ll probably edit it, and eventually maybe send it off to readers, and then edit it again based on their notes. But for now, I’m just worrying about the outlining and drafting. I don’t think I’ll get beyond that point this summer, so I’m just going to concentrate on that much. I did this for each of my projects that I think I can get to before the school year starts up again in the fall.

With that final school’s-about-to-start deadline in mind, I put all those little chunks into my to-do list with their own staggered deadlines. Remember a couple years ago when I made one teeny mention of my to-do app, Habitica? I’m still using it (and underutilizing it) and loving it. Each of the broken up goal bits went into Habitica along with the date I hoped to have them done by. I also wrote them on my big wall calendar to remind me as those dates approached.

Now, it should be said, I am being really ambitious, both with the amount of projects I’m tackling and with their individual deadlines. I recognize that there’s about a .02% chance that I’ll actually get through all of this in the allotted time frame. And that is A-OK. The point of this exercise was to break the projects into manageable chunks and get each of those chunks on my calendar in a time frame that isn’t so far into the future that I forget it for eight months and then scramble (and fail) at the last minute. Remember, I don’t do things unless there’s a deadline—the more looming, the better.

You know what else I don’t usually work without? Punishments. But since I recognize that these goals are basically nonattainable, and I’m trying to be kinder to myself in this time of difficulty, I’m going easy on the punishments end of the spectrum and am instead offering myself incentives for if I do hit the deadlines. I don’t usually work with rewards so this will be a bit of an experiment for me. Honestly, I haven’t even figured out what those rewards will be yet. (Super cheap plus bad at taking time for myself equals really bad at coming up with rewards.) I’ll let you know how it goes. (It will probably end up being something to do with baking. That’s how I roll. *snickers*)

So that is where I currently stand! I have my first two mini deadlines coming up this Friday, which will (hopefully) springboard me into action that I can keep going throughout the summer. We shall see! I’ll be sure to update this post with the exciting rewards I’ll be lavishing on myself as the season evolves.

UPDATE: So I put my goals all up in a calendar on Google Docs and shared it with my little writing group so that they can heckle me if I fail. But they’ve also posted goals of their own so that I can heckle them back! Yay, friendship! But just in case I actually succeed, here’s the breakdown of the fabulous prizes I’ve worked out for myself. After three successful weeks, I get to pay the kids in video game time to give me a back rub while one of them reads to me. After six successful weeks, I get to have a day of doing no chores, but I still get to check them all off in my to-do list. After eight successful weeks, I get to buy one of those really expensive chocolate bars that Anna got me addicted to. And after ten successful weeks (ha!), I get to buy myself a new houseplant to put on my desk. I currently have NO HOUSEPLANTS on my desk, so I am excited for this one. If it happens. So those are my rewards! Big enough that I want them, and frivolous enough that I wouldn’t just go out and get them regardless, but small enough that I’ll actually follow through with giving them to myself. We’ll see how it goes!

How about you fair readers? Any big plans for the summer? Any super organizational systems that keep you on track? Let me know in the comments below! And until next week, happy writing!

Will Learn for Food

My family is privileged to live in the area for what is widely recognized as the best public elementary school in the greater Fairbanks region. The typical background for the kids here is pretty well off, safe and stable, and primarily white with a good chunk of Native kids and a handful of other minorities. They are, as a general rule, sheltered and somewhat pampered by their highly educated, socially liberal, and deeply involved parents.

We at the library have a hard time getting these students to check out books about kids outside of their own demographic. I mean, if there’s like a sentient teddy bear or an anthropomorphized talking sunflower seed, sure, they’ll check that out. But if there’s a Japanese kid on the cover, that’s a hard sell. If there’s a Black kid on the cover, hard sell. A character in a hijab, hard sell. They’ll read the books when we push them into their sticky little hands, but they aren’t the kinds of books that they just pick up and read on their own.

The librarian and I bemoan this phenomenon together a lot and are constantly coming up with schemes to get the students to read all the amazing gems of books that they aren’t interested in without some prodding. One year for Valentine’s Day, we did blind dates with books where the students only knew a vague description of the books they were selecting from. We did a similar venture for an upcoming winter break where we wrapped books in gift wrap with descriptions, and the kids were snapping them up faster than I could wrap them. And—who’d have thought?—once the kids started reading these books about The Other, they enjoyed the stories and characters immensely, accepting their differences (and similarities) without blinking. Weird!

We do what we can.

Recently, the librarian wrote up a glowing review for Jasmine Toguchi: Mochi Queen in which she lamented how little circulation the series gets. And this sparked an idea!

We have tons of books in the library that deserve more circulation, that are from a culture that could use a bit more representation, and that have food as a central theme in the story. Three books immediately popped in my head: Cora Cooks Pancit by Dorina K. Lazo Gilmore; Jasmine Toguchi: Mochi Queen by Debbi Michiko Florence (obviously, haha); and Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard. Two of those three even come with a recipe in the back of the book!

I’ve taught quite a few after school classes over the years, but the most popular one—by orders of magnitude—has to be French Pastries. I usually teach it twice a year and it always fills up in literal minutes, and then I get to listen to the musical tones of a kid or two weeping in the front office because they didn’t get their form in fast enough to make the cut.

The secret of my popularity is food. Could we use that same trick to drum up interest for some of these awesome foodie books?

Food is really cool because it is so intrinsic to culture. Food says a lot about the way you were raised, what brings you comfort, the ways in which you celebrate. Along with housing and clothing, food is a huge product of the place where you live, the way your ancestors survived, and the network of community and sharing. By teaching the students about the foods of different cultures, we are giving ourselves an easy in for teaching about the people and their way of life as well.

Children’s books are really just windows and mirrors: mirrors that reflect back your own world and the ways of navigating it, and windows into other worlds and their value and beauty. Most of the kids at our school have plenty of mirrors around. By adding some windows to their repertoire, we teach empathy and understanding across cultural lines. We can teach kids that ‘different’ doesn’t mean ‘weird’ (and ‘not a chicken nugget’ doesn’t mean ‘inedible’).

So yeah. We’re roughing out a plan for a cooking class wherein each week, we pick a different book from a different culture with food as a central idea. We make the food and read the book (or parts if it’s bigger) and talk about the characters and their world while we eat. (The eating part is important.) It has all the elements to be a hit.

Now we just need to pick our titles and assess the difficulty/time required for each recipe. In addition to the three I’ve already mentioned, we’re also considering the November cakes from Maggie Stiefvater’s Scorpio Races (a YA novel with a splash of Celtic mythology *chortles*), but I don’t know if that’s so much to get the kids interested in Irish/Scottish culture, or just because the librarian and I want to eat November cakes.

What do you think? We don’t have any shortage of titles, but do you know a tasty kids’ book that we should consider? Let me know in the comments below!

And until next week, happy writing!

Obligatory 20-20 Vision Joke!

Happy New Year! We survived 2019! Good work, people!

Short post this week, but as I mentioned last week, last year was kind of a rough one with quite a few loose ends still mucking up the works. So I’m going to be scaling back my expectations for myself quite a bit in a vain effort to not go completely crazy. Other than that, this is probably all going to look pretty familiar.

Reading Goals Twenty-four books is probably my upper limit so we’ll stick with the attainable. I still want to split it twelve and twelve between fiction and nonfiction, but I’m going to give myself a pretty open range otherwise.

Writing and Editing Goals One first draft, one editing draft, and at least two new short stories. Again, we’re keeping things practical here. This is an area where I anticipate proooooobably overachieving a little bit (maybe?), but I’m wary of setting my sights any higher than this for now. We’ll see where it goes.

Rejections Goals We’re gonna scale waaaay back here and see if I can hit twenty-four rejections for the year. It’s half of what I set for myself last year, but still nearly double what I actually achieved. (Plus, I’m not sure at this point how much rejection my sad little soul can take.)

I have other personal goals (including talking to other humans and not treating my body like utter garbage) to augment my overall well-being and good-humanness, but this is all my writing stuff.

I spoke last week, and in other times past, about balance—and my lack thereof. I had a lot of trouble this last year with balancing work v. volunteer time, kid v. personal time, etc, and it seemed that the easy answer was always to draw off time that I had previously slated for the things that brought me peace and stability.

I wrote a few months ago about self care, and how I needed to get better at it. And for a while, I really did. I did all the things and I felt better for it. Huzzah!

But then the holidays. It was all an unrelenting marathon from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. Everything went to pieces. Next thing I knew, I was nearly ten pounds lighter, arguing with people about hand towels, and contemplating jumping off bridges.

Clearly this is a problem and steps are being taken.

Including the lightening of the goal load this year! If things straighten out and the stress level comes down, I might adjust my goals and amp up the effort a little bit more. We’ll see. But for now, I think this is more than enough. The base line has become Keep Everyone Alive. Anything more than that is icing.

How about you folks? Any writing resolutions this year? Are you scaling it back, or expanding operations? Let me know in the comments below!

And until next week, happy writing, and happy New Year!

Cooking with Strange Ingredients of Questionable Origin

Ugh, I do not feel like I am winning this camp session so far. I don’t think I’m going to not win (yet) but it’s been a slog and I’m quite a bit behind. This nonfiction writing business is kind of a drag. I mean, it’s interesting and stuff, but I feel like I need to do about twenty or thirty minutes of research for every ten words that I write. I knew I would be writing few words this time around and that it would take more research and fact checking, but sheesh. I could really go for just a quick and stupid blitz through draftyville right now, you know?

That said, it hasn’t all been rainclouds and misery these last couple weeks. One of the two nonfiction projects I’m working on is a cookbook, and that means cooking! Furthermore, it means experimental cooking, which is probably the best kind of cooking that there is.

In the interest of keeping the cookbook accessible to normal humans, I can’t do anything too crazy-go-nuts, and that’s kept me reigned in reasonably well. After all the ingredient I’m showcasing here is a little wacky itself- birch syrup. (Who here has heard of birch syrup? Tried it? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to know what you think about it!)

Birch syrup is like the half-sibling between unrelated maple syrup and molasses. It’s got that maple treeishness, and molasses’ kind of minerally tang to it, but has a flavor profile all its own that varies quite a bit from batch to batch. I’ve been working on a series of recipes that bring out its uniqueness, but within the kinds of comfort foods that people already know and love.

Some of the recipes I’m working on are things like birch vinaigrette, birch baked black beans, and birch-infused profiteroles. There are birch caramel popcorn balls, and boreal bliss ice cream, and birch brined moose jerky. (These are my comfort foods, okay?)

My kids’ favorite so far, though, has to be the birch bacon mac and cheese. Sweet and salty and gooey and hot, that double batch I made didn’t stand a chance.

1/2 pound of bacon

1 lb chopped vegetables of choice (broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, etc)

1 lb dry pasta

1/4 c unsalted butter

1/4 c all-purpose flour

2 c whole milk

1/4 c dark birch syrup

1 1/4 c mozzarella cheese

3/4 c cheddar cheese

1.  Boil pasta according to directions, cooking just slightly less than al dente. (I usually find the directions for al dente and then subtract one minute for every five. Bite a piece and if it feel just a bit undercooked, it’s ready.) Drain the pasta and set aside.

2.  Cook bacon in a frying pan over high heat until crisp, about eight minutes. While bacon is cooking, steam vegetables. I typically chop vegetables into chunks about the size of my curled forefinger and steam for five minutes, until they are just a tiny bit crunchier than al dente, like the pasta. Set aside vegetables. Drain bacon, and then chop into bite-sized chunks and set aside.

3.  Melt butter over medium-high heat in a large heavy-bottomed saucepan. When the butter begins to boil, add flour and whisk until the mixture becomes fragrant and turns a light brown, about three minutes. (It’s better to undercook than overcook at this stage. Overcooking with make for a slightly lumpy cheese sauce while little brown flecks, while undercooking is easy to correct with a little extra cooking later. Either way, it will still taste fine.) Slowly whisk in the milk. It may be a little lumpy at first, but keep whisking as the milk comes up to heat and it will smooth out. Whisk constantly as the sauce thickens, taking care that the bottom does not scorch. Turn off heat, but keep pot over burner, and whisk in the birch syrup. The sauce should be a uniform light caramel color.

4.  Add cheese a half cup at a time, allowing it to melt completely and then whisking it in before adding more cheese. Sauce should be thick and gooey; if it is too thick, add two tablespoons of additional milk at a time until desire consistency. (I usually end up adding about an extra half cup of milk at this point, but my family likes a slightly thinner mac.)

5.  Pour the noodles, bacon, and vegetables into the cheese sauce, stirring gently until well coated. Cook over low heat until cheese sauce just begins to bubble and all ingredients are heated through, about five minutes. Serve hot.

Looking for a slightly lighter side dish? Omit the bacon and vegetables, instead adding one teaspoon of salt to the cheese sauce.

Note: While any pasta would taste good with this sauce, different pastas hold sauces differently. When choosing a good mac-and-cheese pasta, pick a “short” pasta, rather than a strand or ribbon pasta, that would cup the sauce and transfer little reservoirs of it into your mouth. Medium-to-large sized tubes or shells (such as penne, conchiglie, or rotini) about the same size as your vegetable and bacon chunks would be about right for this recipe. Alternatively, if omitting the bacon and veggies, you can go for a smaller pasta such as macaroni or campanelle.

PS- If you can’t get your hands on birch syrup (like most of the world outside of extreme northern latitudes), don’t sweat it. This recipe will still be tasty if you use maple syrup or molasses instead. Just, while you’re eating it, you are legally required to think of how much nummier it would be if you had the real deal. Legal truth. *nods*

Until next week, happy writing cooking!

Seasonal Work

Hi, friends! Boy, summer is a busy time around here. I’ve started my full time work for the summer, hot on the heels of wrapping up a crazy school year. Sadly, I haven’t had a whole lot of time for working on my fiction projects, or even for doing submissions. (Less sad about that second part, honestly, because submissions, ugh.) But some exciting new writing opportunities have cropped up to suck up what little time and brain power I have left at the end of the day.

It’s a change of pace, but it’s interesting to be working on different things. I’ve never done work like this before, and golly, it’s downright refreshing to be getting paid for writing. I am not used to that. Here are a few of my shorter term writing projects that will be keeping me busy this summer!

Developing a Game Narrative I stumbled upon this one entirely on accident. A couple I know runs a design company in Washington. One of their clients made a game but wanted some kind of narrative overlay for it before pitching it to game companies or self producing and didn’t feel equipped to do it himself. They thought of me, and next thing I knew, I had a writing gig! This job is perfect for me because I love writing and I love games, and I basically get to do the fun ‘flavor’ stuff while the game designer does all the hard work. I’ve had a lot of fun pitching different narrative ideas and the client has picked his favorite. Now I get to work on fleshing it out into a full game manual. Whee!

Updating and Rewriting a Manual Honestly, this one is… less fun. That said, I believe the information in the manual is important and I like the people I’m working on it for. The manual is for one of the local nonprofits here in Fairbanks and it’s for the volunteers in their program, but the “current” manual is mega outdated. It’s like ten years old, predating like half of what the program currently does and referencing a bunch of things that it doesn’t do anymore. So it’s definitely due for a refresher. I’m going through it with the program head to figure out exactly what he needs done, and then I’ll go at it. Not the most exciting work, but rewarding in other ways.

Writing a Cookbook! Yaaaay! I’ve been wanting to write a cookbook for years and I’m finally working on one! I’ve spent the last few months getting more and more deeply enmeshed in another local nonprofit, this one all about kids’ education and sustainability and citizen science and art and basically all things that I love. I got involved through my husband’s cousin, who got me mixed up in the springtime birch sap cooperative, and I’ve been weaseling my way in further ever since. When I pitched the idea of a cookbook using the birch syrups that the nonprofit makes and sells to help fund their program, the program director loved it and send me off with a couple bottles of syrup. Guys, I am having a blast experimenting with recipes and bothering local producers about food. Putting together the proposal packet isn’t the funnest, but for real- THE FOOD. Why did I not get into this sooner???

In addition to these three big projects, I wrote up a couple little mini articles last week for the sports shop that I work at, but I haven’t heard back on those yet. We’ll see how it goes. Mostly, they’re just fun to write, haha. They’re pretty much about the ways I goof up my adventures and hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes before getting lost in the mountains in winter or going on a sea kayaking trip without a rain jacket. You know, really complicated things anyone could get wrong.

I feel like everything is so seasonal here in Alaska. The summer world and the winter world are so wildly different, and that profound different-ness (which is def a word, yep) seems to seep into every aspect of my life, including writing. But this year definitely takes the cake on seasonal shifting between projects. Who knows what July’s Camp NaNo project will be? I sure don’t!

How about you fine readers? Any exciting new projects in the works? Let me know in the comments! And until next week, happy writing!