Wow. I wrote a whole post (about 1800 words) and posted it, then went back to reread some old posts and realized I had written a post that was STRIKINGLY SIMILAR -- like WAY TOO SIMILAR TO POST a few weeks ago. Sigh. Back to the drawing board.
Yes, I went (deeply!) into Omniscient Third and Close Third and the pendulum and Anna Karenina again. How did I not remember even a tiny glimpse of that? Wow.
But I wanted to write that mostly because I've had a productive few days on the book and it's because I've decided where I want the pendulum to swing. It's closer to Close Third but there is a little narration involved. I don't want to explain more than that. I am a crazy overthinker and sometimes I think myself right out of whatever I'm doing. I am hopeful that I can shut down that part of my brain enough to keep going and finish a first draft. I am continually hovering around 60,000 words right now--I have been revising a great deal but I seem to delete as much as I put in--and am hoping to get to 100,000 (the final goal, at least for the first draft; taking my cue from the agents' and editors' blogs I frequent) by the end of the summer.
Ooh, I just put it out there! End of summer! Can I do it? Yikes.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
more baking
Yes, Mondays are a hard day to blog. Sigh. And last night I went to the Yankees game, so I’m operating on two cylinders. But blog I must.
I have continued with my baking, though not as often. I was in Utah for a quick trip to see the family and I decided to bake for them, so I brought my book with me (all 10 pounds of it) and made the apple and pear tarts, which were particular favorites of mine. I wanted to do éclairs, but I ran out of time, preferring to run, jump, blow bubbles, and watch “Cars” and bits of “Marley and Me” with the nephew instead.
My big baking project in Utah was a “Panamanian Roulade cake,” which I made for my dad’s birthday party. It was ambitious, it was grand, it was time-consuming, it was difficult. (It was delicious.) It was a chocolate cake that had layers, but they were vertical rather than horizontal.
I started this cake around 7 pm and turned on my laptop to watch the rerun of the earlier Yankees game. (I like a good distraction while I’m baking. Yes, it has proven dangerous at times.) I ground my own almonds to substitute for pricey almond flour, which isn’t readily available in Utah anyway (and realized that pricey almond flour is nothing besides finely ground almonds, so I don’t have to buy it again!). I baked the cake itself, a big flat layer in a jelly roll pan. It was very difficult to remove from the pan, so I had my dad help and thoroughly annoyed him with my barking directions. “No! Stop stop stop! Okay, go!” I made the frosting and tasted it and it was delicious, but there wasn’t nearly enough to make the cake with. I stared at the directions, hoping for divine guidance, and got it: the directions said to chill and whip the frosting if it wasn’t “fluffy enough.” My frosting wasn’t fluffy at all, so I did that. Lo and behold, fluffy frosting at double the volume! Whoa! I spread the frosting n the layer. I cut the layer into four strips, and then rolled the strips into one big roll that got set on its side. Now, these long strips were extremely fragile and hard to work with, so I had to cut them in half and oh-so-delicately place them against the roll. My fingers and hands were a gooey mess, which I actually hate. I know, it’s unavoidable in baking. But come on, I don’t want to turn on the faucet and get frosting on it because I’ll forget to wipe it down and then the next time I turn on the faucet, with relatively clean hands (even though I’m going to wash them) I’ll get frosting on them again! And forget to wipe it down again! Do you see my problem(s) here?
So seriously, they were bad and it was driving me a little nuts. I also hate having anything under my fingernails, which are long, and dealing with a fragile cake layer and frosting, you have to put the utensils aside and dig in, and you’re guaranteed to get all kinds of crap under your fingernails. I dealt, but it was gross.
Okay, cake rolled. Picture looking down from above at the plate and seeing what amounts to a spiral of cake, held together by frosting. This is what made the vertical layers. It was supremely fragile; the now-fluffy frosting was loaded with room-temperature butter, which we all know (or the dairy-tolerant among us, anyway) is not structurally sturdy. So I gently frosted the rest of the cake with the frosting, and then swirled the top into a lovely pattern. I filled in the dents with more frosting. Usually my cakes are delicious but ugly, but I actually made this one look nice. It was so fragile, but I knew once the butter frosting got into the fridge it would firm up and we would be fine.
So I picked up the plate and walked to the fridge. My parents have a new fridge these days, the two-door kind. But both doors are for the fridge itself; the freezer is the bottom drawer. So I was holding the plate and fragile cake in my left hand, opening both doors with my right. The fridge was packed. I don’t know if it is normally, but whenever I’m home we load up with fruit and restaurant leftovers, and there was an abundance of both. “Hmm,” I muttered, shifting things around. I didn’t want to grip onto the cake plate too hard, because that would smush it against me and get frosting all over my shirt (because who wants to wear an apron at one in the morning?), so I was navigating that angle. Strawberries go….over here. Styrofoam square containers…go over here, one, then the other. All right, the cantaloupe gets transferred over there, and then I’ll move the milk, and then we’ll have a space for the plate and my very fragile cake.
But oh, the errant cantaloupe.
I picked up the cantaloupe with my right hand. It was not whole, having been sliced into the day before, and so it was slippery, but I dug in there (aware of the frosting lingering under my fingernails and regretting the transfer of said frosting into cantaloupe flesh, but there you go) and got hold and put it on a higher shelf. As I was moving the milk, the cantaloupe decided it didn’t like its new spot and tumbled out…onto the cake, smashing the cake into the plate and bottom of the fridge in a big collapsed heap of frosting.
It was one o’clock in the morning. The televised Yankees game had gone nine innings and was over. I was tired and my back ached from standing. I was alone with a mound of chocolate that had to be cleaned up. And the cake…there was no denying it, the cake was ruined.
Reader, I cried.
I had never cried over a dessert before. I’ve made plenty, I’ve nearly ruined some, but I’ve always managed to save them. And this…I just had no idea what to do with this. So I stood over the sink and put my head in my hands and cried.
Now, there was a little more going on than just the cake. I was in Utah because my grandpa isn’t doing very well, health-wise, and he had taken a turn for the worse the week before. I was spending afternoons at my grandparents’ house and there was/is a very real thought that it might be the last time I see him; and if it’s not, he’s not going to be doing any better the next time. I know that end of life is hard for everybody, and I know that if someone passes away at the age of 89, it’s really not a tragedy, especially when that person has lived a full and successful life. But it’s still hard for those left behind, no two ways about it. And seeing this brilliant, strong man operating at about 25% is humbling and disturbing and profoundly sad, and I was shaken anyway. I hadn’t cried about that the entire time I had been visiting, until the cake.
I cleaned up the pound of frosting that was now nestled into the crevices of the fridge with a wet cloth, making repeat visits to the sink to wash it off and return and listening to the “smart” fridge beep at me to let me know it was open. (Thanks! Yes, I’ve got it now! Yep, you’re open! I know! Okay, thanks… okay… stop it STOP IT STOP IT NOW I‘M GOING INSANE SHUT UP STUPID FRIDGE JUST SHUT UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT UP). It took me some time, but I got the frosting cleaned off all white areas of the kitchen. I washed off the troublesome cantaloupe, and then I had to tend to the plate.
What to do with a completely smashed cake?
I ended up scooping it into a springform pan. I knew it was still going to be delicious (and it was) but I was still freaking out. I put the springform pan into the fridge, planning to cover it with whipping cream the next day. (Sorry, lactose-intolerant family members! But there are pills for it.) And I went to bed.
I awoke the next day with a purpose. I was going to make that damn cake again. Springform pan-molded cake was not good enough for my dad’s birthday party; I wanted vertical layers! So at one o’clock (in the afternoon, this time) I started again. And what do you know, it was a lot easier the second time around. Took a lot less time.
So we ended up with two cakes. Sadly, the frosting and the cake were much the same color, so you could barely even make out the blessed vertical layers. And we had two cakes and didn’t even finish one.
But in the battle of Kathy vs the Cantaloupe, Kathy won. This time.
My big baking project in Utah was a “Panamanian Roulade cake,” which I made for my dad’s birthday party. It was ambitious, it was grand, it was time-consuming, it was difficult. (It was delicious.) It was a chocolate cake that had layers, but they were vertical rather than horizontal.
I started this cake around 7 pm and turned on my laptop to watch the rerun of the earlier Yankees game. (I like a good distraction while I’m baking. Yes, it has proven dangerous at times.) I ground my own almonds to substitute for pricey almond flour, which isn’t readily available in Utah anyway (and realized that pricey almond flour is nothing besides finely ground almonds, so I don’t have to buy it again!). I baked the cake itself, a big flat layer in a jelly roll pan. It was very difficult to remove from the pan, so I had my dad help and thoroughly annoyed him with my barking directions. “No! Stop stop stop! Okay, go!” I made the frosting and tasted it and it was delicious, but there wasn’t nearly enough to make the cake with. I stared at the directions, hoping for divine guidance, and got it: the directions said to chill and whip the frosting if it wasn’t “fluffy enough.” My frosting wasn’t fluffy at all, so I did that. Lo and behold, fluffy frosting at double the volume! Whoa! I spread the frosting n the layer. I cut the layer into four strips, and then rolled the strips into one big roll that got set on its side. Now, these long strips were extremely fragile and hard to work with, so I had to cut them in half and oh-so-delicately place them against the roll. My fingers and hands were a gooey mess, which I actually hate. I know, it’s unavoidable in baking. But come on, I don’t want to turn on the faucet and get frosting on it because I’ll forget to wipe it down and then the next time I turn on the faucet, with relatively clean hands (even though I’m going to wash them) I’ll get frosting on them again! And forget to wipe it down again! Do you see my problem(s) here?
So seriously, they were bad and it was driving me a little nuts. I also hate having anything under my fingernails, which are long, and dealing with a fragile cake layer and frosting, you have to put the utensils aside and dig in, and you’re guaranteed to get all kinds of crap under your fingernails. I dealt, but it was gross.
Okay, cake rolled. Picture looking down from above at the plate and seeing what amounts to a spiral of cake, held together by frosting. This is what made the vertical layers. It was supremely fragile; the now-fluffy frosting was loaded with room-temperature butter, which we all know (or the dairy-tolerant among us, anyway) is not structurally sturdy. So I gently frosted the rest of the cake with the frosting, and then swirled the top into a lovely pattern. I filled in the dents with more frosting. Usually my cakes are delicious but ugly, but I actually made this one look nice. It was so fragile, but I knew once the butter frosting got into the fridge it would firm up and we would be fine.
So I picked up the plate and walked to the fridge. My parents have a new fridge these days, the two-door kind. But both doors are for the fridge itself; the freezer is the bottom drawer. So I was holding the plate and fragile cake in my left hand, opening both doors with my right. The fridge was packed. I don’t know if it is normally, but whenever I’m home we load up with fruit and restaurant leftovers, and there was an abundance of both. “Hmm,” I muttered, shifting things around. I didn’t want to grip onto the cake plate too hard, because that would smush it against me and get frosting all over my shirt (because who wants to wear an apron at one in the morning?), so I was navigating that angle. Strawberries go….over here. Styrofoam square containers…go over here, one, then the other. All right, the cantaloupe gets transferred over there, and then I’ll move the milk, and then we’ll have a space for the plate and my very fragile cake.
But oh, the errant cantaloupe.
I picked up the cantaloupe with my right hand. It was not whole, having been sliced into the day before, and so it was slippery, but I dug in there (aware of the frosting lingering under my fingernails and regretting the transfer of said frosting into cantaloupe flesh, but there you go) and got hold and put it on a higher shelf. As I was moving the milk, the cantaloupe decided it didn’t like its new spot and tumbled out…onto the cake, smashing the cake into the plate and bottom of the fridge in a big collapsed heap of frosting.
It was one o’clock in the morning. The televised Yankees game had gone nine innings and was over. I was tired and my back ached from standing. I was alone with a mound of chocolate that had to be cleaned up. And the cake…there was no denying it, the cake was ruined.
Reader, I cried.
I had never cried over a dessert before. I’ve made plenty, I’ve nearly ruined some, but I’ve always managed to save them. And this…I just had no idea what to do with this. So I stood over the sink and put my head in my hands and cried.
Now, there was a little more going on than just the cake. I was in Utah because my grandpa isn’t doing very well, health-wise, and he had taken a turn for the worse the week before. I was spending afternoons at my grandparents’ house and there was/is a very real thought that it might be the last time I see him; and if it’s not, he’s not going to be doing any better the next time. I know that end of life is hard for everybody, and I know that if someone passes away at the age of 89, it’s really not a tragedy, especially when that person has lived a full and successful life. But it’s still hard for those left behind, no two ways about it. And seeing this brilliant, strong man operating at about 25% is humbling and disturbing and profoundly sad, and I was shaken anyway. I hadn’t cried about that the entire time I had been visiting, until the cake.
I cleaned up the pound of frosting that was now nestled into the crevices of the fridge with a wet cloth, making repeat visits to the sink to wash it off and return and listening to the “smart” fridge beep at me to let me know it was open. (Thanks! Yes, I’ve got it now! Yep, you’re open! I know! Okay, thanks… okay… stop it STOP IT STOP IT NOW I‘M GOING INSANE SHUT UP STUPID FRIDGE JUST SHUT UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHUT UP). It took me some time, but I got the frosting cleaned off all white areas of the kitchen. I washed off the troublesome cantaloupe, and then I had to tend to the plate.
What to do with a completely smashed cake?
I ended up scooping it into a springform pan. I knew it was still going to be delicious (and it was) but I was still freaking out. I put the springform pan into the fridge, planning to cover it with whipping cream the next day. (Sorry, lactose-intolerant family members! But there are pills for it.) And I went to bed.
I awoke the next day with a purpose. I was going to make that damn cake again. Springform pan-molded cake was not good enough for my dad’s birthday party; I wanted vertical layers! So at one o’clock (in the afternoon, this time) I started again. And what do you know, it was a lot easier the second time around. Took a lot less time.
So we ended up with two cakes. Sadly, the frosting and the cake were much the same color, so you could barely even make out the blessed vertical layers. And we had two cakes and didn’t even finish one.
But in the battle of Kathy vs the Cantaloupe, Kathy won. This time.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
fooled you!
Ah ha, I'm not a Bad Blogger after all -- I just decided to blog on Tuesday instead of Monday. Or so I tell myself. I got back to work from a small break that was not a vacation and had a lot to do. And I was exhausted, because my break was not a vacation and I did a lot of work (some of it fun, yes) and no writing and I have a big deadline this Friday and I did NOTHING to prepare for it...etc. But it's Tuesday, and here we are!
So I'm going to follow up a little on what I wrote last week. After finishing the spectacular book, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, I was on a high. And I was terribly excited because I had brought three, count 'em, three other books with me on my break that was not a vacation and even though I was not on vacation I did get to read. And two of the books were very small and by noted author Ian McEwen and I was psyched. Psyched, I tell you, dear Reader.
Reader, I was disappointed. Oh, so disappointed. The first one, The Comfort of Strangers, had these great blurbs on the back. I quote: From The NY Times Book Review, "Convincing and clinging as a nightmare...[McEwan is] an alluringly gifted writer." From the Chicago Tribune, "An exquisite miniature gothic." This sounded good.
Plot: Mary and Colin are on vacation. They've grown tired of each other. They go out wandering (they may be in Venice, but McEwan never says) and meet a man named Robert, who takes them to his house. He's creepy, as is his wife, Caroline--so creepy that (a) colin and Mary wake up naked, and Caroline says, 'oh, I'm just washing your clothes, and no, you can't have them back until I say' and (b) they realize Robert has a FRAMED PHOTO OF COLIN on the balcony of the hotel and (c) at one point, unprovoked, Robert PUNCHES COLIN IN THE STOMACH and levels him. Colin and Mary leave, have a lot of sex at their hotel, go swimming, and then GO BACK TO ROBERT'S HOUSE where Caroline drugs Mary and Robert kills Colin. The end.
Oops. Spoiler.
Okay, now really: you didn't see that coming, Colin and Mary? Really?
Here's my beef. Well, there are many. Here's my first: The NY Times Book Review called it CONVINCING. Really? On what planet does someone return to that house? What, did Colin leave his wallet? Some lifesaving medication? No. Even then, if he had, wouldn't he say, "I'll cancel the credit cards and figure out the ID later" or "I'll phone my doctor and get a new prescription"--either way, "No way am I going back there" ??? Please. Second, people, this is Ian McEwen! The writing was fluid and smooth, and maybe I'd even go with the back jacket copy that calls it "masterly precision," but...this is the man who wrote Atonement! Yikes. Did not like the plot, did not believe the plot, did not feel anything in this story was "inevitable" or a tale of "erotic menace"...hmph. Having just finished The Book Thief, when I finished The Comfort of Strangers I threw it on the floor. Bleah.
and then I went to another Ian McEwan book, Enduring Love. Plot (with spoilers, yes): a man named Joe and his wife Clarissa are on a picnic and see a child about to be carried away in a hot air balloon, so he runs to save the kid. He arrives at the same time as several others and they all jump onto the basket, but a gust of wind takes it up and everybody drops off safely to the ground to save himself--all except one man, who holds on way past the time of safety and then falls to his death. Joe rushes to the body and arrives at the same time as Jed Parry, who instantly and insanely falls in love with him. Jed begins harassing Joe with letters and phone calls. Joe erases the messages and the handwriting looks like his, so no one believes him. His wife Clarissa instantly decides he's nuts and she is going to take some time away from him. They go to a restaurant and an anonymous man walks to another table and shoots a second anonymous man; Jed rushes to Assassin Anonymous Man and knocks the gun from his hand and runs away. Joe knows the assassin was meant to shoot him. Police and Clarissa don't believe him. Joe buys a gun (apparently a terribly illicit thing in refined England) and on his way back Clarissa phones and says Jed is holding her hostage. He returns to his flat and shoots Jed with his new gun. Jed is institutionalized and Clarisas leaves Joe. The end.
Again, this damn thing just doesn't make sense. Why is Clarissa so eager not to believe her husband? This is never explored. Nor is it explained why the police just don't care. At a certain point I really wanted this all to be in Joe's head; I wanted the unreliable narrator and a surprise at the end where we find out that he really does protest too much. I was excited that this might happen, especially since Publisher's Weekly called this story "Stunning..." and said it is "Graced with intelligent speculation and dramatic momentum." Sigh.
Now, please know that I am not saying I am superior or I write better stories or there's so much crap out there and I would do x, y, and z somuchbetterandwhyamInotpublished and blah blah blah. I'm not putting myself into a comparison at all. So what am I saying?
Am I saying that sometimes certain authors might get more favorable reviews based on their past work?
Am I saying that writers might become complacent based on their past work and not look too closely at their stories?
Am I saying that even masterful writers (and I do agree that I. McE is) need a writer's group?
I don't know. But I know that I read one tremendous book and followed it with two books for which I had high, high expectations...and I was disappointed. Sigh.
So I'm going to follow up a little on what I wrote last week. After finishing the spectacular book, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, I was on a high. And I was terribly excited because I had brought three, count 'em, three other books with me on my break that was not a vacation and even though I was not on vacation I did get to read. And two of the books were very small and by noted author Ian McEwen and I was psyched. Psyched, I tell you, dear Reader.
Reader, I was disappointed. Oh, so disappointed. The first one, The Comfort of Strangers, had these great blurbs on the back. I quote: From The NY Times Book Review, "Convincing and clinging as a nightmare...[McEwan is] an alluringly gifted writer." From the Chicago Tribune, "An exquisite miniature gothic." This sounded good.
Plot: Mary and Colin are on vacation. They've grown tired of each other. They go out wandering (they may be in Venice, but McEwan never says) and meet a man named Robert, who takes them to his house. He's creepy, as is his wife, Caroline--so creepy that (a) colin and Mary wake up naked, and Caroline says, 'oh, I'm just washing your clothes, and no, you can't have them back until I say' and (b) they realize Robert has a FRAMED PHOTO OF COLIN on the balcony of the hotel and (c) at one point, unprovoked, Robert PUNCHES COLIN IN THE STOMACH and levels him. Colin and Mary leave, have a lot of sex at their hotel, go swimming, and then GO BACK TO ROBERT'S HOUSE where Caroline drugs Mary and Robert kills Colin. The end.
Oops. Spoiler.
Okay, now really: you didn't see that coming, Colin and Mary? Really?
Here's my beef. Well, there are many. Here's my first: The NY Times Book Review called it CONVINCING. Really? On what planet does someone return to that house? What, did Colin leave his wallet? Some lifesaving medication? No. Even then, if he had, wouldn't he say, "I'll cancel the credit cards and figure out the ID later" or "I'll phone my doctor and get a new prescription"--either way, "No way am I going back there" ??? Please. Second, people, this is Ian McEwen! The writing was fluid and smooth, and maybe I'd even go with the back jacket copy that calls it "masterly precision," but...this is the man who wrote Atonement! Yikes. Did not like the plot, did not believe the plot, did not feel anything in this story was "inevitable" or a tale of "erotic menace"...hmph. Having just finished The Book Thief, when I finished The Comfort of Strangers I threw it on the floor. Bleah.
and then I went to another Ian McEwan book, Enduring Love. Plot (with spoilers, yes): a man named Joe and his wife Clarissa are on a picnic and see a child about to be carried away in a hot air balloon, so he runs to save the kid. He arrives at the same time as several others and they all jump onto the basket, but a gust of wind takes it up and everybody drops off safely to the ground to save himself--all except one man, who holds on way past the time of safety and then falls to his death. Joe rushes to the body and arrives at the same time as Jed Parry, who instantly and insanely falls in love with him. Jed begins harassing Joe with letters and phone calls. Joe erases the messages and the handwriting looks like his, so no one believes him. His wife Clarissa instantly decides he's nuts and she is going to take some time away from him. They go to a restaurant and an anonymous man walks to another table and shoots a second anonymous man; Jed rushes to Assassin Anonymous Man and knocks the gun from his hand and runs away. Joe knows the assassin was meant to shoot him. Police and Clarissa don't believe him. Joe buys a gun (apparently a terribly illicit thing in refined England) and on his way back Clarissa phones and says Jed is holding her hostage. He returns to his flat and shoots Jed with his new gun. Jed is institutionalized and Clarisas leaves Joe. The end.
Again, this damn thing just doesn't make sense. Why is Clarissa so eager not to believe her husband? This is never explored. Nor is it explained why the police just don't care. At a certain point I really wanted this all to be in Joe's head; I wanted the unreliable narrator and a surprise at the end where we find out that he really does protest too much. I was excited that this might happen, especially since Publisher's Weekly called this story "Stunning..." and said it is "Graced with intelligent speculation and dramatic momentum." Sigh.
Now, please know that I am not saying I am superior or I write better stories or there's so much crap out there and I would do x, y, and z somuchbetterandwhyamInotpublished and blah blah blah. I'm not putting myself into a comparison at all. So what am I saying?
Am I saying that sometimes certain authors might get more favorable reviews based on their past work?
Am I saying that writers might become complacent based on their past work and not look too closely at their stories?
Am I saying that even masterful writers (and I do agree that I. McE is) need a writer's group?
I don't know. But I know that I read one tremendous book and followed it with two books for which I had high, high expectations...and I was disappointed. Sigh.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Bad blogger, part deux
I am inching back toward my Bad Blogger ways. Last week I forgot to blog until about 4:30, and by that time I am usually in full-swing “I’m going home soon” mode and useless for anything besides something I’m already doing. I told myself I would blog on Tuesday, but let’s face it, once you’ve failed at something (my Monday blog promise) it’s quite easy to keep failing. Tuesday became Wednesday, and then I said, “I’ll just wait until next Monday.” So even though it is kind of late to be doing a Monday blog—my New York readers have probably left their desks by now—I am trying to be faithful where I can be faithful.
I am on vacation this week, officially. I am in Utah to help out the fam with various crises (I’m only being semi-blasé right now) but the crises don’t seem to be at any peak right now, so I have time to do other things. I am trying to download iTunes on my parents’ ancient laptop upstairs. I had downloaded version 8 about 15 months ago, but my mom bought herself a nano (planning on my setting it up for her—this blind faith may or may not be rewarded) and this new nano doesn’t work on 8, and requires 9. So I downloaded 9 (which took 45 minutes on previously mentioned Ancient Laptop) and then I had to hit “Install” which took another 45 minutes and didn’t work, so I hit Install again and that’s where we stand with that. Whew.
So the real purpose of today’s entry is to tell you to run, don’t walk, either to your local bookstore or library to read The Book Thief, a 2005 YA novel by Markus Zusak. I checked it out from the library last Thursday and finished it (500-plus pages) on Saturday. I could not put it down. It’s a fairly easy read, being YA, but the speed with which I got through it was more because of the author’s skill in drawing me in. I could not put it down. When I did put it down I was disappointed and found myself thinking about it and wanting to pick it up again. I spent all Thursday after work on the couch, reading it, and telling myself that I am actually doing work when I’m reading, because after all I’m a writer and you’ve got to research others’ styles/see what’s out there/fill your creative well, right?
And it was educational. The Book Thief has an omniscient narrator, which is something I’ve been struggling with. I am about halfway through a draft of a new novel, but I’m struggling. I have stopped the forward momentum in order to revise what I have, and one thing that I’m having a hard time figuring out is the voice. For a while I tried to write it in Close Third, because we have 5 different characters whose perspectives will be given. So when I write a passage with the 10-year-old girl, it should sound a lot different than the passages of the grizzled veteran detective who has seen it all, even though they’re not first-person narratives. The passages of the 10-year-old girl are more energetic, generally happy, because the narrator is kind of “sitting on her shoulder” and seeing what she sees. But I don’t want it to be exclusively Close Third. When you’re doing true Close Third, the voice always has to be that character’s voice; you can’t state anything the character wouldn’t know herself, which is really limiting. I decided for a while that I would write in Omniscient Third, and in a fit of learning frenzy I got Anna Karenina, a well-known Omnisicent Third book, to see how they handled it. As I suspected, the different passages tell us what everyone is thinking; there’s one voice throughout (the anonymous narrator). So I tried that, and it didn’t work; it came across as “head hopping,” which is annoying. In another learning frenzy, I ordered a bunch of How To Write books. They are surprisingly helpful. (They are also helpful for making yourself feel like you’re procrastinating when you’re really working—the best of both worlds!) One of the books (whose title escapes me and I can’t look it up, because I didn’t bring it with me) talked about the range of voices and suggested that you don’t have to fall heavily into one category. There’s Omnisicent, and First-Person (“I did this, I did that”) and Third Person (“She did this, she did that”) and Close Third Person (“She did this, she did that, darn it all to heck!” – a shout-out to my Utah peeps)…but there are also shades of gray, if you will. The authors of this book described it as a pendulum that swings between things. You can do Close Third Person and insert the occasional “Darn it all to heck” if that’s what your character would be thinking, but you don’t have to stay 100% there. You can swing out of it occasionally, back and forth; the key is consistency. If you’re going to swing back and forth, don’t just do it once; it has to happen with enough regularity that the reader won’t say, “Where did that come from?” Or so I have concluded.
So this is part of the reason that The Book Thief is so interesting to me: the writer has chosen Death as the narrator. The book is set in Germany in World War II, so Death was hovering over everyone, and saw everything. It’s only logical that Death would know what people were thinking, know their hearts, know what’s good and bad about them. (I have a short story with a different-and-yet-slightly-similar conceit, so this was even more interesting to me...and I'm thinking of making it into a book, so I may read this again just for "research.") Death is telling the story of a young girl named Liesel who is given up into foster care when she’s 10. Her younger brother dies on the trip to the foster family's town, and from then on she has nightmares. Her foster father, Hans, comforts her every night when she wakes up screaming from them, and when he realizes she’s almost illiterate, he teaches her to read. When they buried her brother, Liesel saw a book on the ground, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, and impulsively stole it, and that’s what Hans uses to teach her.
This is just the beginning…the book takes twists and turns and gets incredibly deep. I finished it on the plane, glad to be sitting in a window seat so I could turn away from prying faces as I literally cried at the end. I will occasionally tear up at the end of some books, but only very, very rarely do I break down. At the end of this book, I just wept. It was amazing. It was a great lesson in Omniscient storytelling and it was touching beyond belief. If you haven’t read this book—whether you want to learn or just read a good book—please, please, please read it. You won’t regret it.
I am on vacation this week, officially. I am in Utah to help out the fam with various crises (I’m only being semi-blasé right now) but the crises don’t seem to be at any peak right now, so I have time to do other things. I am trying to download iTunes on my parents’ ancient laptop upstairs. I had downloaded version 8 about 15 months ago, but my mom bought herself a nano (planning on my setting it up for her—this blind faith may or may not be rewarded) and this new nano doesn’t work on 8, and requires 9. So I downloaded 9 (which took 45 minutes on previously mentioned Ancient Laptop) and then I had to hit “Install” which took another 45 minutes and didn’t work, so I hit Install again and that’s where we stand with that. Whew.
So the real purpose of today’s entry is to tell you to run, don’t walk, either to your local bookstore or library to read The Book Thief, a 2005 YA novel by Markus Zusak. I checked it out from the library last Thursday and finished it (500-plus pages) on Saturday. I could not put it down. It’s a fairly easy read, being YA, but the speed with which I got through it was more because of the author’s skill in drawing me in. I could not put it down. When I did put it down I was disappointed and found myself thinking about it and wanting to pick it up again. I spent all Thursday after work on the couch, reading it, and telling myself that I am actually doing work when I’m reading, because after all I’m a writer and you’ve got to research others’ styles/see what’s out there/fill your creative well, right?
And it was educational. The Book Thief has an omniscient narrator, which is something I’ve been struggling with. I am about halfway through a draft of a new novel, but I’m struggling. I have stopped the forward momentum in order to revise what I have, and one thing that I’m having a hard time figuring out is the voice. For a while I tried to write it in Close Third, because we have 5 different characters whose perspectives will be given. So when I write a passage with the 10-year-old girl, it should sound a lot different than the passages of the grizzled veteran detective who has seen it all, even though they’re not first-person narratives. The passages of the 10-year-old girl are more energetic, generally happy, because the narrator is kind of “sitting on her shoulder” and seeing what she sees. But I don’t want it to be exclusively Close Third. When you’re doing true Close Third, the voice always has to be that character’s voice; you can’t state anything the character wouldn’t know herself, which is really limiting. I decided for a while that I would write in Omniscient Third, and in a fit of learning frenzy I got Anna Karenina, a well-known Omnisicent Third book, to see how they handled it. As I suspected, the different passages tell us what everyone is thinking; there’s one voice throughout (the anonymous narrator). So I tried that, and it didn’t work; it came across as “head hopping,” which is annoying. In another learning frenzy, I ordered a bunch of How To Write books. They are surprisingly helpful. (They are also helpful for making yourself feel like you’re procrastinating when you’re really working—the best of both worlds!) One of the books (whose title escapes me and I can’t look it up, because I didn’t bring it with me) talked about the range of voices and suggested that you don’t have to fall heavily into one category. There’s Omnisicent, and First-Person (“I did this, I did that”) and Third Person (“She did this, she did that”) and Close Third Person (“She did this, she did that, darn it all to heck!” – a shout-out to my Utah peeps)…but there are also shades of gray, if you will. The authors of this book described it as a pendulum that swings between things. You can do Close Third Person and insert the occasional “Darn it all to heck” if that’s what your character would be thinking, but you don’t have to stay 100% there. You can swing out of it occasionally, back and forth; the key is consistency. If you’re going to swing back and forth, don’t just do it once; it has to happen with enough regularity that the reader won’t say, “Where did that come from?” Or so I have concluded.
So this is part of the reason that The Book Thief is so interesting to me: the writer has chosen Death as the narrator. The book is set in Germany in World War II, so Death was hovering over everyone, and saw everything. It’s only logical that Death would know what people were thinking, know their hearts, know what’s good and bad about them. (I have a short story with a different-and-yet-slightly-similar conceit, so this was even more interesting to me...and I'm thinking of making it into a book, so I may read this again just for "research.") Death is telling the story of a young girl named Liesel who is given up into foster care when she’s 10. Her younger brother dies on the trip to the foster family's town, and from then on she has nightmares. Her foster father, Hans, comforts her every night when she wakes up screaming from them, and when he realizes she’s almost illiterate, he teaches her to read. When they buried her brother, Liesel saw a book on the ground, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, and impulsively stole it, and that’s what Hans uses to teach her.
This is just the beginning…the book takes twists and turns and gets incredibly deep. I finished it on the plane, glad to be sitting in a window seat so I could turn away from prying faces as I literally cried at the end. I will occasionally tear up at the end of some books, but only very, very rarely do I break down. At the end of this book, I just wept. It was amazing. It was a great lesson in Omniscient storytelling and it was touching beyond belief. If you haven’t read this book—whether you want to learn or just read a good book—please, please, please read it. You won’t regret it.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Can't...stop...baking....
So I was in a “fruity” mood for this next project. I didn’t want to spend quite as much time in the kitchen, so I looked for a couple of not-as-difficult/time consuming recipes. I settled on a lemon cake (simple) and a pear tart (because I already had half a crust recipe). One was amazing. The other was blah.
I’ve come across a couple of problems with this cookbook. Sometimes, um, it’s not edited so well. Pictures are there that are only tangentially related to the recipes. (I mentioned the multicolored/flavored maracons whose recipes aren’t provided.) Equipment gets put in the Ingredients column. Or ingredients…get left out.
I looked at some of the reviews people have left on Amazon. Someone mentioned, in her review, that in a recipe for a genoise cake, they omitted the flour entirely. I checked in the recipe. Yes, sure enough, there’s no flour mentioned in the ingredients column. Bizarre. Over on the next page, there’s a section at the end of the recipe that says, for a 6” cake, use x grams of flour; for a 9” cake, use y grams, etc. But…I don’t know, shouldn’t that be, maybe, AT THE TOP OF THE RECIPE? Or, if not at top, shouldn’t there be a directive that says, “Flour…for exact amount, see page z”? Hmm.
I ran into a similar problem with the lemon cake. It was a cake in a similar vein to a genoise, wherein you beat egg whites separately (not to stiff peaks, happily, given my last experience with that) and then fold the rest of the ingredients into that. It makes for a light and fluffy cake. I was excited. I did everything they said to do, until it said, “Fold dry ingredients—flour, sugar, baking soda—into the egg white mixture.” Um, problem: in the ingredients list, it mentions sugar only once, and then it says that this sugar is to be beaten into the egg whites. So I stared. Do I divide up the sugar? Do I add more? The body of the recipe says to add sugar twice, but it’s only listed once. What to do? I don’t want to risk a sickeningly sweet cake (one other problem with the macarons that I made was they were way too sweet)…hmm.
I ended up only putting in as much sugar as the ingredients list called for. I beat most of it in with the whites and some of it in with the dry ingredients. And then I baked the cake. And it was drab.
Now, the texture was amazing. It was fluffy as a cloud. I couldn’t have asked for a better texture. But a good texture doesn’t make a great cake, obvs. I made a lemon glaze whose recipe I stole from my roommate, and forked the cake and drizzled it over. Then the part of the cake that was glazed was very tasty. And the rest was a fluffy, boring cloud. I was eating a piece and I said, “You know, this would be a great base for something. Like berries and cream.” The roommate agreed. If I had had berries and cream in the house I would’ve gotten them out immediately. But I didn’t, and I never bothered to go buy them. Instead I brought the cake to work on Monday, where “drab” isn’t a big problem; the issue is “free food” and everyone is happy to eat free food, particularly when it’s homemade. I’ve sloughed off some pretty crappy dishes here. Ssssh.
Item number two: the pear tart. This recipe also did not say to use half a recipe of the pate sucree, but since I had half left over from the apple tart I only used half and it was perfect (and, dare I say it?, probably what was intended).
There was an almond filling that was easy to make: almond flour (again the pricey almond flour! Good thing I have that specialty baking shop), sugar, butter, an egg. Maybe something else, I can’t remember. But I mixed that up and then spread it in the crust. Easy.
I poached the pears in a mixture of white wine ($8.50 for the cheapest bottle! It’s a good thing I don’t drink. I can’t afford it.) and apple juice (to make up for the missing bottle of white wine; the recipe called for 2, but a quart of apple juice is only $4) with sugar, vanilla beans, and lemon juice. Boil that together then put in peeled pears and boil them for half an hour. Slice in half, scoop out the seeds and the fibrous center, and you have poached pears.
I then sliced up the pears into tiny crosswise slices and spread them out over the filling, and covered the exposed almond filling with sliced almonds and baked. In baking I experienced my first injury related to this project, as I let my finger touch the hot oven rack, darn it. And then—thanks, reflexes!—I dropped my picture-perfect raw tart on its side and ALMOST over on its top. Had it gone onto the top I would have cried, but as it was I merely let fly a couple of bad words; I just lost the extra almonds, which were easily cleaned up and replaced with fresh ones.
And the tart was wonderful. How could it not be? I got to eat half of one of the poached pears (there was only space for five of the halves) and by itself it was amazing. A poached pear; who would’ve thought? My friends, the ones with whom I’m sharing the excess bounty (I really want not to gain weight with this whole experiment, no matter how much fun I’m having), loved it. One of them said, “This is the best yet.” And I think I agree with him.
I’ve come across a couple of problems with this cookbook. Sometimes, um, it’s not edited so well. Pictures are there that are only tangentially related to the recipes. (I mentioned the multicolored/flavored maracons whose recipes aren’t provided.) Equipment gets put in the Ingredients column. Or ingredients…get left out.
I looked at some of the reviews people have left on Amazon. Someone mentioned, in her review, that in a recipe for a genoise cake, they omitted the flour entirely. I checked in the recipe. Yes, sure enough, there’s no flour mentioned in the ingredients column. Bizarre. Over on the next page, there’s a section at the end of the recipe that says, for a 6” cake, use x grams of flour; for a 9” cake, use y grams, etc. But…I don’t know, shouldn’t that be, maybe, AT THE TOP OF THE RECIPE? Or, if not at top, shouldn’t there be a directive that says, “Flour…for exact amount, see page z”? Hmm.
I ran into a similar problem with the lemon cake. It was a cake in a similar vein to a genoise, wherein you beat egg whites separately (not to stiff peaks, happily, given my last experience with that) and then fold the rest of the ingredients into that. It makes for a light and fluffy cake. I was excited. I did everything they said to do, until it said, “Fold dry ingredients—flour, sugar, baking soda—into the egg white mixture.” Um, problem: in the ingredients list, it mentions sugar only once, and then it says that this sugar is to be beaten into the egg whites. So I stared. Do I divide up the sugar? Do I add more? The body of the recipe says to add sugar twice, but it’s only listed once. What to do? I don’t want to risk a sickeningly sweet cake (one other problem with the macarons that I made was they were way too sweet)…hmm.
I ended up only putting in as much sugar as the ingredients list called for. I beat most of it in with the whites and some of it in with the dry ingredients. And then I baked the cake. And it was drab.
Now, the texture was amazing. It was fluffy as a cloud. I couldn’t have asked for a better texture. But a good texture doesn’t make a great cake, obvs. I made a lemon glaze whose recipe I stole from my roommate, and forked the cake and drizzled it over. Then the part of the cake that was glazed was very tasty. And the rest was a fluffy, boring cloud. I was eating a piece and I said, “You know, this would be a great base for something. Like berries and cream.” The roommate agreed. If I had had berries and cream in the house I would’ve gotten them out immediately. But I didn’t, and I never bothered to go buy them. Instead I brought the cake to work on Monday, where “drab” isn’t a big problem; the issue is “free food” and everyone is happy to eat free food, particularly when it’s homemade. I’ve sloughed off some pretty crappy dishes here. Ssssh.
Item number two: the pear tart. This recipe also did not say to use half a recipe of the pate sucree, but since I had half left over from the apple tart I only used half and it was perfect (and, dare I say it?, probably what was intended).
There was an almond filling that was easy to make: almond flour (again the pricey almond flour! Good thing I have that specialty baking shop), sugar, butter, an egg. Maybe something else, I can’t remember. But I mixed that up and then spread it in the crust. Easy.
I poached the pears in a mixture of white wine ($8.50 for the cheapest bottle! It’s a good thing I don’t drink. I can’t afford it.) and apple juice (to make up for the missing bottle of white wine; the recipe called for 2, but a quart of apple juice is only $4) with sugar, vanilla beans, and lemon juice. Boil that together then put in peeled pears and boil them for half an hour. Slice in half, scoop out the seeds and the fibrous center, and you have poached pears.
I then sliced up the pears into tiny crosswise slices and spread them out over the filling, and covered the exposed almond filling with sliced almonds and baked. In baking I experienced my first injury related to this project, as I let my finger touch the hot oven rack, darn it. And then—thanks, reflexes!—I dropped my picture-perfect raw tart on its side and ALMOST over on its top. Had it gone onto the top I would have cried, but as it was I merely let fly a couple of bad words; I just lost the extra almonds, which were easily cleaned up and replaced with fresh ones.
And the tart was wonderful. How could it not be? I got to eat half of one of the poached pears (there was only space for five of the halves) and by itself it was amazing. A poached pear; who would’ve thought? My friends, the ones with whom I’m sharing the excess bounty (I really want not to gain weight with this whole experiment, no matter how much fun I’m having), loved it. One of them said, “This is the best yet.” And I think I agree with him.
Friday, March 26, 2010
An awesome post...(not mine)
For all writers out there, check this out.
http://www.hankstuever.com/blog/?p=1541
My stuff looks like that half the time (I also print out on hard copy and make edits with pen), and they're my own marks!
http://www.hankstuever.com/blog/?p=1541
My stuff looks like that half the time (I also print out on hard copy and make edits with pen), and they're my own marks!
Monday, March 22, 2010
More baking trickery
So the adventures in baking continue. For Week Two I decided to do an apple tart and a brioche loaf. Even though there was some consternation with the recipes themselves, the final product, to quote one obnoxious Food Network personality, was Yum-O.
So I did the brioche first. Brioche are usually baked as individual rolls, in this cute little scalloped muffin-sized cup. I chose not to buy the cute little muffin-sized cups because I’m already spending plenty on ingredients (and a kitchen scale, lest we forget) and there was a variation in the book where you could just roll them and put them in a loaf pan and bake that way. The dough itself was incredibly stiff and difficult to work with, and I was honestly worried about my Kitchen-Aid there for a while. It couldn’t mix the dough completely; it kept bumping up and down and making straining noises. I didn’t lock it, because I wanted it to be able to bump if it needed to bump, but it was still unnerving. My roommate came in and, knowing my concern for my kitchen items, kept saying, “Kathy? Kathy?” I didn’t answer—not because I was concentrating so hard on the brioche dough, but because I didn’t know how to answer. She told me I ought to stop and not break my Kitchen-Aid, but I soldiered on. And it didn’t break the Kitchen-Aid, thank heaven (I truly would have been heartbroken). And the brioche was goooooooood.
So it wasn’t complicated, it was just worrisome. I let the dough “proof” in the fridge for four hours, then rolled it into the rolls and let it rise for an hour, and then baked. I burned myself a couple of times getting the rolls out, because I was hungry and impatient and I am a big bread fan. I pulled apart the rolls and stuffed one in my mouth and I just can’t tell you how good it was. Transcendent, really…light and fluffy and buttery and had a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth crust…mmmm. I baked half of the recipe into one loaf, and I was glad because after they cooled down they were still nice, but really just dinner rolls. I rolled them out two or three at a time for the rest of the week to eat them hot. It worked for three days, and then the last day they were heavy and didn’t rise. Sigh. Good eating takes work.
I also did an apple tart, which was delish as well. And it made for a terrific breakfast the next day. I made the pate sucree dough, a whole recipe, just like the tart recipe said to do. It also said to use the whole recipe. The pate sucree recipe itself said it made enough for two 9-inch crusts, but one would think that the apple tart would say, “use half a recipe for pate sucree” rather than “make a recipe for pate sucree.” Ah well. I rolled out the whole recipe and tried to put it in the 9” tart pan and realized the whole recipe would take up the entire pan. Fortunately the pate sucree recipe did say that it freezes well for up to a week, so I cut it in half and stuck half in the freezer.
The apple tart itself was amazing. Very simple: an apple compote with diced apples on bottom, sliced apples on top. The apple compote had apples, water, sugar and vanilla bean and I just boiled them until the apples were soft; then sliced several apples into thin slices and decorated the top. Baked it, then brushed it with apricot jam. Easy. And wonderful.
The bigger concern this week was that my foot started giving me problems. I am assuming it was plantar fasciitis, which is an irritation of the bottom of the foot that makes standing and running painful. This is a problem because I am now consuming huge quantities of fatty desserts. If consuming huge quantities of fatty desserts, one must be able to exercise if one wants to continue to fit into one’s pants. And I do. So I bought an ankle brace that was a semi-torturous device that inflicted more pain, but it did calm the heel enough that I could do yoga on Friday and go running both Saturday and Sunday, when it was gorgeous outside. I hope the pain stays away so I can keep exercising and therefore eating huge quantities of fatty desserts. Because, oh yes, there’s more to come.
So I did the brioche first. Brioche are usually baked as individual rolls, in this cute little scalloped muffin-sized cup. I chose not to buy the cute little muffin-sized cups because I’m already spending plenty on ingredients (and a kitchen scale, lest we forget) and there was a variation in the book where you could just roll them and put them in a loaf pan and bake that way. The dough itself was incredibly stiff and difficult to work with, and I was honestly worried about my Kitchen-Aid there for a while. It couldn’t mix the dough completely; it kept bumping up and down and making straining noises. I didn’t lock it, because I wanted it to be able to bump if it needed to bump, but it was still unnerving. My roommate came in and, knowing my concern for my kitchen items, kept saying, “Kathy? Kathy?” I didn’t answer—not because I was concentrating so hard on the brioche dough, but because I didn’t know how to answer. She told me I ought to stop and not break my Kitchen-Aid, but I soldiered on. And it didn’t break the Kitchen-Aid, thank heaven (I truly would have been heartbroken). And the brioche was goooooooood.
So it wasn’t complicated, it was just worrisome. I let the dough “proof” in the fridge for four hours, then rolled it into the rolls and let it rise for an hour, and then baked. I burned myself a couple of times getting the rolls out, because I was hungry and impatient and I am a big bread fan. I pulled apart the rolls and stuffed one in my mouth and I just can’t tell you how good it was. Transcendent, really…light and fluffy and buttery and had a wonderful melt-in-your-mouth crust…mmmm. I baked half of the recipe into one loaf, and I was glad because after they cooled down they were still nice, but really just dinner rolls. I rolled them out two or three at a time for the rest of the week to eat them hot. It worked for three days, and then the last day they were heavy and didn’t rise. Sigh. Good eating takes work.
I also did an apple tart, which was delish as well. And it made for a terrific breakfast the next day. I made the pate sucree dough, a whole recipe, just like the tart recipe said to do. It also said to use the whole recipe. The pate sucree recipe itself said it made enough for two 9-inch crusts, but one would think that the apple tart would say, “use half a recipe for pate sucree” rather than “make a recipe for pate sucree.” Ah well. I rolled out the whole recipe and tried to put it in the 9” tart pan and realized the whole recipe would take up the entire pan. Fortunately the pate sucree recipe did say that it freezes well for up to a week, so I cut it in half and stuck half in the freezer.
The apple tart itself was amazing. Very simple: an apple compote with diced apples on bottom, sliced apples on top. The apple compote had apples, water, sugar and vanilla bean and I just boiled them until the apples were soft; then sliced several apples into thin slices and decorated the top. Baked it, then brushed it with apricot jam. Easy. And wonderful.
The bigger concern this week was that my foot started giving me problems. I am assuming it was plantar fasciitis, which is an irritation of the bottom of the foot that makes standing and running painful. This is a problem because I am now consuming huge quantities of fatty desserts. If consuming huge quantities of fatty desserts, one must be able to exercise if one wants to continue to fit into one’s pants. And I do. So I bought an ankle brace that was a semi-torturous device that inflicted more pain, but it did calm the heel enough that I could do yoga on Friday and go running both Saturday and Sunday, when it was gorgeous outside. I hope the pain stays away so I can keep exercising and therefore eating huge quantities of fatty desserts. Because, oh yes, there’s more to come.
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