writing

Peaches, books, and three Girl Scout bites

/ Shellie / 4 Comments

Well, I didn’t get to spend as much time at the Texas Book Festival as I would have liked. I made it to the festival on Saturday afternoon and caught a bit of Scott Westerfeld‘s panel before running over to the cooking tent to meet up with a friend for Deborah Madison’s presentation. For those that are interested in such things, Deborah Madison is the author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and Seasonal Fruit Desserts, the latter of which I picked up at the festival after Madison said she wanted to write a dessert cookbook that anyone could use. I’m an easy sell like that. Besides, after staring at that gorgeous tart on the cover for an hour, I was completely under its spell.

The panel also included several local organic growers who spoke about the challenges of organic farming. Perhaps the most interesting (for me anyway) was the fact that the mass production of food has changed the collective palete. Madison cited research that revealed that to the majority of people under 35, the idea of a soft, juicy peach is repulsive. That blows my mind. Even more mind blowing is the fact that this is the new standard for commercial peaches. If the consumer wants a firm, dry peach, the industry will give it to them.  (And apologies for being all vaguey about this, but I wasn’t taking notes and now I’m paraphrasing and my GoogleFu is not strong today.) And makes me very sad, but you know what?I think there’s hope.

My mom, bless her, was (and still is not) a fan of cooking. As such, my childhood palate was pretty much defined by Hamburger Helper and canned green beans. For years I thought green beans were disgusting. But when I got interested in food and cooking my own, I began to acquire a more diverse palate. I wanted to learn more about what food was supposed to taste like. I’m in my thirties now and, while I can’t shop at the farmer’s market as much as I’d like, I’m a much more conscious eater and cook.

There’s a lot of debate these days about the quality of young adult fiction and whether the current titles are encouraging teens to read more but also setting lower standards or limiting their palate for literature, if you will. This is not a new debate by any means. During my MFA program I constantly heard complaints about the “trash” kids and adults were reading. Any mention of John Grisham or the Harry Potter series was met with groans and scowls.  My peers worried that if people develop a palate for commercial fiction, literary fiction would “die” and then who would be there to preserve the “good” writing?  And while I recognize it’s totally snobby and elitist, I can’t side-eye it too much since during my single years one of my dealbreakers was anyone that thought The DaVinci Code was the Best Book Ever. You say hypocrite, I say, it’s complicated. It’s… a peach.

One one hand, yes, anything that sparks an interest in reading and books is great. Say what you will about Twilight or Harry Potter, but I know several people that got interested in reading again because of those books and then went on to read The Hunger Games trilogy and other books. Books they may never have sought out if something hadn’t happened to spark their interest in reading. What I find problematic are that some readers never explore new kinds of writing. They find something that they’re comfortable with and that they like and they don’t try anything else. Much like that soft, juicy peach, the idea of experimental literature or short stories or poetry is alien to them.

Despite my mother’s aversion to cooking, she did instill curiosity in me. If she (or, more likely, someone else) put something in front of me that I was skeptical of, she insisted I take three bites. “Three Girl Scout bites” she called it, though I have no idea how Girl Scouts figure in there. Anyway, if after three bites, I still didn’t like it, I didn’t have to eat it. Now, I was a kid, I learned quickly how to exploit the hell out of this, but that’s not really the point. The point is that I tried something. And I made some interesting discoveries because of it. Fried okra, for example, rocks. And fresh green beans are superior to the canned variety and easy to cook, too. And the discoveries continue to come. Just recently I’ve discovered I love vegetarian cooking – that it’s not all about cheese and tofu.

I’ve made similar discoveries with reading too. In fact, I am where I am today because during one trip to the bookstore I decided to bypass the literary fiction and check out the YA section. I picked up Sarah Dessen’s Someone Like You and was hooked. A couple of years ago, a friend suggested I check out Scott Pilgrim and after some hemming and hawing about manga, I read it and fell in love. This is how diverse palates are made. By not dismissing anything without trying it.

I admit that when I heard that thing about the peaches, I was shocked, appalled, and a little grossed out. When I went to the grocery store yesterday, I may have actually scowled at the peaches. But I refuse to believe all hope is lost – for the peaches or for readers. As long as there are farmers markets, there will be a soft, juicy peaches. And as long as there are readers trying and recommending new books, there will be diversity in the bookstores. Hey, if I can grow up on a palate of hamburger helper with a side of Sweet Valley High and turn into a foodie and a voracious reader, then there’s hope right?

‘Fess Up Friday: The FAIL week

/ Shellie / 6 Comments

Well, that didn’t go well.

Remember last Friday when I was all, “Tra-la, tra-la! I’m feeling better and birds are singing and sickness will not get me down?” Well, I spoke too soon. Friday was fine. Great, in fact. On Saturday, I felt like I’d been trampled by a herd of elephants in my sleep and the feeling did not go away until Wednesday afternoon. Whatever it was that I got last week was not through with me yet.

So I guess I answered my own question. Yes, writers take sick days. I ended up taking a sick week, since the minute I actually started feeling better, I had to run all the errands and work on all the paying assignments I’d put off since Saturday, including a critique of a fantasy piece that has me all excited for my crit partner. Work on my own projects definitely fell by the wayside, but I took a lot of heart in a comment Adina West left last week about how watching a good film or two counts as inspiration for later writing. This is so true. I draw a lot of inspiration from films and television shows. To me, a well-told story is a well-told story; it doesn’t matter if I read it or watch it. It even makes me a little sad when people, especially other writers scoff at television as if it were a lesser medium. I feel sad for everything they’ve missed out on: The Wire, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, just about anything written by Joss Whedon…

What tv shows, movies, or other forms of media inspire you? Comics? Art? Puppets?

And on that note, I managed to do a lot of reading and watching television this week. Here’s what I

Read:

  • The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
  • The Wishbones, Tom Perotta
  • Seth Baumgartner’s Love Manifesto, Eric Luper

Watched:

  • 30 Rock, Season 4 (Yeah, the entire thing. I mentioned I was sick, right?)
  • Friday Night Lights, Eps. 4×1 – 4×6

And a reminder for any of you Austin (or nearby) types out there that might be reading this. The Texas Book Festival is this weekend at the Capitol. The author list is pretty amazing: Laurie Halse Anderson, Scott Westerfield, Holly Black, Justin Cronin, Varian Johnson, and well, too many to name. I plan to be out there for as long as my health holds up. You can follow me on Twitter for updates.

Happy Writing!

 

‘Fess Up Friday: The sick day edition

/ Shellie / 5 Comments

‘Fess Up Friday coming up just as soon as I . . . a – A – ACH-OO!

The week started out productively enough. I restarted this blog, I did some work on my work-in-progress, I finished up a couple of critiques, and I read like a fiend. By Wednesday I was happily trucking along, making big plans for the rest of the week. I could easily churn out another 1,000 words on my WIP. I could finally sit down and polish my query. But then on Wednesday night, I was sniffling and coughing. By Thursday afternoon, I was zombiefied and wondering, do writers get sick days?

I’ve always wondered this. At my corporate job, it wasn’t even a question. If I felt bad or the least bit contagious, I’d call in, maybe check my email, and spend the rest of the day recuperating on the couch with my kitties and a healthy dose of reality television. It’s a sick day, right? It’s meant to be spent vegging out and melting your brain. But since I quit corporate to write full time, I don’t know how to handle these days, as evidenced by the crushing guilt I felt flipping between Netflixed episodes of 30 Rock and Arrested Development. (Okay, maybe the guilt wasn’t crushing, but every once in a while I definitely felt like I should be writing.) At the same time, my brain was definitely switched to Off. Reading didn’t hold my concentration and my one attempt at the WIP resulted in just moving a couple of articles around.

I’m curious about how other writers handle sick days. Do you write through the headache/fever/cold? Do you try to do something productive but not taxing, like visit blogs or do agent research? Do you just scrap it all and set up shop in front of the television?

For the record, I’m feeling better today. Definitely closer to 60% human, I’d say. Unfortunately, I lost a morning to de-germifying the sheets and house even though Hubs seems to have it, too. I see more Lysol in my future, I’m sure.

 

Okay, now for the fun stuff.  It’s Friday, what is Chicklit…

Reading:

  • Room by Emma Donoghue
  • Bras & Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski
  • After the Kiss by Terra Elan McVoy

Watching:

  • Mad Men, “Hands and Knees”
  • American Teen
  • The Greatest
  • Iron Man 2

 

Happy Writing!

From the “I Wish I’d Written This” Department:

/ Shellie / 2 Comments

Margo Rabb’s “How to Tell a Story.”

Even though it’s not possible that Margo and I were in the same MFA program, this story feels so true to my experience (right down to the sentiment/sentimentality lecture) that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that she was sitting right next to me all that time.

I discovered the story years ago, just before my third year in the program. I thought it was so dead on that I sent copies to classmates with the subject line, “OMG! Is she talking about us?!” In the years since, it has served as a reminder that I’m not the only person who had an F’ed up MFA experience. There are plenty more of us out there, and God Bless us all for surviving it.

Linkage: What Makes Bad Fiction

/ Shellie / 1 Comment

Ward Six writer J. Robert Lennon recently posted a list of what makes fiction bad (in his opinion) and invited others to share their complaints. I tried coming up with my own list of complaints, but could only think of one:

Fiction that puts artiface or style over the story. There’s a book I started reading recently that had an unusual narrator. That part didn’t bother me, but this narrator was frequently interrupted by vague poetic observations that were usually written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. These observations were so intrusive, they kept pulling me out of the world of the story and reminding me that the author was trying something very clever. I hate that. I like to be lost in a story. I like to forget that a novel even has an author, so if the story is mainly a conduit for the style (instead of vice versa) it’s going to leave me cold.

Anyway, I encourage both readers and writers to check out the original list and the discussion that follows. I think we can all benefit from being able to talk about why we don’t like a novel or story instead of simply saying that we didn’t like it.

Operation Domesticity

/ Shellie / 4 Comments

We interrupt this writing day to bring you … bread.

A few months back, I decided to put my domestic skills to the test and bake a loaf of bread. But, even I know that my domestic skills suck, so I went with the easiest bread recipe ever. The results were okay. It was tasty, but my bread ended up much less substantial than expected and, frankly, a little airy and chewy. That, however, did not stop Hubs and me from eating every last crumb.

When I mentioned that I tried the recipe, my friend Karin told me that Cook’s Illustrated had improved it and so I proceeded to badger her for a copy until she finally brought it last week. Turns out it’s available on the internet. Whoops.

So, feeling the urge to be domestic again (and looking for any excuse to avoid a painful revision), I decided to test the 2.0 recipe. The result was much better. Not at all airy and completely substantial. It had more flavor and the crust was slightly thicker and crispier, which is just the way I like it. From now on this will be the recipe I use to impress people with my mad baking skillz.

Here’s what you need:

A couple of modifications on my part. First, the Cook’s Illustrated version calls for all-purpose flour, but why use all-purpose when you have bread flour? I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference, so if you only have all purpose on hand, use it.

Second, the recipe suggests using Budweiser for your mild-flavor lager. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but I simply will not buy Budweiser. Too many bad college memories. I chose the Sierra Nevada Summerfest Lager. It wasn’t bad, but I’m open to suggestions.

Here’s how ridiculously easy the recipe is. Once you’ve gathered everything up, mix up your dry ingredients in a large bowl and then pour in all your wet ingredients and combine until you have a shaggy ball of dough. So easy. After that, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, finish the rest of the beer, and wait 18 hours. At this point, I probably should have gone back to the revision, but instead I read a book.

Anyway, the rest of the recipe is just as simple as the first part. Place a sheet of parchment paper in a shallow skillet (I used my Lodge 10-inch skillet) and lightly spray it with cooking spray. Then remove the dough from the bowl and knead it into a small ball. Put the ball in the skillet, cover with plastic wrap, and wait another two hours.

With all this waiting you would think I could be doing a lot of writing. You would think that, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong.

About 30 minutes before you’re ready to bake the bread, set your oven at 500 degrees and put your dutch oven in to heat up. The recipe suggests using an enameled cast iron, but I used my trusty Lodge. Then find every potholder you ever owned and get them ready. You’re going to need them. After the pot is heated, transfer the bread to the pot by using the parchment paper. Genius idea, really. Just don’t burn yourself. Then reduce the heat to 425 and bake with the lid on the dutch oven for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for another 20 minutes.

Using your gazillion potholders, remove the bread from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

And here is were I worry that the Cook’s Illustrated editors are smoking crack. You’re supposed to let the bread cool to room temperature for about two hours. Two hours!? Seriously? Have you smelled warm bread? Do you think it’s possible to resist the craving to taste warm bread once you have smelled it. Let my clue you in, it isn’t. Wait as long as you can, but I only lasted 10 minutes

That small disagreement aside, I think this recipe is a huge improvement over the New York Times version. Very tasty and much less complicated. (Not that the NYT version was complicated, just that this one is so much easier.) Also, cleaning up for this recipe means washing one bowl. That alone is enough to win my loyalty.

A note about the beer. When I first read the recipe, I was concerned about the beer addition. My mother occasionally makes beer bread and the combination is just not my thing. I was pleased to note that this bread was not beery at all, but that the beer did seem to boast the flavor. You can use non-alcoholic if you so choose.

So Operation Domesticity was a success this time around. Operation Revise that crappy story, not so much.

Source: Cook’s Illustrated.

Linkage: Why Writers Can’t Go It Alone

/ Shellie / Leave a comment

(via Matt Bell)

This Guardian article gets a big amen from me:

The literary world only bestows acceptance, it seems, on those who are published through the traditional avenues. Independent and small presses get short shrift – national newspaper supplements seem loath to review indie books, the big high street sellers won’t stock them, unless the books are about the tough lives of mill girls or histories of public house names, which can be shoved on a shelf marked “local interest”.

<…snip…>

But there’s a sea of dross in the worlds of pop music and movies, too. Quality rises to the surface there, so if the literary industry can relax its perceived inherently snobbish attitude to the output of anything other than the established, traditional publishers, perhaps the same will happen with independent, small press and even self-published books.

Someday I’ll be brave enough to publish my rant/bitch/whine about the stigma of self-publishing in the literary writing world. I think it’s becoming clear that in the current book market, traditional venues are losing ground. In the meantime, read the The Guardian’s take on the subject.

Living in a Powder Keg and Giving Off Sparks

/ Shellie / 4 Comments

Hubs finally got a Playstation 3 last weekend. I say finally because before we started dating, the man had aspirations of getting a PS3. Three years ago he bought his entertainment center specifically so it could eventually house the PS3. But all the fun in shopping for Hubs is spending years looking for the best deal and agonizing over whether the price will drop or a new version will be released and so he waited and waited and waited. Well, the wait was over last weekend when he decided that there wasn’t going to be a better deal before Christmas time and his desire to play Lego Indiana Jones and Assassin’s Creed outweighed the need to wait for another price drop. He came home on Sunday night with both the PS3 and the Indiana Jones game.

So of course, I ran out the next day and bought SingStar.

For those of you who are not familiar with the goodness that is SingStar, it’s essentially a karaoke video game. You sing along with the song and score points for timing and pitch. All the while, the music video plays in the background. The game is so friggin’ addictive that we already have SingStar 80s, SingStar Rocks, and SingStar Pop for the PS2 and SingStar for the PS3. We need help, people.

But by and large, the most fun thing about SingStar is the WTF?! factor of some of the lyrics and videos. To that end, I submit Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” video. Now, keep in mind that I came from a household that did not have MTV until the 90s. The only videos that I got to see were the ones that eventually made it onto NBC’s Friday Night Videos and I’m pretty sure I never saw that one because when we played the Bonnie Tyler song, I lost 2000 points simply because I could not stop laughing. Ninjas, high school swimmers and some freaky angel looking guy… this video has it all.

Enjoy.

P.S. My utmost respect to whomever can tell me what that video is supposed to be about.

Memeage: The Magic MASH Machine

/ Shellie / 2 Comments

I am so thankful for my wonderful friends who find glorious online time wasters and share them with me. Today’s find: The Magic MASH Machine.

For those of you who were not blessed with playing MASH in junior high (i.e. boys), it’s a wonderfully silly game where you list all your crushes (plus one or two duds), all your dream jobs (plus one or two duds), all your car choices, kid choices, dream city choices, etc. and then wait for the hands of fate to determine your future. And by hands of fate, I mean, the girl that sits in front of you in Social Studies who counts out the answers and who may or may not be cheating thereby making you end up married to the class clown, Sammy Melcheck, instead of to Alan Peterson, for whom you KNOW you are truly destined.

Ahem. . . No hard feelings, Laura.

Anyway, there is now an online version of the hands of fate. I believe it only slightly less biased than Laura Dyer. My results:

You will marry Freddy Rodriguez. [1]
After a wild honeymoon, you will settle down in Deluth in you fabulous Apartment.
You will have 0 kid(s) together.
Your family will zoom around in a Seafoam Green Chevy Nova.
You will spend your days as an Acclaimed Air Guitar Champion, and live happily ever after.

If you are so inclined, leave your fate in the comments.

________________
[1] It totally came down to either Freddy or Meatloaf. Whew!

Linkage: “Confessions…”

/ Shellie / Leave a comment

Via Jade Park: “The confessions of a semi-successful mid-list author“

If you don’t want to hear about the noir underside of publishing — if you’re a writer longing for a literary career, or a reader who’s happier not knowing that producing and marketing a book these days involves about as much moral purity as producing and marketing a pair of Nikes — I suggest you stop reading now.

The above linked article is not a cheerful read. I’ve had a long rant coming on the publishing industry, the death of reading, and the stigma of self-publishing. I’ll see if I can’t get that up in the next week or so.