Marian Allen's Blog, page 482

Writer's Tools, Cooking

I am not obsessed with food. I am not! I am not! Okay, maybe a little. But it serves me well.

Many long years ago, while browsing the library shelves (remember libraries? remember bookshelves?), I came across Reay Tannahill's FOOD IN HISTORY. I checked it out so many times, my husband bought me my own copy.

More recently, while I was writing the Culinary Chronicles column for World Wide Recipes (the best darn recipezine in the whole darn universe), I bought Michael Symons' A HISTORY OF COOKS AND COOKING.

Both of these are great, for someone who writes historical fiction or fantasy.

Historical fiction, obviously. If you're writing about the Civil War, you don't want the General to say, "Corporal, these men are hungry. Here, take my credit card and don't come back without a wagon-load of Egg McMuffins!" Not that you have to have an entire chapter or scene centered around what people eat, but just a line or a word can, as was said in Gilbert and Sullivan's THE MIKADO, "lend artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

Same thing for fantasy. You can 1) decide what level of technology and what geography and what available sorts of plants and animals your people have and then look up something comparable in history for details or 2) browse the books for something interesting and work your world-building around it.

Both of these books are great for writing. I've used both of them–the first more extensively, obviously, since I've had it longer; in fact, the whole premise of one story began with a bit of history I read in the second book, which told me something about the history of cooks and cooking I never knew before.

Finding out things I never knew before is one of my favorite things to do. When I have to sit in a waiting room, I sometimes go for magazines appropriate to my interests, but I also love to pick up FIELD AND STREAM or CAR AND DRIVER or MULE FANCY or something totally outside my experience. I read the letters to the editor and the ads, as well as the articles. It's a great way to expand your base of possible characters!

But that's another post.

WRITING PROMPT: Open a history book at random and read a few paragraphs. Write a logline (one-line summary) of a story built around that information.

MA

Sample Sunday, A Bizarro Flash

[image error]This is the first story I sold. It was to an awsome on-line magazine, no longer with us, alas, with the wonderful name of Bovine Free Wyoming. Here is how awesome it was: this is the picture on their masthead. Is that swell, or what?

This story was another writing exercise at a Green River Writers retreat, so you see why I like to go to those.

Anyway, here it is:

Caffeine High

by Marian Allen

My mother hasn't been out of the house for two months. She hasn't left the kitchen for a week. She takes sponge-baths at the sink. She wears a barbecue apron while she washes her clothes in the dishwasher and dries them in the warming oven.

Through the window, I watch her scrub counters, sweep, and mop the floor, amazed she can find so much to occupy herself in such a small territory. Nights, I sit outside the shed; the lit window glows like a television screen — reality show with the sound turned down.

Every day or so, she slips a grocery list out the window, and I go for supplies. She makes me frappacinos; I drink them until the top of my head unhinges and my brain flies above the roof, down the chimney, and sits at the kitchen table across from my mother, and we talk again.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

WRITING PROMPT: Write a character who can leave his/her body and interact with people in his/her astral form. What would he/she do?

MA

Fun With Catalogs

Not Victoria's Secret. Quite the contrary. For some reason, my mother gets a catalog from an outfit called Living Grace: Affordable Church Supplies Since 1948.

Now, this might not sound like much fun to you, but I'm here to tell you, I was rolling on the floor. This catalog is AWESOME!

Did you know, you can get your very own crown of thorns? 6″ diameter, boxed. It's regularly $20, currently knocked down to $9.99. You can get enough ashes to anoint 500, too, for only $13.99 a bag.

Is it wrong for this to send me into whoops?

You can get an eight-piece resurrection set, including a tomb with a roll-away rock door, an angel, three astounded women, two astounded men, and Jesus — No, wait a minute, I have to show you this. Here is the picture.

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I totally want this. I would make the guy in the black robe be all, "No way! You did NOT see the risen Lord! You're just making that up. It always has to be about you, Mary Magdalen, doesn't it?" And then Jesus would come up behind him and be all up in his grill and go like, "Don't be dissin' my homies." And then he'd throw the guy in the black robe into the tomb and close it up and not let him out until he said, "Uncle!" and "I'm sorry! Mary Magdalene rules and I drool!" and, just for fun, "For the love of God, Montre[image error]ssor!"

You can get a wooden cross made to be gripped — No, look at this:

You could put a world of hurt on somebody, whacking him with that fist.

You can get clergy shirts with collars (insert collar for clergy shirts now on sale for $0.99 each). Imma have a non-clergy character buy some clergy shirts. Or maybe a burgundy coronation tapestry chasuble with matching inner stole, tailored for a beautiful drape with Velcro® side closures for non-slip fit.

Okay, there are some really good things in here, from church supplies to tooky little gifts. Fun to browse.

If you want to browse, too, go to the Living Grace web site and browse away. I'm keeping Mom's catalog because I just can't bear to give it up.

WRITING PROMPT: Would your main character want an action figure set of the primary moment of his/her religious tradition? What would he/she do with it?

MA

Friday Recommends

First, the best story exercise generator EVAR!! Bonnie Neubauer's StorySpinner. I love this thing. I totally used it to generate the basic springboard for PICKLE IN A PEAR TREE, my 2010 NaNoWriMo project. While you're on her site, hit the Home button for links to her writing books, exercises, workshops and more.

As I said earlier in the week, I did an article for The Blood-Red Pencil on publishing for Amazon AND Smashwords, with additional links in the comments section.

Another recommendation for the Writer's Knowledge Base. This is Elizabeth Spann Craig's collection of the best articles on the web for people who write and for writers who want to publish. AWESOMESAUCE!

You know me and tiny/storybook/odd houses. If you don't know me and tiny/storybook/odd houses, I'll tell you: I love them. Perhaps inordinately. Look it up. Anyway, I just stumbled onto this web site for Coober Pedy, Opal Capital of the World. That alone is enough to make me drool, but even better is the "architecture". Check it out!

Finally for this Friday, a great site for people who want to explore being vegan, for themselves, for loved ones or for a character. VegWeb has articles, recipes and a forum, so you can ask questions of real people who are also exploring or proficient in vegan living.

WRITING PROMPT: Look out your window. Focus on one thing. Describe it minutely.

MA

I Love Google Maps

Last Sunday, I posted a sample of "The Dragon of North 24th Street". The North 24th Street in that story was nothing like the real North 24th Street; I just liked the name. I lived on North 24th Street for years, in my youth, in the Lamburtus (Lamburtis?) Apartments. Here is what it actually looks like:

View Larger Map

Coolio! I got to go back to my old stompin' grounds and walk around. I got to walk down the cross-streets, but I didn't get to go up the back. I was most pleased, though, to see that I had remembered the entrances to the back correctly from both ends. This was so awesome!

This is sort of where Lonnie and Tiny, of "Lonnie, Me and the Hound of Hell" and the upcoming "Lonnie, Me and the Battle of St. Crispin's Day" grew up.

WRITING PROMPT: Use Google Maps to go someplace you remember and see if your memory holds up or, if it doesn't, what changes your memory made.

MA

Fun With White Sauce

All right, calm down. You know me–all flash and no dash. Besides, this is food day on the blog, so this is about, like, recipes and stuff.

White sauce, known to the haute cuisine crowd as béchamel and to the home cookin' crowd as milk gravy, is versatile and, made properly, um yum. And it's easy to make, if you do it right. Here's a recipe to make slightly less than a cup of sauce:

WHITE SAUCE

1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour
1 cup milk

Melt the butter over medium-low heat. Remove from heat. Stir in flour. Return to heat, stirring constantly, until flour and butter are thoroughly combined and cooked–a few minutes. Remove from heat. Add milk, stirring well to blend butter/flour with milk. Return to heat. Increase heat to medium and stir constantly until milk is hot through, thick, glossy and bubbly.

If you want the sauce thinner, use more milk or less butter/flour.

If you try to do this too fast, it'll be lumpy. Some people want you to heat the milk before you add it, and that does make it happen faster, so do that, if you want to. It's more important, if you're making a larger batch of sauce than a smaller batch, obviously.

NOW. What can you do with such a sauce? You use it as one of the sauces in some versions of lasagna. You can use it in place of tomato sauce for a white pizza (topped with white cheeses, diced chicken and bacon). You can begin by frying a little chopped-up sausage meat, draining off most of the grease, and using the grease left in the pan in place of the butter; add lots of black pepper and pour the sausage gravy over split buttermilk biscuits and mmmmmmmm….

Also:

WELSH RABBIT (not "rarebit")

White sauce
cheddar cheese
Worcestershire sauce
toast

At the last minute of cooking, stir cheese into white sauce. Add a dash of Worcestershire sauce (some use beer, but why waste good beer by EATING it?). Ladle over toast.

Even better, make a HOT BROWN, which is toast topped with sliced turkey, cooked bacon and sometimes sliced ham (or, if you're vegetarian, avocado and fresh sweet bell peppers) topped with the Welsh Rabbit sauce.

And then there's our kids' favorite, SOS. Charlie says they used to have it in the army where, my grandfather told me when I was young, SOS stood for Same Old Stuff. Charlie disabused me of that misapprehension, but we let it stand with the kids.

SOS

white sauce
chopped meat (we usually used ham, but chipped beef is excellent)
toast

Add the cooked chopped meat to the hot sauce and serve over toast.

Or you can make a Dutch Baby or gougeres and serve the hot sauce over that.

So call it what you like, it's good stuff.

WRITING PROMPT: What does your main character whip up on a cold and snowy day with not many ingredients?

MA

February Update

It's the first of the month–FEBRUARY?!? ALREADY?!?–and I've put up a new Hot Flash. Click here to read it. Scroll down that page for January's, and links to previous years'.

I try to keep the Appearances and Reviews and Interviews pages current, as things come up, so nothing new there today.

"Lonnie, Me and the Battle of St. Crispin's Day" is almost finished, alas! I'm having so much fun with it, I don't want to be finished. Of course, when it's finished, it won't be finished. It'll still need a lot of work before it's ready to submit anywhere. That's fun, too. Big fistfight going on, right now. In the story, not in my office.

WRITING PROMPT: Write a fight scene.

MA

Writers Tools, Cut-and-Don't-Paste

I have a writerly flaw. Shut up–I'm just talking about the one today, okay?

The flaw for today is: I start the story too early. Plots are hard for me and, even if I have an idea of where I want the story to go, I need to sit down and start writing before the characters get comfortable in my head and come alive to me and move into the actions that take them to the climax of the story. I'm also an edit-as-you-go writer, which means that, by the time the action actually begins, I've put in considerable time and effort on the stuff I've already written.

This means that I'm invested in a lot of material I don't really need, and it's pretty nicely done. My friends and admirers (I do have them) like the writing in the beginning bits, and I'm encouraged to keep them in because the beginning bits DO establish setting, character, voice and resonate with the coming conflict.

But that doesn't mean those bits belong there, especially in a short story.

In a novel, you can afford to ride a bit on style–not long, but a bit. In a short story–especially a genre short story–not so much.

Not that every short story has to begin with somebody kicking down a door and striding in, guns and/or singing sword blazing, but….

Case in point: "Home on the Range" is a funny story. When anybody who has read it tells anybody else about it, they say, "It's about a talking, smart-mouth, pot-smoking cow." The cow doesn't come into it for a lo-o-o-o-ong time. I should have opened the story with the conversation in which the main character is warned about the "wild cow" in the woods by her new home. Then, when she finds the wild cow in her kitchen and learns that "wild" doesn't mean "undomesticated" but trash-talking and pot-smoking, there you go. But, no. I started way too far back, and the story lost impact because of it.

By the way, "Home on the Range" is in the Southern Indiana Writers Group's anthology, IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING.

If you're a writer who tends to write too much lead-in, remember your old pal cut-and-paste. Make a folder called Scraps or Cuttings or Bits & Bobs, and use it for all the beautiful writing or interesting bits you've written that slow down the story but are too good to delete. Maybe you can use them dynamically somewhere else, or maybe you can just run them through the fingers of your mind like so many jewels. But don't let them spoil your story before it starts.

WRITING PROMPT: Try to write a very boring scene. See how long it takes you to make it interesting in spite of yourself. Cut all the boring stuff.

MA

Sample Sunday, The Dragon of North 24th Street

Not the whole story, but a sample of it. Another sample is on the THE KING OF CHEROKEE CREEK page, because the story is included in that collection. "The Dragon of North 24th Street" appeared in the final issue of Marion Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine.

The story begins:

The Dragon of North 24th Street

by Marian Allen

In the year four-hundred-and-something, St. Patrick lured the serpents of Ireland into the sea with the playing of his harp. He may have sung a bit, too, I couldn't say.

And where did they go? Where else but America, like so many Irish after them. It wasn't America then, of course, but the land was there, if the name was not.

So they went to America, where they had room to spread themselves. They mingled with whatever native snakes they couldn't eat, the world turned on its axis and life went on.

Now, among the serpents was one who was so old he still had his four legs which, as you know, serpents lost after that business in the Garden of Eden.

This serpent was as long as the night before your wedding, as black as the inside of a cow's second stomach, and as evil as your sweetheart paints your friends. In fact, if this serpent wasn't a dragon, he would do until a dragon came along; and he was, in very fact, Beltran: the devil's own wicked uncle, the one the devil's mother never let the family mention when they came to tea.

Now, for sixteen hundred years (give or take a hundred), Beltran lay about, creating a general nuisance. He made his home beside the Ohio River, near the top of Kentucky, and, if he didn't start more fights between the settlers and the Indians than they started between themselves, I'd like to know who did.

But, in spite of him, the land was settled, and the city of Louisville grew up. Beltran retreated underground during a particularly rambunctious period in the city's history, when he felt his deviltry would only be superfluous, and took a nap of a century or so.

At last he woke. This was about 1934, I'd say it was. 1934 or '35. No, I tell a lie, it was 1933, and I'll tell you how I know: In 1910, a girl was born to Patrick and Mary Kelley, and they named her Pearl, and that girl grew up and married John Anthony Sullivan, and that very Pearl Sullivan was exactly 23 years of age at the time I'm speaking of.

So, in 1933, Pearl and Johnny Sullivan lived in a sort of a tenement on North 24th Street in the West End–that is to say, the "poor" section–of Louisville. Mind you, this was the heart of the Great Depression, and nobody had money, but it was still fashionable for folks in other parts of town to look down on the West-Enders.

Not that anybody who tried it would recommend putting on airs with Pearl–or any of the Sullivans, for that matter. "We're no better than anybody else," (so said the Sullivans), "but we're damned if we aren't every bit as good."

WRITING PROMPT: Put a dragon into a setting that is unusual or unexpected.

MA

Writer's Block, Schmiter's Block

It isn't that I never get blocked–I do. Often. For me, writing a story is often a lot like traffic gridlock. There I am, tootling along, on my way to my destination, sometimes on a deadline, and everything stops. Next thing you know, I'm sitting in stop-and-go traffic. Then I look out the window and see that the problem is some jerk who didn't want to sit at a red light, so he pulled into the intersection behind a line of stopped cars, and now the cars with a green light can't go anywhere because Jerkface is in the way.

Writing is like that. When I'm blocked, it's usually because something is in the way. If I can figure out what it is, I can use my god-like writerly powers to reach down from the heavens and pick Jerkface up and put him in that great time-out in the sky.

Except during NaNoWriMo, I seldom write full speed ahead. I usually write carefully and slowly, and what I've already done nags me and drags me until I have it good enough to go on. Sadly, that doesn't always mean it's good, just that I think it is. I'm learning to cut most of my lead-in, even if I've written it to my satisfaction, but I have to write it to my satisfaction first. Then I can go on.

Eventually, there comes a point at which the story flows. After that, if I get blocked, I know it's because I've taken a wrong turn. Somebody reacted inappropriately for no reason. I've told too much when the scene needs to be compressed, or I've glossed over a scene that needs to be opened up. I'm putting too much emphasis on something that distracts from what I want to emphasize.

During NaNo, I just make a note of this and write on, as if I hadn't made that mistake. If only I could do that the other eleven months of the year! Maybe I'll learn to do that, when I've been doing NaNo long enough. For now, writer's block is my friend; it helps me write the way I write, until I learn a better way.

Does writer's block torment you, or do you use it to help you write?

WRITING PROMPT: Put a character in traffic gridlock, as a perpetrator or as a sufferer.

MA