Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's Blog, page 7

Where the Wild Stories Are: How to Find Great Ideas for Your Writing

One of the
questions I'm asked frequently when I give talks is this: Where do you get the
ideas for your stories?  Often I sense a
certain pensiveness in the questioners, as though they were thinking, if only
I, too, had access to that wondrous and magical land where stories come from!

Well, my answer to that
question may seem somewhat simplistic and pedestrian, but it's something I
really believe. Stories are all around us, like invisible spores in the air. We
just need to have the eyes -and often the ears--to discover them.

It also helps to believe that every
life is important, worthwhile, and dramatic in its own special way. That's something I feel strongly about.

[image error]

When I was writing my first
collection of stories, Arranged Marriage,
I got a lot of ideas from just listening to other people's conversations. I
would go to an Indian dinner party and sit in the corner and eavesdrop. That's
how I picked up the line which occurs early in the story "Affair" ("You know,
of course, that Meena is having an affair!") 

Eavesdropping is a great
technique. I recommend it to all writers!

Sometimes we just need to
be willing to listen. People are often hungry for a patient and respectful
listener. They want to tell someone what has happened in their lives. They want
someone who will give them attention, who will not judge them, who will try to
feel empathy for what they have undergone. A friend once told me that soon
after she arrived in America, her husband was shot in a store robbery. Her
story touched my heart. I thought of how terrified she must have been, so
alone, so far from home. That became the kernel of my story "Clothes," though I
was careful to change the actual circumstances and to create a set of very
different, imaginary characters.

The idea for my novel Sister of My Heart came to me during a
visit to my hometown of Kolkata, on a day when I wasn't thinking about writing
at all.  I happened to see an ancient
marble mansion being torn down to make place for a high-rise apartment
building--something that happens quite regularly nowadays in India.  Even as I recognized the necessity for this
change, I felt a deep sorrow. Something important was passing out of our
culture, a whole way of life, a different definition of family. It gave me the
impetus to begin the story of two cousins who live in a house like the one that
was being torn down: their adventures as they push against the boundaries
erected around them, and what happens when they fall in love with the wrong
men.

[image error]

Stories are all around us.
Right now I'd bet there are a dozen possible stories floating around you--things
you've seen at work, or on a bus, or at a party, or at your child's school, or overheard
while waiting in a visa office. But you have to be vigilant so you can
recognize them and capture their energy. And then you have to write them down,
even a few words, even the roughest of notes, so they don't evaporate. Because
stories will tend to do that.

That's why a writer's
notebook is so important.

There are other places we
can find stories.  Books, newspapers,
movies, photos, songs. More about that in another post.

 

 

 

Nostalgic Cuisine, or the Immigrant's Delight: An Indian Bitter Gourd Recipe from One Amazing Thing

When I lived in India, I
disliked bitter gourd with a passion. I thought it an unnatural, dangerous,
distasteful vegetable, with its ridged skin not unlike the hides of alligators,
its large, hard seeds that cracked and lodged between your teeth, and its acrid
bitterness that remained in your mouth no matter what you ate afterwards. My
mother thought otherwise. The result was many tearful mealtime struggles.

[Click on this link http://www.pbase.com/selvin/image/28924093
for an image of a bitter gourd, also called bitter melon.]

So I am well aware of the
irony in the fact that today bitter gourd has become one of my favorite
vegetables, and that I try to present it in various palatable disguises to my
own children.  This has resulted partly
because I've developed a taste for its unique, tangy bitterness and partly
because I'm now aware of its health benefits. (It can help people with diabetes,
toxemia, obesity, high blood pressure, and eye and skin problems, among
others.) But mostly it is because of nostalgia, because the taste brings the
India of my childhood back to me. In this, I believe I'm not alone. Food is an
easy way to transport our culture to a strange land, and transport ourselves
back to familiar landscapes at the same time.

In my novel One Amazing Thing, Uma's parents, who
live in America, constantly cook the dishes of their youth, although they also add
a new cuisine to their repertoire--another skill the immigrant must learn. "They
celebrated weekends with gusto, getting together with other suburbanite Indian
families, orchestrating elaborate, schizophrenic meals (mustard fish and fried
bitter gourd for the parents; spaghetti with meatballs and peach pie for the
children)."

Fried bitter gourd can be
made in many ways in Bengali cuisine. Here is a simple version.

Thinly slice bitter gourd into
circles (2 cups worth). Rub with 1/4 t turmeric. Add salt to taste. Put aside
for an hour. Squeeze out excess water. (This makes it less bitter).

In a pan, add enough oil (I
use Canola) to cover the bottom. Fry the bitter gourd slices on medium heat
until they are crisp and brown. Add red pepper to taste.  (I add a ¼ t). If you want to reduce the
bitter taste further, mix in a ¼ t. sugar. Drain on paper towels.

Eat with hot rice.

For a complete meal, this
first course can be followed by chochhori (a mixed vegetable dish) and a
chicken yogurt curry, ending with mango ice cream for dessert.  All these recipes are on this blog.

Enjoy! 

Do you have your own
recipes for bitter gourd? Or other nostalgic dishes from your childhood? Please
post--I'd love to know of them.

Creating Powerful and Memorable Characters: Using Voice

One of my favorite methods
of creating characters is the use of voice--how a particular character speaks or
thinks.  Before I begin writing, I try to
hear the character in my head. If I'm lucky, I'll come up with a memorable
sentence right away (even if ultimately that doesn't appear in the beginning of
the book). Then I ask myself, what makes this voice different from the other
voices in the book? That helps me understand the character more deeply,
with his or her motivations. Then I ask why. Why does this character speak/think
like this? What might have happened in his or her life that has caused this
voice? And that gives me backstory.

For instance, my novel
Sister of My Heart has two narrators, Sudha and Anju, who are cousins and best
friends. It was important for me to distinguish them  clearly, as much of the irony in the novel
rises from how differently each young woman interprets and reacts to the events that occur in
their joint-family household. These are the opening sentences I came up with:

Sudha: "They say in
the old tales that the first night after a child is born, the Bidhata Purush
comes down to earth himself to decide what its fortune is to be. . . . That is
why they leave sweetmeats by the cradle. Silver-leafed sandesh, dark pantuas
floating in golden syrup, jilipis orange as the heart of a fire, glazed with
honey-sugar. If the child is especially lucky, in the morning it will all be
gone."

Anju's is: "Some days in my
life, I hate everyone." (She follows this with a catalogue of who she hates and
why--basically everyone except Sudha, whom she considers sister of her heart).

These first sentences set
me on the course of portraying Sudha as slightly dreamy and a believer in
tradition and destiny, and Anju as a rebellious and headstrong iconoclast.

Here are a couple of other
writers who are consummate creators of voice, each in a different way.

Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City: "You are not
the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.
But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar
although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a
shaved head."

Tagore, Home and the World: "Mother, today there
comes back to my mind the vermillion mark at the parting of your hair, the sari
which you used to wear with its wide red border, and your wonderful eyes, full
of depth and peace."

You might also want to look
up Tim O'Brien, "The Things They Carried," Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son, Sandra Cisneros, The
House on Mango Streeet,  Bharati
Mukherjee, Desperate Daughters, and
just about anything by George Saunders.

Voice can be addictive. And
it can have its downfalls. More about that in another post!

Writers in the Schools, Houston, Poems on my Facebook page, and an Amazing Poem by a 3rd grader

Friends, Poetry month is in full swing--a great occasion for us to nurture our inner poet.
In honor of the occasion, I'm putting up lines from my favorite poets on my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/chitradivakaruni, and inviting readers to do the same. Some we have so far: Milton, Tagore, Akhmatova, Wu Men, Wordsworth, Robert Burns, Frost, Swinburne, Emerson, Maya Angelou. Please come by and add yours.

Today I was sent a poem by Writers in the Schools (WITS). This is a great Houston organization
promoting creativity and literacy in Houston Area schools. I've blogged about them before. (Many of our
University of Houston Creative Writing graduate students teach for them.) They sent me this poem -- by a 3rd grader!! I
certainly wasn't putting together work like this in 3rd grade--were you?
Congratulations, Camille--and kudos to WITS! If you like the poem,
please post a comment for our young writer below. And check out WITS at http://www.witshouston.org/.

Collage

The cage was covered in an
elegant cloth,
with a practical bird
inside.
The sign was actually a
picture,
with a person fleeing
in the forest.
To the villagers this was
common, as ordinary
as can be.
A miracle was
necessary, to have
a success.
A sound reflected
in the silence
from the shallow
water,
a ripple
made a gentle
sound,
an equal to the world's
finest picture,
the freshness of justice
and the evergreen
scent of nature.
Fire never wanted
a truce with water
but thought it was
foolish otherwise.
Oh, the wonders!

by Camille, 3rd grade

Regional Indian Cuisine: Chocchori, A Favorite Bengali Vegetable Recipe

Friends:

My novel Oleander Girl, which I've been working on for a long time, is finally
completed, edited, revised, and sold! The publisher is Free Press, an imprint of
Simon and Schuster. I am really looking forward to working with them, especially as Martha Levin, the publisher, was my wonderful editor at Anchor Books when I began my writing career with Arranged Marriage and Mistress of Spices! Oleander Girl
will come out in March 2013. I'll blog about more details once I have them, so
watch this space.

So
now I'm back to my sadly neglected blog, and ready to write on topics that people
have asked me about. I thought I would start with a recipe from my part of
India--Bengal. This is a staple dish which I grew up eating. As you might know, although people talk
about Indian food as a category, the regional cuisines of India are quite diverse. In
restaurants, you will usually be served a smattering of North Indian dishes, often from Punjab, or a few South Indian ones, often from Tamil Nadu. You will rarely
find food from Bengal. So here's a dish for you. The 5 spice mix in the recipe, panchforan, is
very typical of Bengal, and gives the dish its distinctive taste. This
spice-mix is ayurvedically balanced and is supposed to be extremely healthy. Bengalis
are also known for adding a little sugar at the end into their dishes, so you can experiment with that.

 

Bengali
Chocchori

This is a mixed vegetable dish and can
be made with all kinds of vegetables, along with some potatoes. Carrot,
cauliflower, spinach. Sweet potatoes. Drumsticks. Broad beans. Green  beans. Banana squash. Chayote squash. Even bitter melon. Basically whatever's in season, and
whatever you like. I made it with potato and 3 different kinds of
squash--zucchini, yellow crookneck, and calabash.



Chop 4 large potatoes (don't peel--the peel adds a special authentic flavor)

Chop all the squash (8-9 of them; don't peel)

Chop 1 large onion, or 2 medium onions (white or purple--purple has a stronger
flavor).



In a large pan, heat about 2 T oil (I use Canola, but any kind of vegetable oil
will do), add one dry red pepper and 1/2 teaspoon panchforan. (Panchforan is a mix of 5 spices: cumin, fenugreek,
mustard, black cumin and fennel--2 parts of cumin, one part of each of the
others. You can mix about 1/2 a cupful and keep it in an airtight container for future use. Sometimes Indian stores will have it ready-mixed). When they sputter, add 1/2 the chopped onion.
Brown onion, add chopped potatoes. Add salt, ½ tsp. turmeric and chili powder according
to taste. (I add ½ tsp. chili powder, which makes it fairly spicy). Cook until
golden-brown & almost done. May sprinkle with water to aid cooking and
cover for a while.



While potato is cooking, in another pan, heat 2 T oil, add 1/2 teaspoon
panchforan, and one dry red pepper. When they sputter, add rest of the onion.
Brown onion; add squash. Add 1/2 tsp. turmeric, and salt and chili powder
according to taste.(I put ½ tsp chili powder, which makes it fairly spicy.) Cook
until golden-brown & almost done. May sprinkle with water to aid cooking
and cover for a while.



Add the cooked squash into the potatoes. Add 3/4 tsp sugar ( you can add more
or less according to taste) --white or brown. Mix in well. Cook for about 5 more minutes. Should be moist but not watery.  Serve with hot rice.

To make this into a
complete meal, you can serve it with the following dishes, recipes for which
are all on this blog: pakora appetizers (Dec. 4, 2009), yogurt chicken (May 13,
2010), and mango ice cream (March 10, 2009).

I'd love to hear from you.
If you try the recipe, let me know how it turns out. If you have regional
dishes of your own that you'd like to share with readers on this site, that
would be wonderful. If you want to find a particular recipe, let me know. You can also post
your comment on my facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/chitradivakaruni.

Crucial Writing Tip: Don't Fall Out of the Fictive Dream

As writers we often experience writer's block. We just don't know which way the plot should go next. Or we feel that an idea we were very enthusiastic about and envisioned clearly no longer excites us. Or a character that we felt we understood in a deep and truthful way is beginning to fade or stiffen. What has happened in these cases? I believe we have fallen out of the fictive dream.

John Gardner in his wonderful book on writing, The Art of Fiction, which I strongly recommend, describes the fictive dream beautifully:

"In the writing state--the state of inspiration--the fictive dream springs
up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page
and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting
through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting
mousetraps, loading pistols. . . . When the writer writes down on paper what he
has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind
from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when
the dream flags he can reread what he's written and find the dream
starting up again. . . until reality,
by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead."

We want to keep ourselves from falling out of this dream because, once we are out of it, it is difficult to re-enter. Sometimes we may never manage to find that magic space again. Coleridge's unfinished marvel of evocation, "Kubla Khan," is a cautionary tale for us all.

What then can we do to remain in the fictive dream? One of my suggestions to my students is to revisit the dream as often as we can, with as little a gap between visits as our lifestyle allows. This means we have to write--or at least contemplate our work-in-progress--regularly. My experience--with myself and my M.F.A. students--is that if you are away from the work for over three days, the intensity of the vision--and thus the intensity of the desire to capture it--begins to fade. I've seen this happen to extremely talented writers. They abandon one work and go on to start a new one, hoping to sustain the fictive dream. But unless they implement a plan to keep the new dream alive, it too will wither away.

The bottom line: create a writing schedule and stick to it. I suggest at least 3 times a week. Every day (at least the weekdays) would be preferable. At least an hour at a stretch. If it's possible to do it at the same time each day, it helps. (Once we develop the habit, it's almost as though we get hungry for writing at that time).

Some of you are thinking, I just don't have that much time. I have a lot of other responsibilities. How can I carve out all those hours from a life that's already hectic and over-scheduled?

I'll write about that soon. Stay tuned.

Different writers write differently--I'm very aware of that. I'd love to hear how you keep your fictive dream alive and well.

Guest Post: More books to Help Your Writing: Donald Maass, Shantaram and Chinua Achebe

Friends, I'm starting a series of guest posts by talented young authors who have studied widely and thought deeply about the craft of writing.

Here is the first one, by Mike Kerlin.
 
"Tension on every page" is what literary agent Donald Maass reminds writers new and old when he signs their copies of his book Writing the Breakout Novel. 
As a non-fiction writer, I wasn't sure if his book was for me, but, the
more I read Maass's book, the more I realized every reader loves
tension and every writer can convey it.  That's because every life, in
fact or fiction, ripples with aspiration, conflict, and obstacles.  To
understand just how important tension is to the fiction author, Maass
went through and analyzed years of fiction bestsellers.  What he found
was that the bestsellers had one big thing in common: they combined fine
literary "voice" with good old fashioned storytelling that keeps
readers on the edge of their seats.

 
How can writers crank up the tension in our books?  First comes a
breakout premise--what Maass describes as "a fictional world that exists
convincingly, wholly and compellingly apart and unto itself."  It's the
"big idea" of your book that has four key ingredients: plausibility,
inherent conflict, originality, and gut emotional appeal.  Many new
writers fall into the trap of relying on originality alone, but we need
all four ingredients to make our premise work.  Then we must make sure
the stakes are as high as possible. That means mixing high personal
stakes for the protagonist with high public stakes, something big that
humanity as a whole stands to gain or lose.  With strong premise and
stakes in place, Maass moves on to time and place. Make them important,
unique, and detailed, he says.

 
True tension springs to life in characters, though.  Maass believes
our protagonists should be sympathetic, strong, likeable people, but
also complex.  Antagonists must bring complex personalities to the
conflict too.  To convey our characters' complexity, we can try listing a
bunch of their core motives and then writing a few scenes in which they
pursue reverse motives.  Conflicted characters are tense characters, so
our readers read on.  But our readers also need to see their newly
beloved characters endure some compelling plot twists.  Maass claims
most writers shy away from the truly tense plot twists that readers
crave most.  To get there, we should ask ourselves, "What is the worst
that can happen?"  Then Maass tells us to make it even worse--kill our
favorite supporting character, create major crises in the core plot and
subplot, crank it up until we feel uncomfortable writing it.

 
Once our premise, setting, characters, and plot are pulsing with
tension, we need to add Maass's beloved "tension on every page."  First,
that means cutting any slow piece of our story.  Maass says, "How many
coffee breaks does your protagonist take in your current story?  Any? 
Cut them out?"  Sounds easy, right?  Just make our books big
shoot-em-ups with one cliched cliffhanger after another.  Not so fast! 
Maass has high standards for just what kind of tension sits on every
page.  He tells writers to make their most tense scenes more compelling
by breaking them into pieces, like movie stills, and then describing,
for each piece, the surprisingly ordinary sights or counter-intuitive
thoughts that pass through our protagonist's eyes and minds.  Even then,
a reader may not love every page if they don't fall in love with the
"voice," that elusive piece of writing craft that no one can define but
everybody wants.  Maass says, "Voice is more than style.  It is infusing
yourself in your story."  He also tells us to "become impassioned about
your story" and "express convictions through your characters."

 
How do all of Maass's tips come to life in a real book?  Let's take Shantaram,
the Bombay epic by Gregory David Roberts.  The premise has us hooked
immediately: an escaped convict from Australia trying to make a life for
himself along the shadier edges of Mumbai.  The stakes roll straight
from the premise and easily keep us hooked: Will the protagonist turn
his life around?  More broadly, is redemption possible?  We newer
writers keep hearing that our characters need to go through a
transformation.  So we think Roberts has it easy.  The protagonist will
just go from bad to good.  But, as if he went through Maass's "reverse
motive" exercise, Roberts, early on, shows his protagonist healing
slumdwellers in one scene and then selling drugs to tourists in the
next.  The tension escalates slowly, but we stick with Roberts because
we are confident the payoff will be big.  It is, but we'll avoid
spoiling the fun for anyone who has yet to read Shantaram.


Does good tension always require drugs, organized crime, slums,
knives, and guns?  If we zip south and then ride the tenth parallel to
West Africa, Chinua Achebe proves over and over the power of context and
character to drive tension.  My favorites among his books are Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, and Anthills of the Savannah.  In all three books, the huge public stakes provide plenty of tension: creeping political and religious colonialism in Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God and then the long shadow of that colonialism in Anthills of the Savannah.  Okonkwo, in Things Fall Apart, and Ezeulu, in Arrow of God, are both strong, likeable characters, and yet an inner weakness (pride, perhaps) escalates the tension.  Chris Oriko, in Anthills of the Savannah,
appears weaker sooner, on the other hand.  As Achebe carries these
characters through his books, he could teach a whole Donald Maass
workshop on depicting "What is the worst that can happen?"  Indeed, the
reader eventually learns to read on, not for quick resolutions of each
plot twist but rather to get to the next turn for the worst.  Achebe
could easily rely on contextual forces alone for this effect, but it is
through his rich characters that he hooks us to the history lessons
behind his work.


I finished How to Write the Breakout Novel and revisited Shantaram
and Achebe's books determined to crank up the tension in my own
writing.  I also promised myself to pause and admire the power of good
stories, in real life and imagined life.

Michael D. Kerlin is an international management consultant and freelance writer.  He is a columnist for The Rio Times in Brazil. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Inquirer,
and several other publications.  Michael is currently at work on a book
about Rio de Janeiro's favelas and a memoir about his father, a
philosopher.

Creating Powerful Characters

A while ago, a reader on my Facebook Author Page asked how one goes about creating effective characters. Here are some thoughts--and a few examples from books I've enjoyed.

1. The character should be dynamic and driven by a strong passion. So it's a good idea to give the character a powerful desire, something he or she wants so badly that it will drive the action. An example is Balaram, the protagonist in Adiga's The White Tiger. He wants power & money. He wants a taste of the life the rich are living all around him. A very different example is Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. She wants to be loved by Ashley even after he marries another woman.

2. The character should be interesting, so either this desire should be something out of the ordinary, or it should be something archetypal (like love or riches) that is made specific  and striking because of the character's nature and his/her way of looking at the world. Again, in The White Tiger, as Balaram broods on the gulf between the rich & poor, it embitters him and leads him to violence. Scarlett's desire, heightened by obstacles and her own obstinate nature, leads her to unwise and risky actions, such as professing her love to Ashley even after he is married, and keeping him and his wife in her home.

3. The character should rouse the audience's sympathy or empathy--and also their admiration. This can be because of his/her challenging situation, or because he/she possesses special characteristics.
An example: Elizabeth, the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Her difficulty: she has a foolish mother who causes her much embarrassment. She has numerous sisters who need to be married off. Her father is not rich. Her talent: she is smart, brave, unaffected, humorous and knows her own mind.

4. The character should grow and change--mostly positively, though sometimes, in tragedies, this change can be negative and thus very powerful. Conflict is a major vehicle of such change. This conflict can be with another character, with the situation in which the character finds him/herself, with society, with internal values, etc. Conflict with Darcy changes Elizabeth as the novel progresses, making her angry and confrontational.

Character change also occurs as a result of maturity, or because of a sudden understanding of a truth. Again, Elizabeth learns certain things that cause her to fall in love with Darcy, whom she hated earlier. In Tolstoy's novella Master and Man, Vasili the landowner at first is completely insensitive to the needs of his servant Nikita. But by the end of the work--which only encompasses about 24 hours, his attitude has changed completely. It's a great story--so if you haven't read it, I don't want to give the ending away!

There's obviously a lot more to creating characters, which I believe lies at the heart of good fiction, but this is a start. Of course, good characters may be created in many different ways. It depends on the kind of book we want to write. These are traditional methods. If we're writing experimental fiction, we'll need a different approach.

I hope you find this useful. I would love to hear about your methods for creating characters, or fictional characters that you have enjoyed, so please do write in with comments.

Indian Rice Pudding: a Recipe from Sister of My Heart & a Tribute to Mom

Friends,

Many of you have been discussing my novel Sister of My Heart on my Facebook page, and also telling me that you want more recipes, so I thought I'd combine them in this post! Additionally, it's a tribute to my mother, who passed away in 2010.

Do let me know if you like it, & if you have your own variations.

This recipe was published in a book titled Table of Contents: Recipes and Inspiration from Today's Top 50 Authors, eds. Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. Check them out at www.bookclubcookbook.com

A Sister Of My Heart Special: Payesh (Bengali Rice Pudding)

In
my novel Sister of My Heart, when Anju and Sudha, the two cousins who
are the protagonists of the book, are still little, their aunt, Pishi,
cooks several special desserts for them. This one, payesh, is very
traditional in Bengal, the part of India where I come from and where
Sister of My Heart is set. It is also a dish that my mother was famous
for. But whereas hers used to take a half-day to make, I've given you a
shortcut recipe.

Makes 8 servings

Note: The payesh
consistency should be fairly thick, and it may take a little longer
than indicated to achieve this thickness. Keep in mind that the payesh
also thickens as it cools.

3 cups half-and-half (fat free or whole)

1 cup whole milk

3/4 cup basmati rice, washed & soaked for 1/2 hour

1 cinnamon stick

4 cardamom pods--peel & crush the seeds. Discard peel.

1 cup granulated sugar or brown sugar (according to your taste). More if you have a sweet tooth

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped peeled almonds

Rose Petals (if desired)

1.
In a non stick pan, bring half-and-half and milk to a boil. Add rice (drain it first), cinnamon stick, cardamom. Cook on low, stirring often to prevent sticking,
until rice is soft and milk thickened. (30 to 45 min). Some friends do this in a large container in the microwave oven, but I haven't tried it that way myself. (I tend not to use microwaves for cooking).

2. Add sugar, raisins and almonds. Cook on low heat another 10-15 minutes until the mixture is thick. (Keep in mind it will thicken more when cooling).

3.
Payesh can be eaten warm or chilled. Sometimes I sprinkle rose petals
on the chilled version just before serving. If refrigerated, it keeps
for 5-6 days.But probably it will not last that long because it is terribly tempting!

Like I said, I'd love some feedback if you try it out.

More Books to Help Your Writing

Friends who write poetry asked if I had a recommendation for them, and I do.

An excellent craft & ideas book for poets is The Poet's
Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio
and Dorianne Laux. They are both wonderful poets themselves.
I also recommend reading what's getting published and what's winning awards; I've always learned a great deal by analyzing actual texts, looking at themes, images, sentence lengths--everything I could think of.

Prizewinning anthologies that I've found valuable:

For fiction, Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories
For poetry, Best American Poetry
For fiction and poetry: the Pushcart Prize Anthologies.

In my early writing years, I would buy these, read and re-read them and mark them up. I'd spend a long time with each story, looking at a different element each time, such as Setting or Dialogue.I'd mark these things up with different colored hi-liters.This made it easier for me to discern patterns.

Hope this is helpful. I'd love to know about your favorite craft books/ anthologies and your methods for learning from them.