Taven Moore's Blog, page 2

One Step

What does one step forward look like to you?

When your goals aren’t simple and your dreams aren’t straightforward, it can be so easy to get hung up on parts of your journey you have yet to take.

But from right here, where you are standing now, what does a single step forward look like?

It doesn’t matter what your goal is. Doesn’t matter if you’re trying to clean your kitchen or start a family or write a book.

Because every journey is a collection of steps. Even if some of them are sideways, backwards, or straight into a pit trap — failure is another step on that journey.

For YOU. For YOUR dreams and YOUR journey … what does one step forward look like?

Once upon a time, there lived a young prince who loved cinnamon tea so much that they refused to go to sleep without a steaming mug. Their family despaired, for the kingdom was at war and cinnamon more precious than saffron.

Once upon a time, there lived a dragon who collected books instead of gold, and who cried herself to sleep at night because she herself could not read. A learned wizard stole her favorite book (so dubbed because it contained a great many beautiful illustrations) and in terrible retribution, she set fire to the countryside at regular intervals, decimating the cinnamon farmers nearby.

Once upon a time, there lived a wizard.

Once upon a time.

Poll 2: Of Bats and Wolves

Let’s hammer out a few worldbuilding elements.

I want to preface here that I use the terms “vampire” and “werewolf” sparingly — I may or may not choose to incorporate some very obvious references to either, but I will NOT be rehashing the same old werewolf and vampire power tropes that are commonly available.

In particular, alpha werewolves and irresistibly creepy vampires shall NOT feature.

However, I do like some aspects of both mythos.

Moreso than the poll, I am inviting you to verbalize your hesitations about the use of either trope in the comments — so if you think I might do something akin to “vampire” but you’re so sick of X, Y, and Z aspects of vampire stories, please please please comment and tell me. That way, even if I decide to go “vampire”, I can be a better writer and avoid those things that invoke a facepalming gag reflex in my readers.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Poll 1: The Protagonist’s Experience

Today’s poll will tell us a little about our new protagonist.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I’ve got an idea that lends itself to either, but I REALLY want to know if you, as a reader, are so incredibly tired of “modern human finds herself in an unfamiliar setting” style stories, or if maybe you love that trope and want to see more of it.

I haven’t yet decided on the unfamiliar setting itself (stay tuned for upcoming posts!) but I definitely want to know if I’m aiming at someone dragged from our world into another or if you’d rather read about someone already familiar with this “other” world.

I have a way I’m leeeaaaning towards writing, but I’d like to see what your collective thoughts are.

The REAL Question

The end result of all that mental wrangling from the last few posts is this:

I am strongly considering reviving my most successful long writing projects to date (Blue Moon for those who’ve known me a VERY long time, or Choose for more recent friends).

I don’t enjoy writing in a vacuum.

And my youthful enthusiasm towards Getting Discovered And Becoming An Author has dimmed.

It’s hardly as if I dislike my job, after all, so dreams which would have me not doing it tend to feel a little hollow. (But what if I make it BIG, I always ask myself. And yes, if I become the next J.K. Rowling, then sure. But the odds of that are so catastrophically out of my favor that I might as well start buying lotto tickets).

So! The only reasons NOT to do another chunk of serialized fiction is

I won’t be able to formally publish it afterwards. Not with the naked eyeballs of the entire internet free to peruse its every dirty little comma.

And the reasons TO do another chunk of serialized fiction are numerous.

I’m rusty, y’all, and I won’t pretend otherwise. I’d get up to speed on a “publishworthy” story, sure, but it’s pumping water from an old well at this point and I know it.
At this point, the word “publishworthy” tasks like dead ash and shattered glass. I’m sure that won’t last, but I want to write because my soul is on fire rather than because I dream of acclaim or fame. I miss writing just to WRITE.
I love. LOVELOVELOVE being able to share writing with folks and get their enthusiasm and happiness and enjoyment. Selfish to want it in the moment? So be it.
I have had success with serialized fiction in the past.
I LOVED the concept of Choose and encouraging my readers to add story seasonings I might not have chosen.
I like reading it. I know not everyone does, and I’m delighted to offer a purchasable book at the end — but I do enjoy the format. It’s something to look forward to on a regular basis. (I currently follow Ilona Andrews’s “Inkeeper” series as well as Charlotte E. English’s “Modern Magick” series)
My life is just not interesting enough to sustain this blog. I spent this weekend reading books and playing silly video games while my cats curled up in various impossible yoga positions around me. To me, that’s happiness — but it makes for one heck of a cobwebby blog.

I -could- split the difference and issue chapter updates behind password-protected posts … but then I lose discoverability and my blog stops being welcoming to the idle visitor. It becomes a cascade of “No Touchy” posts for anyone not in the “know” and that feels a bit squicky to me.

So! Without further ado, howsabout we start with a poll?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Lean UX – Applied to Writing

Finished a new work-related book called Lean UX.

A trimmed-down version of the Amazon description is as follows:

Lean UX has become the preferred approach to interaction design, tailor-made for today’s agile teams. […] how product teams can easily incorporate design, experimentation, iteration, and continuous learning from real users into their Agile process.

A bit dry, I know. And some of you may be thinking, “Okay, Tami. Just because YOU work on a Scrum team using Agile developmental principles that is striving to incorporate a more lean user experience methodology, that doesn’t mean -I- need to care about this book.”

Right you are, my bizarrely-buzzword-knowing friend. However … if you’re a writer, you may find some of these very problems, principles, and solutions to be eerily similar.

Diving right in ….

Vocabulary

I know, I know. I hate it when things start with vocab lists as well, but at the same time there are some concepts that make the discussion easier.

Waterfall Method – Doing all the planning up front, with the expectation that things will go more or less according to plan.

Agile/Scrum Method – Planning as needed, with the expectation that things will go cattywampus and the plan will need to be changed.

Businesses struggle to leave the seeming comfort of the Waterfall Method, but software developers gravitate towards the Agile Method because they deal with uncertainty in their code on a regular basis.

Lean UX

Where Does “Lean UX” fall in all this?

Well, in a software development framework, UX (or User Experience) is often quite difficult to fold into the mix.

UX asks, “How is this working for the user?” or, more to the point, “As this changes, how does it affect the experience the user is having?”

UX is also traditionally done in a Waterfall style. The experience, interface, screens — all the way down to the exact language to be used on a page — are often developed before a single scrap of code is written.

Integrating a cycle of re-examination and re-evaluation of the user experience at the same time as development is uncovering changes and business units are reacting to changes … well, that’s going from two strands to three.

So the purpose of the book is to talk about those difficulties and suggest solutions.

And the reason this matters in a WRITING context is because when you’re a writer, you’re the business unit, the developer, AND the UX professional.

Business Unit

As a business unit, you have a GOAL.

Writing just for fun? Maybe your goal is to “Write A Book”. (Refine that to “Finish a Book”. Refine it further to “Finish a Book That You are Proud Of” … on and on, but this post isn’t about refining goals, so I’ll stop there.)

Writing with intent to publish? Your goal may look more like “Write a Publishable Book”.

Already published? Your agent or publishing company may be helping you refine your goal.

Once you’ve got your goal, it’s the Developer and UX portions that take over actually implementing it.

Developer

This one’s easy. You’re the one banging out wordcount, encountering problems, and developing solutions. Most writers probably identify most strongly with the “developer” tag.

UX

The “UX” portion is the bit that cares the most about the user/reader experience. This is the part that wants to make sure a character comes across in just the right way. The one to make sure that the pacing is right, the drama is perfectly tuned, and the climax is worth feverish page-turning.

And just like with software development projects, it can be difficult to inject UX throughout the project life cycle.

As an excellent keynote speaker recently said at a UX conference I went to, user experience is like the blueberries in a blueberry muffin.

It’s really difficult to add them in after the muffin is baked.

Writing Development – The Scrum Method

Teaching

Hello and welcome again to Tami’s Teachery!

Tami’s Too-Long Tangential Teachery.

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls

When last we met, I regaled you with the definition of the Waterfall method of project planning. In this style of planning, most (if not all) of the requirements and details of a project are determined up-front before being handed off to actual development.

I likened this to the Plotting method of writing, wherein an entire novel (for example) is exhaustively planned before writing begins. The theory is that this will help the writer stay on task, minimize revision time, and work out plot bugs before they happen.

To be fair, they aren’t 100% similar. I would say most of the Waterfall projects I’ve been on have gone WAY beyond a basic outline when it comes to pre-planning projects. It would be more akin to handing a writer a heavy outline, character sheets, world building notes, conflict details for every scene, and …

Okay, nevermind. They’re pretty gosh-darned similar.

MOVING ON.

Agile

The Software Development community banded together and mutinously created Agile frameworks. The focus of Agile, in general, is to fail fast.

Bear with me.

Waterfall assumes that everything will go according to plan.

Agile assumes things are going to go awry.

If you begin with the expectation that failure will happen, you should (in theory) be able to respond to that failure in a nimble and (dare I say it) agile fashion.

Agile says “how fast can I get the absolute bare minimum out there?”

Agile takes a giant project and says “What can and should I be working on right now so that I get maximum failure and learning from it?”

Agile focuses on the next few steps toward the big picture.

Agile does NOT mean having no plan whatsoever. Agile does not mean a lack of deadlines or requirements.

But it does mean that those plans and deadlines aren’t fully fleshed out before the project has even begun. It means constantly producing work and being willing to learn from surprises (both good and bad).

Agile != Pantsing

Interestingly enough, although I feel like Waterfall equates fairly well with very heavy outlined Plotting, I don’t feel that Agile is the same as Pantsing.

Pantsing would be more like never really doing any planning whatsoever, while Agile usually has a pretty solid plan in place for the next two weeks, with a constantly evolving list of work stretching out towards the end of the project. The further away the work is from being worked on, the less refined it is.

Pantsing is more like saying “I’m going to build an app game similar to Connect 4” and just sitting down and working on it whenever you have time.

Like many good novels, you can get a good app that way, but a lot of it depends on how much experience and skill you have with writing apps. In my experience, you won’t find many businesses taking the Pantsing approach to product development.

Two Worlds Collide

So yes. Agile, while not perfect, certainly seems to be treading a line between chaos and militant order. And I think there’s something Tami-the-Writer can learn from Tami-the-Programmer.

Stay tuned next time for more thoughts based on the book “Lean UX” and how it can apply to writing.

Writing Development – The Waterfall Method

What do software development principles have to do with writing?

Rather a lot, actually! I’m finding the parallels fascinating, and I thought I’d bring you along on this learning journey.

(Bear with me here. I started a different post about how Lean UX principles and ideas can be applied to writing … and then I went off on a TamiTangent and my very first vocabulary word is long enough for its own blog post.)

Waterfall in Software/Project Development

Waterfall is the most common and oldest project development methodology.

(Spoiler Alert: It’s usually bad news, Bucko.)

It’s called Waterfall because it assumes a great amount of effort and work up front — all flowing downward to the releasable product at the end. It is literally a series of hand-offs.

Step 1: The business sees a problem they’re having. They debate solutions, do the cost/benefit analysis, and hand the winning idea off to a product team. They then sit back and wait for the seeds of their ideas to bear fruit.

"Our sales are in the tank for another year running and we're losing out to competitors who can offer an online experience. Let's build an app!"

Step 2: The product team figures out EVERY SINGLE REQUIREMENT (often including experiences and screenshots and variables) … and they hand that off to the development team and tell them they have X number of days to make it work. They then sit back and wait for the tree of their idea to bear fruit.

"Here are all of the screens and workflows the user will go through to set up an account, use product pages, check out, etc."

Step 3: The developers use this “totally-ready” massive design document to build the thing, which is available for sale sometimes over a year after the idea was first germinated in step 1.

In other words, the developers are handed a hot mess and expected to produce fruit from what nobody thought to verify was actually an apple tree.

Step 4: Profit?

Reality

Yeah, it doesn’t work that way. The developers — you know, the ones actually doing the work to build the product? They often discover things as they build that wreak merry havoc with the carefully-ordered plans handed down to them from on high. Meeting those arbitrary deadlines (which were determined without ever asking the developer how long THEY thought it should take) is almost always a nightmare.

Waterfall makes businesses feel good up front, because they put a lot of work in and have deliverables and … well, how could it possibly not work perfectly? Look at all the planning! The words typed out on a page! The, the, the requirements gathering!

Side Note

Oh hey, just out of curiosity. Any of you reading this blog post ever tried the planning/Outlining method of writing a book?

How. How’d that work out for ya?

Yeah.

Felt real damn good when you were building the outline, didn’t it? How could it not work perfectly? Look at all the planning!

*awkward cough*

(Just in case you’re new to this blog, I am a long-identified Planner with my outlines, and I’ve developed several super in-depth outlining methodologies that have never quiiiiite worked perfectly. If this is a callout post, it’s a post for ME, not necessarily you. Moving on.)

Writing

But yeah. I never really equated the hated Waterfall method with the Outlining method before.

Probably because most of the detractors of the Outlining method cite primary arguments around how restrictive and uncreative Outlining can feel.

I never thought about how it also amounts to the same “do all the planning first and obviously everything will work” mentality that I dread encountering at work.

Project Size

And, of course, the size of the project in question matters. Waterfall on a small feature is less likely to end in disaster as Waterfall planning an entire system.

Pre-plotting a novel can end up feeling unwieldy and precarious, like planning an entire vacation with the expectation that airlines will be on time.

We’ll delve into Agile methodologies in the next post. Specifically Scrum, since I am a certified Scrum Master. (Does anyone say that without snorfling? It does not sound like a seriouspants certification, but I swear it is.)

Thoughts on “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”

I recently finished reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo.

Amazon describes it thusly …

Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again.

… and now that I’ve had time to ruminate upon it, I have thoughts.

This Book Is Maybe Not Aimed At You

I feel like the first thing that needs to be pointed out is that Marie is a “cleaning consultant.”

That means people HIRE her to help them tidy their homes.

THEY seek HER. (That’s key)

If you aren’t the sort of person who WANTS their life/home/world/whatever to be tidier? Then this book will do you no good whatsoever, and you will likely find it a handy subject for ridicule.

I say that because I’ve talked about this book with multiple people and the most productive and interesting conversations I’ve had have been with people who already strive for tidyness in their lives.

The people who aren’t ready to commit to a tidy lifestyle or who are perfectly happy with the way their lives are organized … mostly scoffed.

Which is a perfectly natural reaction to someone giving you advice you don’t want. =]

The Book Itself

The book itself is a lovely combination of self-reflective ramblings and a regimented recommendation for how to get your home ship-shape.

Marie talks you through her own personal journeys in tidying and the many ways in which they have failed her in the past.

This dovetails nicely into her KonMari method, which she developed based on learning from those failures. She posits that if you tidy ONCE (thoroughly and completely over a six-month period) then the dramatic change in the way you view your home/living situation will resonate with you in such a way that you will naturally want to keep it tidy thereafter.

Once you live in it, you will want to continue to live in it.

I won’t go into great detail on the exact method (clothes first, then paperwork, etc) because you can find that elsewhere if you’re truly motivated and I didn’t commit it to memory.

The Core Precept

The core ideal of the KonMari method is to touch a thing and ask yourself “Does this bring me joy?”

Note that I said “touch” — you cannot look at a book on a shelf and make this decision. You must take ALL of your books off of your shelves and put them on the floor. Only then (taken away from their natural habitat) can you pick up each book individually and ask yourself “does this bring me joy?”

If it doesn’t, then why does it need to be in your life?

I Feel Personally Attacked Right Now

I’m gonna take a step back here because I have a feeling I just lost some of you.  /wink

When she got to the chapter on books, I found myself slumping into a sullen, unhappy blob.

She talked about clients who kept books because they might read them someday. Because they wanted to be the sort of person who did woodworking or origami or whatever. Because they were a gift. Because …

… well, basically all the reasons I have kept so many books, lol.

I am not going to lie, I was SO incredibly NOT on board with a book purge. I doubt I need to explain to YOU guys.

But!

But then she said (and excuse me for paraphrasing because I don’t have the book anymore) something along the lines of, “Imagine a bookshelf filled only with those books that truly bring you joy? Can you imagine anything more magical?”

And I had to admit that no … I couldn’t. That sounded absolutely amazing.

I still … haven’t actually done it.

I DID go through them while still on the shelf and then them out considerably. I’d say about a third of them are gone now and I don’t miss them. I don’t think about them or pine after them or wish I’d kept them for later. (And if I ever DO get rid of such a book, I have the means to get another copy of it).

But I haven’t pulled them all down and done the Joy Test on all of them yet. I will, but this weekend was purging my clothes and documents (why did I keep the user manual for my old hair dryer? Or my rice maker?)

So yes. I realize that for many of you, the book bit will sting. And I’m not saying that YOU need to do this thing … that ANYONE needs to do this thing. But after I thought about it, I realized that -I- needed to do this thing.

Moving on.

Why Is It In Your Life?

Back to asking whether an item brings you joy or not.

Even supposing one doesn’t thin out one’s library, there are probably tons of things that you would feel confident chucking.

Makeup samples that have expired and you will never use. Spices that are expired or you never use. Clothes that you haven’t worn in years. Socks with holes in them.

There’s a lot of stuff that’s “obvious” when it comes to chucking it in the bin, yet we never do it. We hold on to it because we “might need it someday”.

And there’s the rub.

Because yes, you might.

But in the meantime, while you’re waiting for this lifestyle change that would transform you into the person who will use that spice or wear that makeup … you’re just … holding on to it.

You’re letting it take up space in your cupboards, which makes your cupboards messy and overflowing, which makes you not know what’s in your cupboards, which makes you buy more makeup and spices.

OR you never confront the fact that you’re probably never going to make a great deal of curry or probably never going to need sixteen different shades of eyeshadow and therefore you keep buying it because someday you might be that person.

I dunno. Maybe that’s just me.

And I didn’t go CRAZY. I didn’t throw out all my spices or my makeup. But I DID throw out everything that I haven’t touched since I bought it (years-plural-ago). And I don’t plan on replacing anything I threw out.

And from my bathroom alone I got rid of two garbage bags full of … I don’t even know. I don’t even remember what I threw away, but I know that now I can see EVERY single type of medicine and band-aid I own and that I don’t have to reach behind my spare toilet paper to try and find my spare conditioner.

And maybe I’ll stop buying floss because good grief, I have bought a lot of floss. I must’ve been worried I would run out or something, but if anyone needs floss, I’m your gal.

Gifts and Memorabilia

The hardest part of this is going through memorabilia and gifts, which she acknowledges freely. She recommends saving ALL of that for last, when you are more “experienced” at culling.

Because we are prone to keep things because they were a gift from someone. Or because they asked us to hold on to it for us. (Ever have your parents snatch up an item you were getting rid of … or worse, ask them to hold on to it for you? *raises her hand* Yeah, guilty as charged).

The person who gave you that gift would (probably, hopefully) hate for you to hang on to it for no other reason than because they gave it.

Your parents are not responsible for holding on to your stuff. (And parents, you are not responsible for doing so.)

If you want to keep it, you should keep it. And if it doesn’t matter if you own it/have it/see it/touch it … then why is it in your life? Is it bringing you joy?

An Item’s Purpose

Marie talks a lot about an item’s purpose.

We often feel like we need to keep things because of the effort that was put into them.

I spent the money on this shirt, therefore I feel guilty about not wearing it, therefore I can’t just throw it away (or donate it, whatever).

That guilt is based on assuming the purpose of the shirt is to be worn.

(I know, that seems pretty self-evident, but according to Marie’s method, it’s wrong).

Examine why you don’t wear it. Is the style not you, or does it not fit, or is it too heavy, (… or does it attract too much cat hair …) … WHATEVER the reason, delve into it.

I love that this book doesn’t recommend wholesale cropping of your stuff – it wants you to understand WHY you keep or don’t keep an item.

So let’s say the reason you don’t wear the shirt is because (as in my case) every time I wear it, the collar drops down and it becomes uncomfortable. I liked the design, the colors, the texture … but about ten minutes into actually wearing the shirt — BOOM, the “back of the neck” has crept south, making every other part of the shirt uncomfortable and binding.

The purpose of that shirt, Marie might say, was to teach me to be more careful when trying on shirts. Wear them for a few minutes, stretch my shoulders, and make sure it stays comfortable.

By learning that lesson, I will not spend MORE money on shirts like that. I can thank this shirt for what it taught me and allow it to move on. It doesn’t need to stay in my closet to fulfill its purpose.

(Yes, the personification of items is a recurring theme, and although I personally enjoyed it, this may be a thing you would gloss over if you read the book. YMMV, but I talk to inanimate objects all the time. Giving my socks time to relax in my sock drawer instead of balling them up into potatoes made sense to me … and yes, that’s another recommendation, though I won’t go into further detail, lol).

We sometimes punish ourselves for having spent money on an item by forcing ourselves to leave it in our lives.

And I think that’s no good. To be surrounded by items that you’re keeping just to punish yourself with is not a healthy home environment.

Only YOU can Tidy Your Home

I could keep going (and goodness, I certainly HAVE kept going) but I want to leave you with one more thought from Marie.

You’re the only one who can tidy your home.

Her book doesn’t tell you how to tidy.

Her book tells you how to figure out what tidy looks like for you.

It’s a subtle distinction, but one she calls out later in the book. No one else can go through your closet and know what to chuck and what to keep. No one else can go through your spice cabinet or your baking drawer and know what you love and what you never use.

The way YOUR home will look after tidying is a reflection of you, and that is why the “Does this bring you joy?” test is so important.

The end result shouldn’t necessarily look like it fits in a Better Homes and Gardens magazine — the end result should be somewhere that you are joyful to be in. A place that welcomes you and loves you and is a celebration of you.

Your Turn

I’ve gone on (and on and on) here, but I really did have a lot of Thoughts about this book. I would say I regard myself as a tidy person, and that the book was definitely “preaching to the choir” with regards to most of what it had to say.

Has anyone read it? Did you have any thoughts? (even dissenting ones, no need to pretend you liked it or keep from voicing an opinion … it wasn’t a perfect book or method, and I have a few nits I could definitely pick though I think we can all agree I’ve shed enough words on the subject for one blog post).

To “Read More” or not to “Read More”

I’ve been waffling about adding “read more” breakpoints in my longer blog posts.

When I’m READING a blog post, I hate them. They require another click to finish the content and they’re not always user-friendly.

However, when I’m scanning a blog to try and find a previous blog post, these super long ramble-fests of mine get REALLY tedious.

Do YOU, oh-readers, have opinions on them? Do you care, do you not care, and why?

If I don’t get a “please do not do this thing” from at least one person, I’ll be adding them, so … fair warning.

Emergency Freezer Burrito Follow-Up

I promised a follow up to my Emergency Freezer Burrito post, and you shall have it forthwith!

I’m a fan.

(temptation to hit the publish button rising. riiiisssiiiinngg….)

In all seriousness, I tried two sizes of tortillas. The larger “burrito” size, and the one-size smaller family-pack that I got from Costco. (Sorry I can’t give a more useful size description than that — costco’s website doesn’t list them and apparently tortillas come in a lot more sizes than I expected).

The “burrito” size was the recommended size and although I can see why (it was MUCH easier to roll a full burrito with the extra inch or so around the edges) the convenience of buying a crapton of inexpensive tortillas outweighs that in my mind.

Because I am incapable of creating a burrito with the recommended amount of stuffing, you guys.

A little bit of rice, a few chunks of chicken, some beans, some sauteed onions, peppers and all the sudden I’M the monster. Pfft.

(Seriously though, you should probably put about half as much filling in there as I do. Don’t be like me. Even though I have no intention of being better about this the next time I do it.)

ANYWAY. The other thing I got from Costco that I recommend are pre-cut tinfoil squares.

Because I made a LOT of burritos you guys. Even stuffing them cramjam bursting full, I used EVERY SINGLE TORTILLA IN THE HOUSE.

And I made exactly one box of spanish rice (wiiiith one can of tomatoes in it), one sauteed onion, one cup of beans, two sauteed peppers, one small container of mushrooms, two zucchini, and one small sweet potato.

It didn’t seem like a ton at the time but when I laid out all the bowls for the assembly line, I felt a little flutter of fear in my heart.

So yeah. Costco sized tortillas? Check. Pre-cut thin tinfoil sheets? Checkity-check-check.

I would have started gnawing on the walls if I’d had to tear all those tinfoil sheets by hand, and I would NOT have been efficient about it.

Moving on.

Foil. Tortilla. Spoonfulls of various combinations of fillings. Tuck, wrap, fold, label.

Times a billion.

I have now EATEN many of the burritos I made and I can assure you, this is an excellent plan.

I haven’t figured out the exact microwave time for them yet (I’m thinking around a  minute and a half) but despite my overfilling them, the tortillas I used are so soft that they sort of … sealed themselves? (And I want to point out that I specifically had zero cheese in these — not from any moral high ground, I just had no cheese in the house and zero desire to LEAVE the house to get cheese).

I wrap mine in a soft cotton napkin before microwaving. Partially because I don’t like using paper towels only to throw them away, and also because the tortillas are soft enough to sometimes meld with the outer material and I certainly don’t want to EAT paper towels.

I’ve heated up some small ones to toss a breakfast fried egg into. I’ve taken them for lunches to work.

The vegetable flavor (which is really all the seasoning I have in there. Only the rice had any sort of spice beyond salt) is REALLY compelling and they always smell wonderful when they come out.

Sometimes I have overcooked them and I’ll get one corner that’s a little tough (or interestingly, really dried out and crispy) but they’re always delicious.

So yes, I will do this again. Unquestioningly. The convenience of just grabbing a pre-wrapped burrito from my freezer to dash out the door to work is unbelievable and I made a TON of food for a very small cost outlay.

Two thumbs up.