Scene mapping

It's amazing what the right format can do for my writing.

I've been plugging away at my children's novel but as the document got longer, I've been having trouble with the organizing part. I felt like I was spending way too much time scrolling up and down in the document trying to find where the part I wanted to write fit in the work as a whole. I tried listing scenes in a separate Word document, but again, that left me scrolling up and down until I was getting dizzy. I tried using an Excel spreadsheet to map the scenes and the action, but it didn't work for me. Maybe I have too many mathematical associations with Excel (that's what I use for our budget tracking) for it to feel like something I could use to organize a creative project.

So yesterday, once I got the little people off to their various schools, I decided to hell with technology! I cleared off the dining room table, unrolled the huge roll of paper that I bought a while back at the Scrapbox for kid art projects, and got out some multi-colored post-it notes. I assigned colors to major characters and locations (I'm working on a parallel universe scenario so being able to see where they are is important) and drew some long, horizontal columns on the paper (yup, basic linear organization where the upper left is the beginning of the novel and the bottom right is the end). Then I printed out my document and got to work transferring what I have already written scene-wise to the sticky notes and where it will fit in the narrative as a whole.
And the great thing was once I filled in the spots I had written, I could see where I needed new scenes and additional material, where previously existing scenes should be moved, and what part of the book I really haven't approached yet (see that big swath of white...?) I was on a great roll, jotting down ideas for plot developments and scenes when the alarm went off to remind me to pick my son up from his school (yea, I've tried remembering to get him without an alarm and that didn't go so well...). So I rolled up the paper and stuck it in a corner of my office where (hopefully) the little people won't find it and start re-organizing the stickies.

So, here's my question. What organization method do other the writers out there use to visualize their work as a whole?

Well, the food and company were good...

I haven't finished the last two books that my book group selected. Naughty naughty Kate. But seriously the last two books have bored me to tears. The first no-finish was Kiran Desai's novel, The Inheritance of Loss, which has very pretty writing but nothing happens and the latest was William Poy Lee's memoir, The Eighth Promise, which is so unfocused that I'm still not sure whose memoir it was supposed to be (Lee's? His Mother's? His younger brother Richard's? Unfortunately, I think it was supposed to be his and his was the least interesting of the three possible stories).

But hey, the food and company were good! For the Desai book we gathered at Meg's and ate some lovely Indian food. To start were some addictive Sev Puri that Ami brought. Ami's co-worker, Sangeeta, coached her in the assemblage of these flavorful mounds of potato, chili's, onion and various chutneys (assembly instructions/recipe below).


Then we moved on to plates loaded with stewed chickpeas, turmeric spiked cauliflower, raita and biryani rice.



And we finished our meal with cardamom creme brulee. I'm pretty happy whenever I get creme brulee, but the cardamom imparted an even lovelier finish to the richness.

For The Eighth Promise we indulged in a massive quantity of Chinese takeout from Tk Wu, because none of us has a big enough wok supply or stove space to do the cuisine justice (ok, it was also March and we were sick of Winter and just needed a damn break.) I know, the picture to the right looks like a mess, but it was a tasty mess, particularly the tofu with black mushrooms. I also love their dumplings which are served with a vinegary, non-soy based dipping sauce.

And then for dessert, I made something that had nothing at all to do with the book: puff pastry with almond cream and winter fruit compote. The picture in the NY Times magazine was so appealing that I was willing to simmer, steep, whip and bake up the various components. The most limiting factor for most people to make this recipe is the requirement that the winter fruits (kumquats, dried figs and dried apricots) be simmered in verjus, which is sour juice from unripe wine grapes, which retails for about $18 for 25 oz. Tightwad that I am, I don't often spend that much on a bottle of wine, much less on the juice from un-ripe, un-fermented grapes. But then I hit Wikipedia and found out that verjus is also called husroum in Arabic and is used in place of vinegar or lemon juice in Middle Eastern cuisine.
So I trotted off to one of the many Middle Eastern grocery stores in our area and poked around until I found, for $4 for 32 oz, Momtaz Sour Grape Juice!

It did impart a nice level of acidity to the compote, though I still don't think I'd spring for $18 bottle. I'd probably eliminate the sugar in the recipe and substitute white grape juice and a good squeeze of lemon juice. I still have a significant amount of verjus left in the bottle so I think I'll freeze it and when summer comes around, I may use it in this recipe for verjus mint sorbet.

The next book we will gather around is one I've already read and which I know is good, Peter Ho Davies' The Welsh Girl (my review from last year here). I'm hosting the meeting so I need to try and figure out what to cook for the main course. Welsh cuisine? Is there such a thing? Suggestions welcome!

Sev Puri

Flat Puris (thin crackers) – 1 bag
Fine Sev (thin lentil crunchy stuff) – 1 bag
Small chili peppers – a handful
Sweet chutney (made of dates and imli) – 1 jar – preferable Swad brand
Cilantro and chili chutney – 1 jar – preferable Swad brand
Cilantro chopped fine
Chaat masala
Garam masala
Roasted cumin powder (optional)
Red chilly pepper (optional)
Yogurt (optional)
Potatoes (boiled)
Onion chopped fine

1. Boil potatoes until soft, cool, remove skins and mash.
2. Add to potatoes a teaspoon or so of chaat masala and garam masala and pinch of salt. Set aside.
3. Chop all cilantro, peppers and onion. Set aside.
4. Mix up cup or so of yogurt with chaat masala and garam masala and salt (season to taste)

To assemble:

1. Spread crackers on a platter.
2. Add tablespoon or so of potato (as Sangeeta told me, don't skimp on the potato) on top of each cracker
3. prinkle chopped onions and peppers on top of potato mound (careful with those peppers!)
4. Spoon generous teaspoon of sweet chutney and cilantro chutney on top of potato mound
5. Spoon generous tablespoon of yogurt/masala mixture onto potato mound
6. Sprinkle lots of Fine Sev on top of everything
7. Sprinkle cilantro on top of everything
8. Enjoy

Why I love Louisville

Last week I left Ann Arbor to be hit by a big old snow storm and headed south to Louisville, Kentucky for 3 days of "mama-needs-a-break" time.

On this break I got to:

1. See two friends from grad school at Northwestern who I haven't spent time with in way too long.
2. Go to see four new plays at the Actors Theater of Louisville's Humana Festival of New American Plays, two of which were mind-blowingly fantastic, one which was interesting and had some great scenes/monologues and one which I didn't care for. (Which, for a picky, judgemental viewer like myself, is very high percentage of positive response.)
   
3. Eat at a whole bunch of cool and quirky (and not outrageously expensive!) restaurants. Louisville is one of the few towns I've been to lately that has resisted takeover by the national chains. You can see the pride in the unique character of the town in the slogan that appears at most independent businesses "Keep Louisville Weird".
4. Go to a cool yarn store and pick up a Rowan book I'd been coveting.
5. Go to see two exhibits at an art museum, one on the Quilts of Gee's Bend and the other on Medieval and Renaissance items on tour from the Victoria and Albert Museum including one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks (a wee little thing! I had always pictured the notebooks as being more folio-sized rather than smaller than a pocket paperback.)
   
6. Sit on my friend's back deck in the sunshine and feel the soft air of Spring around me. Despite the fact that it is supposed to snow here again today, I now have hope that we will get to experience non-hostile weather soon.
   
7. Not have to multi-task for 3 full days (which, I confess, made Tuesday a little bumpy as I tried to get back in the mama-swing of things).

I'm going to try and make this break an annual tradition.

Unfortunate naming

I know I'm not the only one who, when they hear the title The Facts of Life thinks of this:

rather than this wonderful novel which I finished last night:
I have to admit with some degree of shame that the title and the reminder of the supremely annoying TV show with a character named "Tootie" actually kept me from picking up this book for a good long while. But I strongly urge you to look past the title and read Graham Joyce's beautiful book.

The book is set during and immediately after WWII in Coventry, England and it is centered on Martha Vine and her seven daughters, particularly the youngest Cassie, who they describe as "wayward" and "fey," and her son, Frank. When Cassie decides not to give up her fatherless child, the family bands together and agrees that they will all do their part in raising Frank. This is a beautiful portrait of how a family works together to confront mental illness with love and kindness and there is a strong message that "different" isn't necessarily bad.

There are times when the book goes inside Cassie's delusions--most memorably her experience on the night Coventry was firebombed--and at these points magical realism seeps in to the narrative. We believe that Cassie can actually see the radio waves in the sky that guide the bombers to her city, that she can briefly bring a dead boy back to life and that she can choose a bomber out of the sky and make it crash into a field.

But he book is also downright funny and much of the humor comes from the finely drawn characters. The author has a subtle touch with humor so that characterizations that could be cruel are instead kind and funny. Frank's Uncle Gordon with his stammer, receeding gums and death's-head resemblance could be a repulsive character, but instead he is presented with humor and sympathy:

Gordon was apt to display his lack of gums every time he spoke, and whatever words he spoke were preceded by a long, drawn-out whine in which he appeared to be locked in heroic or merely constipated struggle with himself while he shaped whatever it was he was about to say.

"Another slice of corned-beef pie, Gordon?"

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee, well, no, I'm not much mithered, but...."

A newcomer into the family...might lean in expectantly, politely waiting for Gordon to conclude his statement. And they might wait. And wait. And Gordon would widen his eyes at them in a kind of terror and draw his lips back over his disappearing gums, as if this predicament they both found themselves in...was just as astonishing to himself as to anyone.

Gordon might have become a caricature but later in the novel, when Frank is taking his turn living with Aida and Gordon, he is rounded out and shown in his own home, without the intense social pressure of his mother-in-law and six sisters-in-law and their families. He is a warm man who teaches Frank about death and passing in an exquisitely gentle way. By the end of the book, I wanted to go up and give Gordon a great big hug, even though he is often described as looking like "a fresh corpse."

Other moments of humor come up due to the different circumstance in which Frank is raised as he is passed from Una's farm, to Evelyn and Ina's spinster home and spiritualist church, to Bertie's experimental commune near Oxford. For example after a stay at the commune with Bertie where, instead of going to school, he is tutored by the residents in Marxist philosophy, Frank goes to his much more conventional Aunt Aida's house where he watches the television for the first time. But the two worlds come together in Frank's head seamlessly so he can enjoy the BBC Children's Hour while simultaneously continuing to refer to the television as "the reactionary hyena". Such touches of humor are subtle but are woven into the text so that what could be a grim book about mental illness, is instead a resoundingly positive story.

Really the only flaw with the book is that I had some trouble imagining the characters in the period before the book takes place--Martha and her seven daughters in their teen and adult years are perfectly realized, but I really can't picture them when they were young, all packed in the same house with their conflicting personalities not tempered by the presences of the men in their lives nor the separateness of their own homes. But that really is a small complaint. This is the best book I've read so far this year and I am looking forward to exploring more of Graham Joyce's works.

Food notes

I have had some modest successes in the kitchen of late--none worth their own post in splendidferousness, but fine for a group post.

First off the one without a photo:
Last night the kids got a big kick out of bucatini pasta. The loooong tubes were great for pretending to be anteaters, though not so hot when it came to table manners. And it is an excellent shape when paired with the best Bolognese sauce I have ever made. I made the original batch a couple of weeks ago and thankfully there was enough left to freeze so we could enjoy it on an otherwise rushed weeknight. It is destined to be a regular recipe around here.

Another quick and pretty tasty weeknight dinner was pork tenderloin medallions in ginger pear sauce. This would probably look prettier if you followed the original recipe and flattened boneless pork chops to big medallions rather than the sort of stew-like effect of the circles of tenderloin, but it tasted damn good, especially when served with farm bread and a biting arugula and walnut salad.
I modified the recipe slightly (at the end of this post) and it really was done in about 15 minutes total time.

And last weekend we had the party for the girl whose birthday fell over the mid-winter break. She requested a dinosaur party and thank god for The Baker's Nook in Saline or I would have been struggling with fashioning a dinosaur scene from buttercream. I was able to pick up molded sugar dinosaurs and dinosaur sprinkles which was much more pleasant than wrestling with the pastry bag and icing tips.
I made my standard Mexican chocolate cake though with no cinnamon and less vanilla than the original recipe. It has got to be the easiest, most fool-proof cake ever and turns out really moist and not too heavy. This time, I tried a meringue based chocolate buttercream which the grown ups seemed to like even more than the yolk based French buttercream I've made. It has a slightly lighter texture due to the Italian meringue into which the butter and chocolate get beaten. And it has a lot of chocolate--12 oz of bittersweet--so it really packs a flavor punch. The only hitch with the recipe I used is that it made a hell of a lot:
I have about a pint and a half left over and we're all a little caked out here. Other than sitting down with a spoon and a movie and descending to a new low of gluttony, I don't really know what to do with the stuff. Anyone in the neighborhood making cupcakes this week and want some buttercream?

Pork Medallions with Pear Ginger Sauce
adapted from Bon Appetite, November 1994

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1.25 lb pork tenderloin cut into 1/2 inch pieces or 4 1/2-inch-thick boneless pork loin chops
Dried rubbed sage
All purpose flour
2 pears, peeled, cored, thinly sliced (about 1 pound)
2/3 cup dry white wine
2 t honey
2 Tablespoons chopped candied ginger
1/2 t salt

Use a meat mallet or the bottom of a heavy frying pan to flatten the pork until it is about 1/4 in thick. Season pork with dried sage, salt and pepper. Coat pork with flour; shake off excess.

Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add pork to skillet and sauté until brown, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer to platter.

Add pears and sauté over medium heat 2 minutes. Stir in wine, honey, ginger and salt scraping up any browned bits. Add a little water if you need it to deglaze the pan properly. Increase heat to high and boil until pears are tender and syrup is thick, about 5 minutes. Return pork and any accumulated juices to skillet. Simmer just until cooked through, about 1 minute. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Arrange pork on plates. Spoon sauce over and serve.

Because I had NO impulse control last week...

Despite the fact that I am presently knitting two sweaters and a pair of socks, I was just complaining about how large my stash is and I probably can't fit this stuff into the stash bins under the bed, last week I bought this:
The pattern and supplies for the Urban Aran (cardigan version). As I previously mentioned, it was a challenge laying my hands on the pattern--everyone was out of it (though Ingrid generously offered to loan me her copy; that's Ingrid who just had a beautiful baby and is still blogging and commenting more than those of us who get a full night's sleep! Thank you Ingrid, but I tend to scribble on my patterns.) so when I saw it for sale at the Knitting Warehouse, I kind of panicked and bought it. And the yarn.

I know some people turn their noses up at Patons Shetland Chunky because it is only 25% wool and the rest is Akkkkkrylic. But it's really soft. And washable. And it doesn't look like spun plastic. If I could have found the right weight and color in a superwash wool as soft as the Swish worsted I am currently knitting with on the other sweater, I would have bought it. But it seems like most chunky yarns have an itch factor that I am not equipped to handle.

I'm this far on the top down wrap cardigan:
Well, truth be told, I'm a little further along because it is a great brainless pattern to knit on during Ian's piano lessons or while watching videos. And I have recently discovered another TV series on DVD worth watching--the Canadian show Slings and Arrows. As one who is perhaps overly familiar with the personalities and egos of people involved in theater, I am having a wonderful time watching this series which pokes gentle fun at a theater company and festival that closely resembles The Stratford Festival. There are even regular Stratford Fest actors in the cast, most notably Stephen Ouimette who I saw in a fantastic Waiting for Godot. I'm only on the first season though I hear William Hutt is prominent in season 3. The Ann Arbor District Library has the whole series on DVD, so if you are looking for an excellent way to retreat from this endless winter (6 inches of snow on Wednesday! Up to 8 more forecast for tomorrow!) and get some of your knitting done, give this a try.

Toile developments

I'm still working on my "subversive toile" keyboard cover and lately finished a couple of additions:
It was a lot of fun making the octopus, particularly the little suction cups on his tentacles. I love how un-fazed all the people around the octopus look, as though there is no reason to interrupt their business to acknowledge the presence of a large cephalopod in their midst.

The other completed detail is just a small fire in the ruined castle, but no one is in danger of burning:

Everyday is Smekday!

I finished reading The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex yesterday, a wonderfully inventive novel of alien invasion.

The main character is a smart, sassy 11 year old girl named Gratuity (nick name "Tip"). She is resourceful at the start of the book and becomes even more so as the book progresses. The novel moves from invasion plot, to a road trip plot, to a save the world plot with Gratuity joined by a confused but very handy alien who calls himself J.Lo. He has mistakenly alerted another hostile alien species to the presence of Earth (aka Smekland) and thus is on the run from his own species (the Boov) and isn't welcomed by humans either. Gratuity is trying to find her mom and survive, and together with a pet cat named Pig, they save the world not only from the Boov, but also from the much more fearsome Gorg.

Rex is an illustrator and throughout the book there are wonderful little black and white sketches that made me smile every time I came upon one--I defy anyone to see a drawing of J.Lo's goofy smile and not adore the little alien.

Rex also has a great ear for ESL and J.Lo's speech is fun to read with all its malaprops and confused verb conjugations. There is a wonderful scene that hinges on J.Lo's use of the word "explore" for "explode" (I never noticed how close those two words were before this). I particularly loved exchanges like this:

"I am thinking we are alls in the same car now," said J.Lo. "We should to have no more secretions."
"Secrets."
"Secrets. Yes."

This kind of dialog had me snorting with laughter as I read along. But the novel isn't all jokes and silliness--there are some excellent points made about how people treat each other, group mentality vs individual responsibility, and friendship. The novel also includes moments of insight such as this exchange between Gratuity and J.Lo:

"This is incredible!" I shouted. "You guys can teleport! You can clone things! You could, like, teleport to France and leave a clone of yourself behind to do your homework!"
The Boov frowned. "Everybodies always is wanting to make a clone for to doing their work. If you are not wanting to do your work, why would a clone of you want to do your work?"

There were a couple of weak spots in the book. One conveniently borrowed idea--the Boov discovered the existence of our planet and learned our languages through TV broadcasts--is exactly the scenario in the fun Star Trek parody film Galaxy Quest. And Gratuity's mom is such a space cadet in the beginning that it is hard to see how she has become much more capable when she is finally tracked down in Arizona. But these are really minor quibbles with a book that takes on so many cultural icons (Roswell, New Mexico; Disney World; Indian Reservations) and folds them into a rambunctious plot with grace and humor.

I can't wait to read this one with Ian if only for the great fun that reading J.Lo's part aloud will bring.

Stash shock

It is a snowy day today, the last weekday of my kid's midwinter break. We're all a little sick of each other--Brian is on a work trip and I've maxed out my "entertaining mom" persona. It takes a lot more energy to come up with interesting things to do with the kids when the weather is lousy, though, all things considered, we've done pretty well this week. My mom and I took the kids to a water park overnight on Monday and I think we all came back a few shades paler from the chlorine. It was fun in a weird indoor mid-western kind of way and did tire the kids out, especially Fiona who pretended to be a seahorse and pulled my mom in an inner tube around the lazy river for about two hours straight. I've let the kids eat fast food this week which resulted in them being pretty nice to me, we visited pretty much every branch of the Ann Arbor District Library and I planned to take the kids to the Detroit Science Center today until the snow storm and sickness hit.

The newly minted 5-year-old is asleep upstairs with a low fever and I'm letting the 7-year-old play as many games of Chain Factor as he wants. So after I shoveled the 5 inches of snow that fell this morning, the house has been pretty peaceful.

It seemed like a good day to start taking responsibility for my yarn stash. I got the invite to join Ravelry a few weeks ago so I set up my account, logged in two of my works-in-progress and then kind of spaced out and forgot about it. Today I had enough time to do a little more exploring and discovered that I can check out other people's experiences with patterns I'm considering and also organize my own notebook area. The scary and humbling part is to take responsibility for my stash.

Right now my stash takes up 4 Sterilite bins that fit under one half of our double bed. And they are kind of, um, full...
Some of the items packed in there I recognize--a whole load of Rowan Big Wool print from a sweater I frogged, the extra ball or two of yarn that were left over from a project where I was worried about running out of the dye lot and overbought a bit, a few gifted balls of yarn that I haven't had the heart to get rid of. But there is also a large quantity of yarn that I completely forgot I had. There's a nice little "Will trade or sell" feature on Ravelry that I plan to make use of to get rid of some of these errant skeins. Maybe I can get myself down to 3 bins?

Desk protection

I have never owned coasters until now. Truth be told, I have hardly ever had a piece of furniture that required a coaster--most of it was so utilitarian or impermeable that a condensation or coffee or tea ring was not a problem.

But now that both Brian and I have desks at home that could be damaged by the errant glass or tea cup, I decided that it was finally time to get some coasters. Actually, it didn't work quite like that. I saw these coasters and realized that I loved them so much that I could finally justify their purchase rather than continuing to prop my tea cup on some piece of correspondence.

I bought them from the lovely, quirky Etsy shop of Robotcandy. It started with a Robot Sam the Answer Man coaster stocking stuffer for Brian:
And then I found myself wandering over to his desk mid-day and snagging it for my afternoon cup of tea. After forgetting a number of times to replace it before his evening beverage/computer time, I decided that additional purchases were necessary.

I went back to Robotcandy's shop and found the following perfect coasters. I don't really need three more coasters, but I figure it is good to be able to rotate them as my mood requires. So now I have:

My writing coaster

A kitty with glasses and an ink well to get me in that dweeby mood to write.

My knitting coaster

I'll forgive the girl for holding her needles wrong (the ends point down when you knit, for you non-fiberholics out there)

My I'm-freaking-out-and-having-a-bad-day coaster.

A bit of WWII advice from the British government puts my own problems in perspective.

Now the question arises which coaster will get the most use...I'm afraid that at the moment, I'll probably be leaning towards coaster number three, but I have hopes that number one will become more and more necessary as my children's novel progresses.