THE BELLY RULES THE MIND

But I'm going to give it the old college try this weekend and try to get as many words in as possible to catch me up. Can I do 4k words on Saturday and again on Sunday? That's what I need to have me on track to make the 50k for the month. Dang. That's a lot of words.

Honestly, I'm realizing that half my battle is that I'll stop to look up words, get the right phrase for a passage, etc. This is an exercise in just plain spitting it all out and that's where I fail. I'm not good at spitting it all out. I want things to be accurate, words to have the right meaning, characters to have a correctly historical setting, etc.

I'm a huge fan of Peter Elbow, who wrote the definitive book on free writing--Writing with Power. I REALLY need to review that book I think, and figure out how to shut off my internal censor.

It's especially hard, I think, because I write for a living. I spend my time writing press releases, articles, ghostwriting other people's articles and even books. Over the years I have worked to be both proficient but also efficient, which for me means editing as I go. It has saved me great chunks of time when it comes to my career, being able to churn out a decent first draft which often will need only minimal editing. It works great for non-fiction.

Not so great for fiction. Or at least not so great when you are writing NANOWRIMO fiction. Having a 50k word goal with a deadline of 30 days is not actually that much of a challenge--if that's all you are doing and don't have another job that occupies your time. If I can average, say, 600-1000 words an hour (thoughtfully and well-crafted words), then it shouldn't take me more than maybe 10-12 days. But throw in a fulltime job and the rest of real life and WOW suddenly I'm realizing that it may not be achievable.

The last NANO letter from Chris Baty suggested that if you want to throw in the towel, don't do it in the second week. Do it in the third week. He says he's serious.

Because if you quit in Week Two, you're going to miss an amazing moment---the moment when your novel begins to click. You'll miss a genius plot twist you can't foresee right now that will suddenly elevate your book from a distressing mess to a sort-of-tolerable mess. And then you'll miss the euphoric breakthrough that follows that twist, when your book improves itself all the way to not-half-bad.

The thing is, my novel is clicking, it's just that I'm not!

And you know what? The more you write, the better it gets. So make it a priority to write in torrents this week. Allow your characters to change, and have change forced upon them. Follow your intuition, even if it leads away from where you thought your book was heading. And know that writing a novel is like building a car. Your only job this month is to create a clunky machine that will eventually move people from one place to another. If your beast rolls at all at this point, you're doing great. Pretty prose, snappy dialogue, brilliant metaphors---they're all part of the high-gloss paint job and finishing touches we put on *after* the body is built.

Now THIS I find to be good advice. It's true...I need to just create that clunky chunky freaked out machine and worry about how to stick the engine in later.

For now, the 20,000s are calling, and we can't get distracted by the small stuff if we're going to get there.

Yes yes, Crystal. That's what NANOWRIMO is really about. Not sweating the small stuff.

But it does make me sweat when I think that I'm nowhere near plunging into the 20,000's yet. I still need to break into  the teens!!! Maybe I can sneak some writing time in at lunch today...

I hope. I'm only about 4800 words behind where I should be to keep pace...

Wow, it's so much harder this year!!

Okay, so I'm looking for advice. My novel has many different scenes from throughout history as well as a main modern plotline. Thoughts on how to work the transitions? I don't really want to intersperse the main plotline into the historical mini-stories; I think they should remain intact because the characters in those stories are only relevant in that part of the timeline. But that leaves me with big chunks of story in the middle of my main story. Is that too distracting?

To explain, I have a knife that has traveled from hand to hand from the 1st c. AD (and yes I have figured out a way that the knife would still be plausibly in use over all that time) to modern times. I have all of these little vignettes, starting in ancient Rome, moving to medieval Europe, the French Renaissance, 19th century New York, etc. They're integral to the history of the knife which in turn becomes important to my main character, Emmaline, in her modern story.

It's nice to write, in a way, because I can just focus on each particular story and jump around. But at some point I need to tie it together and I'm concerned about transitions. Ideas? Examples of other authors you have seen do this well?

cena ~ a dinner, feast or banquet held by ancient Romans. A more intimate form of the cena with family and friends was called a convivium.

Very slow going for me this NANOWRIMO. I didn't write yesterday but should have. And today, after three and half grueling hours and only 3 pages later and 1450 words later, I gave up. I never write that slow!! I can usually turn out drivel in record time, but for some reason I am struggling. I should be at around 8335 words by now but nope.

I think that part of it is my feeling that I need to try and get some of the details right the first time when I shouldn't even be worrying about that. I should be focusing more on just getting the story out of my head instead. But part of the problem is the historical significance of many of my scenes. I did do quite a bit of research before I started writing but I'm realizing that some of my research would be better done in conjunction with my writing. I keep coming up with scenarios that I don't know how to execute unless I look up the details--if the Romans ate lying on couches, for example, did they serve themselves from the center tables or did they wait for the slaves to bring them food, or both? Something like that could be crucial to the scene at hand, so I end up stopping to look it up.

I need to just put in some sort of placeholder text, highlight it and move on. That's part of what NANOWRIMO is good for--forcing writers to just plow on, to get the story out and then going back later to edit.

To stay on track, I'll need to average about 1856 words a day...oh boy.

Which is not on target. But I'll get there. I will keep my morning schedule, even if I can only crank out a few hundred words or so. I'll just have to put in more time on the weekend to compensate.

I picked up some new period cookbooks too, so hopefully I'll be posting some recipe possibilities this weekend.

I'm not going to blog my whole novel here but I will post excerpts. I think I got off to a good start today. And so, I present to you 1008 of my first 1238 words:

Working Title:  The Cutting Edge (but this is a huge cliche and it will change)

This was the part she hated most. Emmaline loved to whip batters to a frothy peak. She felt a warm rush of satisfaction when she delivered the perfect hand-made penne in a delectable morel ragu. She was at peace when she saw the look on her diners' faces after slipping a fork into one of her rabbit pot-pies. But this part--the skinning and deboning of any fowl--she absolutely hated.

Some of her distaste had to do with the sheer slime of the effort. There was something about the slipperiness of the skin and the glisten of the raw meat that made little shivers run up her spine. No matter how many times she started to carve a chicken, capon, turkey, quail or as in this instance, a pheasant, she had to force herself not to frown and sigh but instead pretend as though it was as easy as any other activity at which she was expert.

Even now she was wishing that the striking man at the front of the room was demonstrating the proper technique to create a cheesy souffle or perhaps the perfect pumpkin soup. Instead, she found herself fuming at the ease with which he carved the pheasant on the plate before him. His knife seemed to glide through the skin as though it were a stick of fresh butter, not bone, gristle and sinew.

Unfortunately, watching his technique wasn't helping Emmaline discover any special tricks. Despite the fact that she found Niall Quinn to be one of the most arrogant and self-satisfied men that she had ever met, she found herself distracted. In the moments she glanced up to watch, it wasn't his carving technique that caught her eye. It was his eyes that were the color of cold steel. It was the wave of his dark hair, just starting to grey at the temples and at the top of his forehead. It was the little laugh lines around his mouth, and the grace of his nearly perfect nose. His smile, however, was what always arrested her attention. He wasn't smiling now, yet it was his best feature and had captured the hearts of millions of women and men alike.

Niall Quinn looked up at her and the look of tranquility that deboning his pheasant had seemed to engender completely disappeared. "What's your name?" he said. His voice, while still resonating the charismatic charm it always held, sounded stern and disappointed.

"Emmaline Ferrau." She cursed herself inwardly. Why couldn't she just debone the damn thing with ease like everyone else was doing?

"Emmaline, why have you twisted up your face to look like a Halloween mask? This task is one of the most basic things that every chef should know. That you should know."

He was staring at her. Her five colleagues, all chosen specially to be part of this exclusive two-week summer course, were staring at her. Josh, her closest friend at school, would tease her later. Madeleine, the tall, beautiful redhead at the table to her right, was probably smirking at her discomfort. She hated Emmaline's success and was quick to let her know it.

"Yes, chef. I do know how to do this." She wanted to sound humble but humble didn't come easy. She was angry at him for singling her out and angry at herself for not maintaining a calm composure as she was hacking her bird apart.

"Then what is taking you so long? Your classmates have their birds nearly done and you have barely started." He wiped his hands on a towel and came down from the demonstration table to look at her work. "Why do you have it turned like that?" He flipped the bird over and pushed its partially severed wing back into place. "You should know this by now.  Start your cutting with breast turned down. Slice down the backbone and then work over to the legs and thighs. And there, with the wing--you shouldn't have started there. You can't find the joint if you haven't opened up your bird and then you end up having the neckbone making your cutting more difficult, just like you did here." Much to her chagrin, Emmaline could feel her face growing hotter and most likely even more pink. She wished she could turn and throw her knife into Madeline's forehead.

He turned, which made his voice harder to hear as he walked back to his table. "You are lucky, Miss Ferrau, that we're making a terrine so it doesn't matter what the meat looks like. Otherwise you would be doing your carving over today."

Emmaline bent down to the task of carving her bird, no longer caring how Halloweeny her scowl looked. She was angry at herself for not focusing, for not paying closer attention in her past carving lessons, for letting herself end up being the laughing stock of today's class. She had excelled in every aspect of cooking school thus far. She had never been humiliated in front of her classmates by any of the demanding chefs which taught at the school. And now, of all times, after being hand-picked to take this course, she had been cut down to size. Perhaps, she tried to reason, she needed it. Humility is a good trait to have, right? After a moment's thought, she ruled that out. She only needed to look to the man at the demonstration table to see that humility wasn't a required ingredient when it came to success. Niall Quinn was the world's most popular chef, a true celebrity, with an award-winning cooking show; two reality television series; dozens of cookbooks; TV and movie roles; and three world class locations of his four-star restaurant, Pandora, in New York, Vegas and London. He held five Emmy awards under his belt for his cooking show; two Academy awards for best supporting actor; numerous James Beard awards; Food & Wine best chef; and for the last six years, People Magazine included him in the the top ten of their 50 Most Beautiful People. On television he came across as very charming. His movie co-stars always talked about how great he was to work with. But in the kitchen, she found, he was an arrogant bastard.

Well, it's around the corner and even through my excitement, some self-doubt is creeping in:

• Am I ready?
• Will I be able to pull it off this year?
• How will I avoid the distraction of the two video games that I'm doing beta for right now (I'm a geek at heart, but a cool, socially adept geek)?
• What will I do to avoid the dreaded I'm-not-sure-where-to-go-with-this-piece-of-crap, phase?
• What if I write a bunch of drivel? (I suppose that doesn't really matter to some, but I don't want my 50k words to end up being scrapped in the end because it's so much junk that it becomes unsalvageable).
• What if I don't end up having time over Thanksgiving because we decide to go away somewhere this year (my in-laws are going to N. Carolina so we won't be going there)?

One thing that I will have to be thoughtful of is that I don't want my gym schedule to go awry because I get caught up writing in the early mornings and end up working through that time. Or, using writing as an excuse not to go to the gym.

That cracks me up--usually I have a million excuses not to write. It's amusing to think that I might use writing as an excuse not to do anything else. That would be super cool, in my opinion.

So cheers, and best of luck to all my fellow NANOWRIMO writers! Get your pens and pencils ready, your typewriters and word processors primed. Shut the Internet off and happy writing!

Today I spent the morning going through my plot thus far and creating new cards to help me keep everything organized. This year I thought I would try out Supernotecard to manage my characters and plotlines. Last year I used Writer's Cafe, which I think may be more robust in general, especially for viewing timelines, but I liked the simplicity and clean feeling of Supernotecard, so we'll see how it works out.

I'm finding that I'm doing less physical preparation this time around. I have the main milestones worked out but there is a lot in between that will be happening in real-time this year rather than through a plotted timeline. And I am not entirely sure what the end of the book will be. I have a vague idea...but it's quite vague. Still, I have enough really interesting start and middle information that I'm sure my characters will unravel that as I go.

Most of my writing time will be for an hour every morning at 5AM. I can average about 3 pages in that time, I think,

depending on how tired I am--that's 90 pages there and I figure I'll need about 125 or so to make 50k words. I expect to be able to devote a few more hours on the weekends and over Thanksgiving when I'm at the in-laws. They're marvelously supportive and I can lock myself into one of the upper bedrooms for a few hours every day and crank through even more pages. So if I can average 3 pages every weekday morning and 4-5 on the weekends, I should be all set.

Things that I need to do before Wed:

• Finish the character sketch for Niall Quinn, my super-celebrity chef.
• Do a character sketch for Georgia Harris, Emmaline's best friend in NY city.
• Finish researching early cutlery and figure out how I want my opening scene about the forging of the knives to go.
  
• Find my Feast book which I seem to have misplaced and has the name and key information about a very obscure cutler on whom I want to base one of my scenes.
  

I started thinking about this NANO project in September and that has given me a really good chance to both do research ahead of time but also to just plain THINK about how I'm going to execute this project. I'm finding that I'm not really writing a lot down about it if it's not research specific. I haven't yet started plotting out a timeline or writing out character sketches or anything of the like, which is what I would typically do. Instead I've been mulling things over in my mind and talking ideas with my husband, Joe, over dinner.

I also have begun taking time on my 20 min drive home from work to just think out loud about my book. No, I don't tape record it at all. I just switch on the classical music channel and start working through my book thoughts as I drive. I pick a character I already know about or a plot device I haven't fleshed out fully and start asking aloud, "what if?" I didn't actually steal this technique from Neil Gaiman but it really IS the best way to develop ideas. The "what if?" part that is, not the doing it while driving.

I can't begin to explain how working the plot aloud like that makes me feel. It puts me into a really wonderful zone, the space of "flow" that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about. I think the only other time that I have felt that same sort of intense oneness with my ideas is the time that I tried to learn oil painting many years ago. It is a very zen-like state, a place of incredible creative thought combined with a feeling of peacefulness. When I get home and walk in the door it's hard to shake it out of my head. I can't talk about it right away. In fact, I don't actually want to talk at all until I have had a moment to process where I have been, maybe jot down a few ideas or yank myself out of my head and back into the present moment.  But using this technique, I have significantly advanced the plot of my book although I haven't yet written anything down. In his Art of Thought, Graham Wallas outlined incubation as the second stage of creativity. It's an exciting stage for me because I'm having a bunch of little Eureka! moments. (I did my M.A. in Critical & Creative Thinking so I'm fascinated by all these things...you'll have to put up with my subsequent rambles in that area as a result). 

What usually follows are great dinner conversations with Joe about the book. He's given me some great ideas I can incorporate and he feels really inspired by the cooking. In fact, I'm going to integrate him more specifically into the role of this book overall--he's going to be the head chef of this little project. 

I was trying to decide how I would handle the recipe part of my novel. Since Emmaline, my sous-chef, is writing a massive recipe book herself I want to incorporate many of her creations into the story. They will be recipes of the ages because she retains the memory of particular people that have cooked before her. However, the recipes themselves are not the key part of my tale but rather a great add-on for interested readers. I was struggling with trying to figure out if I should bother with my own translations of these ancient recipes or should I just go with the well-established translations from authors like Francine Segan and Mark Grant? In order to translate, you have to have a good understanding of what ingredients were available at the time and what techniques were used. I don't want to devote big chunks of time for research in those areas since I don't feel that is the most important part of the story. However, I realized that since this is Emmaline's book and she is the chef, she has the opportunity to take those classic recipes and put her own amazing, modern twist on them.

That's where Joe comes in. He's an excellent cook. He isn't terribly keen on recipes in his own cooking and so that's why this is a really cool, creative challenge. He can look at the old recipe (see how vague that the staititai and the beef purse recipes are?) and come up with his own interpretation. We may look to the translations as guidelines, but primarily more for understanding technique than anything else (i.e. what type of cooking method works well--frying, baking, etc).  I think  that this solves a couple of issues--it gives the book new life as Emmaline exerts her creative expertise (through Joe's actual cooking!) and it also means I don't have to worry about copyright issues and all that good stuff. Plus it will be a lot more fun.

This weekend and next week I am going to start actual plotting. The writing down of all the ideas that have been incubating in my head. Character sketches, developing how the subplots entwine with the main plot, etc. Then it will REALLY get exciting.

This last weekend I made Beef Purses, which are something that play-goers may have bought before they entered the Rose Theatre to check out the latest Shakespeare play. I snagged the recipe from a really gorgeous cookbook, Shakespeare's Kitchen by

Francine Segan. (I HIGHLY recommend buying this book if you are a Shakespeare lover or a cook...the book is beautiful and the recipes look delish). They were good but not the best thing for dinner (we each had three of them) because they were heavy and a bit sweet. But they were tasty as a snack and Joe took some for lunch the next day. They would be REALLY good as appetizers at a party (just make smaller) or to take to a picnic if you can reheat them (oh the glories of tinfoil and a hot fire). We're thinking of serving them up in smaller form for our annual xmas party (will be 7 years this year!).

Beef Purses
Original Recipe from The Good Huswifes Jewell, 1587

To make pursses or Cremitaries

Take a little mary, small raysons, and Dates, let the stones bee taken away, these being beaten together in a Morter, season it with Ginger, Sinemon, and Sugar, then put it in a fine paste, and bake them or frye them, so done in the serving of them cast blaunch powder upon them.

And the very good translation by Francine Segan:

Beef Purses
serves 8

8 oz. ground round or sirloin
1/2 tsp. ground rosemary
1/3 c. currants
6 pitted dates, finely chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped candied ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. finely ground nutmeg
2 tbsp. light brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
Pinch of finely milled black pepper
1/2 recipe of Renaissance Dough (not going to post this recipe--we cut corners and used ready-made bread dough)
1 large egg, beaten

1. Place the beef, rosemary, currants, dates, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, salt, and pepper in a bowl and mix well. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours, or overnight. Remove the meat mixture from the fridge one hour before cooking.
   
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Roll out the dough 1/8 in. thick on a floured surface. Using a 3-inch round ring cutter, cut out 24 dough circles. Place 1 1/2 tbsp. of the meat mixture on each circle, fold in half, and pinch the edges to seal. Brush the purses with the egg and place on a well-greased nonstick baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

So, as described in the previous post, I am going to be testing out a few different recipes that my character, Emmaline, may be interested including in her cookbook that she's writing. The first that I tried was Staititai, a sort of sweet pizzetta which dates back to early Roman times.

The end result was interesting. For reference, the recipe is in the previous post. I think that I will modify this a bit before I include in my book. While Emmaline may know the early Roman recipe that Athaneaus referred to, she's a chef, and therefore would want to find a way to always improve any recipe. The spelt dough was good--lots of fiber, although it was very moist. I think would want to create this more as a flatbread, rather than a fried dough. I used too much honey and feta and would reduce those amounts in the future. It was quite tasty though so it's just a matter of adjusting the amounts so that it's not quite as heavy.

Tonight I'm trying out another recipe, this one of Shakespearean era...basically, little sweet meat pies. I'll post the recipe later and the results.

Working on developing various points along the way in my novel timeline. I need to do some more research, and plan to spend this upcoming week going through all the library books I've armed myself with. I really need to flesh out a few more character names and traits--going to start using 2-3 days of my morning pages to devote completely to wrtiting in the future and want to have things a bit more fully formed before I subject my 5AM brain to that sort of work.