Well, I'm sitting here tonight, thinking I need to post something on my blog, something to catch up with you all since it seems that I haven't been here in forever.

I've been working really hard in my real-life job, and I've been obsessed with re-writing a novel I wrote some six years ago, and thinking about publishing it on kindle. I've done my taxes, I've been tending to the bare bones of my life. Uh hunh....

My life right now is sort of like the photo - all that stacked-up stuff in the attic, where I've been going with some regularity. The book has to get done after all, and the attic seems to be the place to find all the secret tantalizing treasures and beautiful masterpieces that will add depth and dimension to my manuscript. So, if you're looking for me at all, I'm in the attic, covered in dust and cobwebs. Send up some soup, if you take a mind to. I'll be here, pouring over old ribbon-bound memories and grainy black and white photographs, and I won't be coming down real soon. Not until I find that treasure I'm seeking.

What's your process? How do you write or where do you write the best?

February Musings

February. Beautiful, blue and white February.
When I think of February, I think of white tulips in a blue and white vase, blue hyacinths sprouting in a china cup, white plumes of smoke rising from chimneys, and food of course. When don't I relate food to any given topic?
Cinnamon rolls. My mother made the best cinnamon rolls ever, ever on the face of this planet and any other. I've tried to emulate her recipe but, after trying many times and not quite making it, I've found another way.

Wanna hear about it?

First of all, let's just say that rapid rising yeast is the breadmaker's friend. I love it. It takes a lot of work out of the equation.

I take one package of the rapid rise yeast and mix it with:
2 c. flour
1 teas. salt
1/3 c. sugar
1/3 c. soft butter (unsalted)
1 egg

Just mix it together, don't get too worked up about it. And then, add 1/2 c. warm water, and 1/2 cooled scalded milk. Mix together. Begin working in more flour, just a little at a time until you've added probably 3 1/2 cups.
Turn your dough out onto a floured board and knead, adding more flour, for about 5 minutes. Form into ball, turn into a greased bowl, greased side atop. Lay a clean towel on top of the bowl. What I do is I put my dough bowl in the oven and put a baking pan filled with hot water on the bottom rack.

Sauna time for the sweet dough.

Okay, let it rise for about 1 1/2 hours. Pull it out, punch down the dough, turn it back out onto a floured board and roll it out. Roll it until it's about 1/8 inch thick, and begin slathering with butter, and I do mean slather in the biggest slathering way. Slather to about 1/4 inch from the edge. Drop brown sugar all over your dough, a thick layer. Sprinkle cinnamon over, a lot of it. I sometimes will chase the cinnamon with smoked cumin but, warning, if you do this, don't inundate your dough with cumin as it will become bitter if used ad nauseaum. For once I am saying, don't be liberal. You don't have to use cumin at all, quite frankly. Sprinkle just a little white sugar over and now, it's time for the roll up.
Working quickly, pull your dough toward you and begin rolling up. Roll, roll, roll, til you're at the end. Seal these edges with a bit of water.
Slice the roll, about one inch apart, place rolls in greased pan, cover with clean towel and again, let it rise, preferably in a sweet roll sauna as described above, about 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees, bake for 25-30 minutes and enjoy.

Happy days!

Guacamole

It really is all about the food sometimes. I love good guacamole. When it's fresh, made with quality ingredients, it just rocks, seriously.

So, let's talk about it, guacamole, that sort of mysterious green dip, the green stuff that sometimes looks more like what one would find in a baby's diaper than anywhere else.

Please now. Don't get mad about the reference to the baby diaper.

It's just that I don't do the pureed green upon green thing. I just can't stand that stuff. Here is what I do. I do the chunky version. Okay, see below.

Four, yes four, avadocos, Hass preferably.

Two roma tomatoes, diced

One fresh lime, or two, depending on your preference

One Jalepeno pepper, seeded and diced

Smoked cumin, to taste

Salt

Pepper

Red pepper flakes

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

Cilantro, rough chopped

Good salty tortilla chips

One large bowl

Scoop the meat out of the avocados and drop into a bowl. Chop carefully because the avacodos tend to bruise easily. Throw in the chopped romas, the jalapeno, the cumin, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, the red onion. Squeeze the lime juice over liberally. Just before serving, toss with fresh chopped cilantro.

Winter Memories

I'm giggling tonight, thinking about my childhood and how it all was when we were all together in the present life. I am specifically thinking of our family adventures in winter, adventures mostly having to do with ice-topped lakes, in Minnesota, my motherland.
My dad, well, he liked a little danger. If truth were to be told, my mother liked more danger than he did but she never showed it.
I'll tell you that when us kids were little, for entertainment's sake and because we had no money to do anything that required a fee, our parents would pack us into the big old wood-trimmed station wagon and away we would go...to the lake of course.
Now, if you are a Minnesota or Wisconsin native you know what I'm talking about. We got a lotta lakes up there in that area, every town's got one, and those lakes will freeze over and well, let's just say there are more than a few snow mobiles sunk at the bottom of those lakes. Other stuff too, including people sometimes. I know, plenty of stories there.
Anyway, I am giggling tonight remembering how my dad would drive out onto the ice and gun the engine and let the car swirl madly on the frozen ice. He knew just how far out to go and how long to let those hot tires graze the frozen surface before it got dangerous. I remember thinking, "Wheeeee!" and my stomach would drop in a big happy way. My mother would scream, "Oh Jerome!" over and over again, and of course, at some point she would have to point out that we were all about to die a certain death, a frozen one, and we needed to get out of there quick.

I also remember getting back home, drinking hot chocolate before bed and falling asleep thinking my dad was the biggest guy in the universe, and how fun the twisty curls in the car were, and how beautiful the moonshine and the ice was...I remember all this.

What is your favorite winter family memory?

The Brown Egg

I'm taking an artist's day today, and it's actually Monday. I'm taking a day to write, wander about with my camera, and of course, eat. To that last end, this morning I wound up on the corner of Kimbrough and Madison, at The Brown Egg.

I have to say I love restaurants. I love independently owned eateries because it seems to me that you find the best food in those places and, beyond that, you find character.

The Brown Egg is such a place.

Tucked into the corner of a strip mall, at first you might pass by it unless you're looking for it, which I was. I read about it in the paper recently and I've heard word of mouth that it's a good place to eat.

I mentioned character. This place has it. Dark wooden square tables, bookcases overflowing with all kinds of books, globes, musical instruments, other artifacts. The vibe is comfortable. The food is very good (I had biscuits and gravy) and of course, I have to mention the coffee. I had a medium roast breakfast blend this morning, which made me feel just a little bit pampered and special.

The bakery case is full of beautifully dressed cupcakes. The lunch special will be white bean chili (I see it written on a black chalkboard above the counter).

I liked that I saw a pair of elderly men dressed in heavy wool sweaters sitting at one table, while a younger college-age couple wearing their blackframed glasses and beanie caps sat at another and, a pair of Springfield Police Officers sat not too far from me. It was an electic mix of folks; good, I thought.

I left satisfied and happy. Bravo, Brown Egg! I'll be back.

January

Here we are, smack in the middle/end of January. January, the first month of the new year. The month of bone-chilling winds, hot tea in pretty china cups, hearty casseroles steaming in bakeware and fur-lined snowboots, splotched from tramping through snow. January. The month of new resolves, goal making, organization and list upon list upon list of things to accomplish here in this new year. Lists of things we will DO this year, things to accomplish, goals.

We're goal orientated anyway, aren't we? But. Do we need to be?

Well, as far as I am concerned, about organizing your closets, which seems to be what January is about, you can do that any time. January just seems a good month to toss out old and not usable, and to put everything you wish to keep in order, from tupperware to sweaters.

But as writers, well, we work all year long. We organize, search through, find new, find old, we put things in boxes all year long. Writers have an interminable attic containing every thought, every character, every scene we can ever think of, in boxes in our eternal attic, to be pulled out when needed.

We have memories, we have photos, we have trunks and trunks of fabrics, and notecards of handwritten recipes and weather forecasts and Bibles complete with family trees. We have baby bibs and quilts and land owner records. Some of us may be lucky enough to have diaries, personal, hand written thoughts, impressions, real life happenings.

Allow yourself to revel in these things, allow yourself to think about what went before you. Relax. And then, allow yourself to reflect.

When you are ready, climb the stairs to your attic. Take a long look at that dress dummy in the corner. What is that dress dummy wearing? Sniff, smell, touch, see. Open the trunk you've always wanted to look into. Pull out the old letters (is there a hint of perfume lingering there?), the photos (who are all those people), the fabrics (how sensual), entrench yourself in the history entombed there.

Inhale the history, claim it. Aborb it.

And then sit down and write it all out. Come back and tell me what you found. Is it more than what you expected? I suspect so.

Adverbs

Are adverbs our friends?

Do you ever run crazily or scream loudly or maybe even climb mightily? Now, when I run, I just run. It may be crazy at the time to be doing it but, I run just the same. I seldom scream but if I do scream, take it for granted, it's loud. My climbing, which these days is limited to small ladders at my law office, trying to reach a file from the top shelf, is simply that. I climb up the ladder, retrieve the file, and I climb down. There's nothing mighty about it.

What do adverbs do to our writing? I believe, adverbs weaken our writing. The real action, the real strength, is in the verb.

Are you ever insanely crazy? I heard that one not too long ago. Okay, that's an obvious one. Let's move on.

Sometimes I think writers, and I'm talking to myself here too, simply like to hear the sound of their own voices. We love words. Spinning a weave of words is what we do, right? Well, sure. But what we really do is spin an idea. We sow an idea in the reader's head, a grain of a seed that blossoms into a plant and bears fruit and is the story we are writing.

Adverbs are pretty, sort of like a false promise is pretty. When you get below the surface though, it's all show and no substance.

I attended a writing workshop last weekend and part of the program included a critique session. I sat in and, it being my first time at this workshop, I tried to stay quiet and listen. We had a lovely lady bring her work; she read 19 pages aloud and although it was an intriguing and well thought-out story line, her work was filled with adverbs and trite cliches. I ended up writing her a note and I simply asked her to read through her manuscript and cut the adverbs out. She was confused and asked the question of the critique group, "Are adverbs bad?" Apparently, an editor somewhere told her to use them all the time, as much as possible. I don't think that is the trend but if it is, heaven help us. At any rate, I don't think she was satisfied with the answer she got (not from me) that, yes, adverbs are bad. They do not help your writing in any way.

If you have not read it, find horror writer, Stephen King's, book called On Writing. Mr. King addresses the subject of adverbs very well and listen, that guy, he's sold a bijillion books. He must know something.