The Work That Binds Us Together

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This is, of course, National Novel Writing Month – which really ought to be called International Novel Writing Month, as the map on its web page shows.

In a month that’s been full of bad news from all over, and much unhappiness and partisan animosity, I find looking at that map to be immensely consoling – because whatever else may be going on, there are people all over the world striving to do the same difficult but rewarding thing, and cheering each other on as they go.  The 1,994  writers hard at work in Chicago are doing their bit; so are the 8,046 in Chile and the 39 in Kenya, the 127 in Latvia and the 756 in India . . . and all the rest, all around the globe, working on their individual acts of subcreation.

(Shameless self-promotion time:  If, after you’re finished with your project, you should happen to want it gone over with an editorial/critical eye, please imagine me making a discreet gesture toward the “Editorial Services” link just beneath the header.)

He Finds Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

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jamesdmacdonald's avatarJAMES D. MACDONALD

Darth Vader does the Linking Rings. He knows the ways of the Force. Also the Elmsley Count, the Double Lift, and the Regular Pass.

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Random Thoughts for a Random Sort of Day

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Or, bits of loose mental fluff that were never enough to make a whole post by themselves:

The thing about obsolete tools for critical argument is that nobody ever bothers to box them up and put them away after acquiring a shiny new set. Instead, they’re left lying around out in public where untrained amateurs can pick them up and use them for god-knows-what.

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I’m not sure whether the Cult of the Western Canon is the result of the tendency of (mostly male) literary critics to turn everything into a dick-measuring contest an emergent property of the patriarchal nature of western institutions of higher learning, or the natural consequence of there only being room in a two-semester survey course for so many books.

(It’s always a bit unsettling to open a new edition of a familiar anthology textbook, and see which authors have been thrown out of the lifeboat in order to take aboard someone new.)

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There are times when I’m convinced that the only two states in the life of a freelancer are the state of too much work and the state of not enough money. What’s pure hell is when they both hit at the same time. Theoretical speculation suggests that the simultaneous state of too much money and not enough work must also exist; but I don’t know of any freelancer who’s ever actually achieved it.

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If you want characters to generate plot and conflict, they need to have shadows in them to hide stuff and angular bits to catch on things.

Peeve of the Day

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Maybe I’ve been reading too much paranormal fantasy lately, because you wouldn’t think this would be a thing I’d run into often enough to make me peevish.  Nevertheless, I do, and it does.

Listen to me, people.  Nephilim is not – I repeat, not – a singular noun.  It’s a plural noun (that –im bit is the marker), and the singular is naphil.

The same goes for seraphim and cherubim.  They’re plurals, too, and their singular forms are seraph and cherub, respectively.

If you’re going to mess around with Judaic and/or Christian esoterica, at least get the words right.  (Or as right as reasonably possible, anyhow, given that we’re talking about words that wouldn’t have been written in the Roman alphabet to start with.)

Well, the election is over

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My candidate didn’t win. But as Rocky would say, “she went the distance,” and maybe that was the best we were truly likely to get at this point in time. We’ve just finished with two terms of a precedent-shattering presidency, and I’m not surprised, in retrospect, that the elastic band wasn’t up to stretching out to another one.

But I’ve voted for — pauses to count on fingers — eight presidents, now, and half of the ones I voted for won, and half of them didn’t. Which is the sort of thing that happens, with elections.

Granted, it’s still no fun to get so close you can almost taste it, and then not get it anyway.

The world goes on, however, and we as writers still have books to finish and books to edit, because people aren’t going to stop reading just because their candidate lost, or even because their candidate won.

news from dixville notch

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Jim Macdonald was over at Dixville Notch for the minute-past-midnight voting, and reports on the results of it here.

Only Two More Days…

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…(and, as I write this, seven and a half hours, but who’s counting) until the US presidential election is over, and whatever comes next, comes next, but in any case I should stop getting multiple daily polling calls and stacks of four-color glossy political ads.

Meanwhile, to keep us all going, a recipe – not a simple one this time, but one that I got from my father quite a while ago.  It’s become my go-to recipe for when somebody phones up and says, “You will bring a cake to the bake sale, won’t you?”  Obligatory writing reference:  This is kind of like being asked to contribute a story to a charity anthology, except that you can’t keep re-using the same story from one anthology to another, but you can definitely make the same cake every time.

Anyhow, this is Marvelous Mississippi Mud Cake (or Triple-C Chocolate Cake, as I usually call it up here in far northern New England, where the marvelousness of Mississippi mud – providing, as it does, “the richest land this side of the Valley Nile” – is not exactly common knowledge):

  • 5   ounces (the original recipe called for “5 squares”, but that was before the chocolate makers changed to half-ounce squares and didn’t warn anybody) unsweetened chocolate
  •  2   Cups sifted all-purpose flour
  • 1   tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup powdered instant coffee or instant espresso
  • 2   T boiling water
  • 1   cup plus 2 T cold water
  • 1/2 cup bourbon, or rum, or amaretto, or cognac
    (bourbon is the classic, but up here I use cognac, it being more in the local idiom)
  • 1   cup unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 1   tsp vanilla extract
  • 2   cups powdered (aka confectioner’s) sugar
  • 3   large eggs plus 1 large extra yolk
  • 1/4 cup sour cream or buttermilk
  • cocoa or confectioners sugar (optional)

Generously grease  a nine inch Bundt pan – 10 cup capacity.  (This is a place where the recipe betrays its age and regional origins – I don’t think recipes say “grease” any more.  My father would have used Crisco; I generally use Baker’s Joy spray.)

Position rack in center of oven and heat oven to 325 F.

Melt chocolate in the top pan of a double boiler over hot, not boiling, water.  (Another indication of this recipe’s vintage.  These days, I melt my chocolate in the microwave.) Remove chocolate before it is completely melted and stir until smooth.  Set aside.

Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside. 

In a two cup glass measure, dissolve the instant coffee in the boiling water, stir in the cold water and the bourbon or other flavoring and set aside.

Beat the butter with vanilla and sugar in the large bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle beater until  well blended and smooth. (Or, like me, use a handheld electric mixer because that’s what you’ve got.)  Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.  Beat in the extra yolk and the sour cream.  Scrape down the bowl and beater.  Add the melted and slightly cooled chocolate and beat until the batter is smooth

Remove the bowl from the stand.  (Obviously, if you’re not using a stand mixer, you can skip that step.) By hand, using a spoon or rubber spatula, stir in small amounts of the flour mixture and the coffee-bourbon liquid.  Beat until the batter is smooth;  it will be quite thin.  Don’t worry if the batter looks slightly curdled.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan.  Bake until the cake top is springy to the touch and slightly cracked looking and a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean — about 65 to 70 minutes.  Do not over cook.

Cool the cake on a wire rack for 15 minutes.  Top with another rack or plate and invert.  Lift off pan,  Cool completely.

Top with light sifting of confectioner’s sugar or cocoa.  Serve with bourbon-(or cognac, or whatever booze you’re using)-laced, slightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

This makes a decidedly grown-up chocolate cake.  Treat yourself; after the campaign season we’ve all had, you deserve it.

One of the Things We Tell People in the Writers’ Workshop…

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…is that if people keep telling you that there’s something wrong with your story – they’re probably right.

They may be – in fact, they quite likely are – wrong about what, exactly, is wrong with your story, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the fact that you have a problem and the problem is real and you need to fix it.

The same thing, I would make bold to say, applies to politics.

(This is not, however, the point where I expound upon my grand theory of What Is Wrong With Our Politics and How to Fix It, because that sort of thing is not remotely within my skill set.  Your story, though, and how to improve it . . . that I can figure out, and gladly, too.)

This Is About as Political as I Ever Get

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With regard to the upcoming election:  What John Scalzi said.

Take Care, People.

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Hurricane Matthew looks set to romp and stomp all over the state of Florida, and possibly a goodly chunk of the Atlantic coast.  Some people who might have otherwise been reading this have probably already evacuated to safer climes; for others, I direct your attention to this web page on emergency jump kits, also known in the trade as bug-out bags.  (Full disclosure:  The author of the list is also my co-author.) They’re the bag you keep packed to grab when the state police come around your neighborhood telling everyone that the dam has busted/the wildfire has jumped the firebreaks/the chemical plant has exploded and you need to get out of there now.

If you’re a writer, your jump kit might also need to contain a means of continuing your work – anything from a paper notebook and pencils to a cheap netbook and a mouse, depending upon your purse and your habits.  And it’s never a bad idea to keep a current backup of the work-in-progress on a thumb drive you can grab on the run and shove into a pocket, as well as another backup on Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever offsite server you trust with your data.

For right now – stay safe, and take lots of mental notes on the storm while you’re getting slammed by it.  You’re writers, and everything is grist for your mill.