Category: blog

Over at Sterling Editing…

More busy-ness for Sterling Editing — a new editcast on dialogue. These are fun to do (and those of you who read here regularly may enjoy imagining how much of a challenge it is for me to stay in a 5-minute limit…)

And don’t miss Nicola’s post about “Dialogue Don’ts” which includes perhaps the absolute worst writing she has ever done (as an example of bad dialogue). If you’re feeling creative, join the conversation and improve her work (grin).

Sterling is taking a lot of my time and focus right now, and I’m sorry for the resulting absence of me here these last weeks. But for what it’s worth, I’m having a marvelous time. It’s so exciting, this confluence of writing, editing, working with Nicola, using business skills, supporting and helping people… as if all the major rivers of my life are running together, fast and deep.

It’s good. And thanks for your patience. I’ll be back soon.

Olympia SciFiFest

It all happens in Olympia WA on October 24 at the Olympia Timberland Library.

Nicola and I kick things off at 5:30 with readings and Q&A. Science Fiction Museum curator Jacob McMurray (who designed Nicola’s beautiful memoir) hosts a showing of video interviews with SF authors. Blöödhag plays literary heavy-metal music and then MCs a fashion show.

See those words “All Ages” on this poster? Ignore those words (grin). Of course all are welcome, but it’s billed in the library events calendar as an adult show, and if you’ve read my work or Nicola’s, you know we’re not exactly kittens-and-bunnies (or rocket-ships-and-rayguns) storytellers.

Should be fun. Join us if you can!

scififest
 

Lamb stew

This is a recipe that I’ve adapted for the slow cooker. It makes a Ton of Stew (yes, that’s a precise technical measurement) — easily enough for 6-8 hungry people at one meal, or 2 people for several days worth of meals.

    Ingredients

  • 4-6 cups lamb stock (I use the 1.5 oz. package of Glace d’Agneau Gold in 4-6 cups of boiling water. If you can’t find this at your local store, I recommend veal stock or a mix of beef and vegetable stock. But the lamb stock really rocks the recipe.)
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • Olive oil or vegetable oil
  • 2-2½ lbs. lean lamb stew meat, cut into 1″ cubes
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
  • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 lb. baby carrots
  • 3/4 lb. diced turnips
  • 3/4 lb. diced potatoes
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
  • 2 sprigs rosemary
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1½ tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 10 oz. pearl onions, peeled
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
  • 1 cup frozen petite or regular green peas
  1. Reconstitute the lamb stock in hot water, or pour whatever stock you’re using into a bowl. Add the tomato paste and mix well. Set aside.
  2. Heat a small amount of oil in a large heavy saute pan or skillet over medium heat. Add the meat in small batches so it doesn’t steam. Brown the meat (it should be brown on at least one or two sides, but it doesn’t have to be thoroughly browned). Remove the meat to a bowl as it is browned.
  3. When all the meat is browned, add the onion to the pan and cook until lightly browned, stirring frequently. Add the garlic. Return the lamb to the pan. Sprinkle the flour evenly over everything and turn to coat everything well. Cook for a few minutes until flour is absorbed (no white lumps!)
  4. Put the lamb/onion mixture into the slow cooker. Add the stock/tomato paste, baby carrots, turnips, potatoes, rosemary, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low for at least 8 hours.
  5. Melt the butter in the saute pan/skillet. Add the pearl onions and saute until lightly browned. Add the sugar and balsamic vinegar to carmelize the onions: boil to reduce until the carmelized liquid is thick and coats the onions. Set aside to cool, then refrigerate the onions and any leftover coating.
  6. Stir the pearl onions and frozen peas into the stew 30 – 60 minutes before serving.

Peeling and glazing the pearl onions is the most fiddly part of this process, but well worth it — the carmelized onions finish the stew beautifully. Serve with thick chunks of lovely fresh bread and some really good butter.

Followed by crumble…

Deeper

I should be working right now on Sterling Editing projects, on my new screenplay, on keeping my little corner of the internet here bright and shiny (otherwise known as, Dude, where’s the content?; to which the writer answers In the small part of my brain that isn’t doing Everything Else…).

And I am working, mostly. But also, I am thinking about the turn my life has taken in the last year; or should I say, the dive. Not a dive as in a drop into negative space, although I’ve definitely spent part of the last 12 months in freefall, and that’s been no fucking fun. But that’s not important. It doesn’t really matter when or how we fall, or why, because we all do. What matters is where and how we land.

Ishita Gupta wrote earlier this year about lessons she’s learned. It’s the list of a person who likes to grow, and I recognize that. I’ve spent an enormous part of my life growing my way toward myself, looking for pieces of myself in everything from boarding school to driving a delivery truck in Chicago to ASL to… well, I’ve been a lot of places.

But these days I find I am not traveling wider so much as deeper. Diving down farther into my writing, my marriage, and an increasingly unsentimental understanding of myself that is surprisingly liberating. I’m learning simple things:

  • I am not more special for doing good stuff years ago. I am not less special in spite of some really spectacular stupid behavior. I own it all, and it’s all part of the mix, but it’s not where I live. I’m making plenty of choices now that I can celebrate or beat myself up about, if I really need to.

  • I’d rather celebrate.

  • I choose who to answer to.

  • I have some powerful amazing brilliant things to do. I will do the fucking work.

  • I can’t have whatever I want, but I be whatever I want.

  • Shakespeare really was a genius, and I want to play Lady Mac on a professional stage before I die. (Hah. Bet you didn’t see that one coming. I’ll explain some other time.)

I told Nicola over lunch today that I was still looking for a way to bring all these ideas together. Oh, she said, You mean that you’ve figured out the essential parameters of who you are and now you’re going to explore that. And I said, Well, yeah, and ate my sandwich.

So there we are. For what it’s worth, I feel like the universe shoved me hard spang right into myself, and I really, really want to stick this landing.

What are you learning these days?

Special day

It’s Nicola‘s birthday.

Today it’s All About Her at our house; Whatever you say, honey, has long been a part of birthday celebrations for us. The cool thing is, she’ll spend the entire day getting what she wants, but I feel like I’m the one who got the best present all those years ago, one I am still unwrapping, discovering, raising an eyebrow over, sometimes laughing out loud in pure delight. One that still brings me both deep contentment and unexpected joy.

So if you raise a glass of anything today, please think of Nicola and wish her well. Wish her many happy returns of the day; because that will be a gift to me too.

Enjoy your day.

Cellphone Rage

No, it’s not what you’re thinking — an over-the-edge moviegoer hasn’t thrown some obnoxious Dude! I’m totally watching Batman kick the Joker’s ass! texter through the screen. This Rage is a movie itself, the first to be filmed for simultaneous release on mobile, online, digital screens and DVD. It’s filmed specifically to be watchable on your cellphone screen. As such, it tells the story completely through a series of monologues. The notion is that a schoolboy is doing a report on the fashion industry… and then something unexpected happens.

This won’t be everyone’s minty chocolate goodness: I can already imagine Nicola’s response (*waves at sweetie through the internet*). But I’m an actor by training and a talker by nature, so the idea of a story that unfolds in breadth (linear storytelling) and depth (character exploration) through monologue fascinates me. And this kind of thing is clearly catnip for actors — watch the trailer and see the lineup for yourself:

 

 
And here’s an interview with the director, Sally Potter. Here’s Potter talking about what inspired her to use intimate filmmaking techniques to make a movie intended for distribution on tiny, utilitarian cellphone screens (arguably the least intimate viewscreen ever…)

I do think it is intimate… It is in part my direct experience from being on the internet and doing a blog and making myself accessible to people in a very intimate way and finding that for the first time in all my working life I was having a one on one global relationship with strangers…
— Sally Potter, director of Rage

Interested? You can get the DVD, or you can watch the film in installments over at Babelgum, which is distributing the film on mobile and the internet.

I believe

This is cheating a bit (in blog terms) because I posted this quote over at Sterling Editing last week. But not everyone may visit there; and the SE blog is very much focused on helping or inspiring writers. It focuses out. Here in my little personal corner of the internet, it can just be about me if I like…

… and today I do.

Here’s what Robert McKee has to say about the love it takes to write well. It speaks to me because I think it speaks about me. I recognize myself.

The love of story — the belief that your vision can be expressed only through story, that characters can be more “real” than people, that the fictional world is more profound than the concrete. The love of the dramatic — a fascination with the sudden surprises and revelations that bring sea-changes in life. The love of truth — the belief that lies cripple the artist, that every truth in life must be questioned, down to one’s own secret motives. The love of humanity — a willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their skins and see the world through their eyes. The love of sensation — the desire to indulge not only the physical but the inner senses. The love of dreaming — the pleasure in taking leisurely rides on your imagination just to see where it leads. The love of humor — a joy in the saving grace that restores the balance of life. The love of language — the delight in sound and sense, syntax and semantics. The love of duality — a feel for life’s hidden contradictions, a healthy suspicion that things are not what they seem. The love of perfection — the passion to write and rewrite in pursuit of the perfect moment. The love of uniqueness — the thrill of audacity and a stone-faced calm when it is met by ridicule. The love of beauty — an innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the difference. The love of self — a strength that doesn’t need to be constantly reassured, that never doubts that you are indeed a writer. You must love to write and bear the loneliness.
 
But the love of a good story, of terrific characters and a world driven by your passion, courage, and creative gifts is still not enough. Your goal must be a good story well told.
 
— Robert McKee, from Story

Reading these sentences makes me feel like a little girl again, wide-eyed in a dark movie theatre on a hot Florida summer afternoon, clapping my hands until they hurt so that Tinkerbelle wouldn’t die: calling out I believe, I believe! And still I am calling. I believe in the heightened life of the imagination, and I believe in bringing as much of that same joy as I can to my everyday life; to this moment as I write about love and story with the taste of tea in my mouth and outside the wind blowing, autumn clouds racing across they sky so it turns blue to gray to blue again, and the rowan tree sags with red berries and little puffball birds, and it’s just beautiful, you know? It’s so beautiful.

It’s beautiful that way inside my head too, in that other life where the only one in the theatre is me, where all the stories are powerful, strong, strange, wild. They roll through me like autumn clouds. The wind blows.