Veterans Day

In my life, I've lived in several different countries, including those that do not have the freedoms we enjoy in the U.S. Much of the reason we have those freedoms is because of the efforts and sacrifices our veterans have made.

Honor them today.

Cooking up Creativity

Last rose of summer in November!

Powder Biscuit rolls, we ate the cake.

The holidays are roaring towards us, laden with expectations and promises and angst. First up (at least for my U.S. readers) is Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the easiest holiday for me. Perhaps it's because it has the fewest expectations, promises and angst--and most of them are around food, or rather the creation of food. In my experience, many if not most creative people enjoy making stuff, in this case, food.

For example, my dad, an artist, adored making fudge. He never ate sweets, but every couple of months he'd make an enormous, vast amount of fudge, two to four pounds of the sweet stuff. He'd use all the best ingredients and spend hours creating pan after pan. When it had cooled, he'd take a tiny square to taste and make sure it worked. The rest of us ate the rest.

I've wondered about why he made fudge and have come to the conclusion that he enjoyed the process. He enjoyed using myriad ingredients, sometimes in new and different ways. And when those new and different ingredients and ways didn't work, he'd toss the batch out and start over (even if we wanted to eat the experiment). Because it was only fudge, only took a limited amount of time, and unlike his art work, was not going to go up for sale, he played while he created.

This is transferable to our creative work. When I remember, during process, to play, to try new ingredients and new ways, and to be willing to toss the entire batch out, I'm much more creative. I'm more likely to get into the flow of the work, instead of slogging through page after page.

I wish I had my dad's fudge recipes, but they were all in his head. Instead, in honor of the big food festival, follows are two recipes, both easy and delicious.

Here's a baking powder biscuit recipe:

2 cups white flour (can be unbleached)
1 teas. baking powder (I use more)
pinch of salt (omittable)
5-6 tablespoons of any oil or fat (I use canola)
2/3 c. of milk (soy ok)

Mix, dough will be stiff, I usually don't bother to roll into roll shape, 'cause I like 'em weird, but feel free to roll your dough.400 degrees for 15 minutes. Done.

Molasses Cake (This is one you can play with a lot, very forgiving.)

1/2 c. molasses (light or dark, your choice)
2/3 c. water
1/2 c. raisins (can be omitted, other dried fruits can be substituted)
1/2 teas. cinnamon
1/2 teas. cloves
1/2 teas. baking soda (I use more)
1 and 3/4 c. white flour

Boil water, combine with molasses and raisins, boil 5 minutes (to soften dried fruit) let cool.
Combine other ingredients together, add mixture.
Spray 8" by 8" pan (or oil and flour) bake in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

I use more of the spices listed above and often add ginger and nutmeg, sometimes even a touch of chili powder. I often add a half cup of chocolate bits and/or a half cup of nuts. This cake is a little dry and not terribly sweet, so sometimes I melt chocolate bits on the top for a quick frosting and sometimes I frost the cake, depending on mood. Plain, this makes a good breakfast cake.

So, dear readers, what are your favorite recipes for creativity? How do you bake up a wonderful novel or painting or song or?

Happy Halloween!

MY LITTLE DOGGIE WONDERING IF THE MONSTERS HAVE LEFT AND IF THERE'S ANY CANDY LEFT TOO!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

My favorite story of Halloween is of my very first one. I was three and wore my bunny pajamas and my dad carried me around the apartment complex where we lived. Such an adventure! And candy too!

Do you celebrate the holiday? Have a Halloween story, fun, silly, sad, scary to share? Please do.

Fall Musings: What is Failure? Success?

Fall views from my daily walk on the Oregon Trail

Several posts of my fellow bloggers such as Beth, Helen, Kathy, Sandra, Enid and Lynda made me think about how every time the seasons turn it is a opportunity for reflection on a life's course, past, present and future. This time of year when the ground goes fallow is especially conducive to contemplating the past. Not only the past, but what it means for the present and the future. And though the past is gone, it still impacts our behaviors and attitudes today. And while judging our experiences is a bit of a folly, still it's human.

But I've discovered that in judging the past, I'm continually...wrong. Which brings us to the topic. Because, what is failure? Success? It might seem easy to say, "I wish I'd been a bestseller with my first novel and therefore I'm a failure." Except that my first novel was written when I was 11 and much of it was written in colored markers. Now I believe that attempt was a success--certainly I knew I had the passion and discipline to write at an early age! And who can know what a "success" might bring?

And what is success? Again, the definition shifts like fine sand in a loosely grasping hand. I grew up in a posh ski resort and rubbed my hand-me-down Kmart coat elbows with the children of the rich and famous and "successful." And while having money is quite useful--still I'll never forget my friend who could never be without her nanny's supervision (we couldn't go outside often--fear of kidnappers) and who had never tasted peanut butter (chef didn't approve).

I suppose we'd all agree that failure is when we hurt someone, a successful life is when we leave the world a little better off for us being in it--but what about the less important aspects? For me, I count successes when I remain true to my writing passion and true to the love I feel for friends and family. I count when I forget those truths as my failures.

How about you? What do you see as past failures? Successes? Or perhaps more importantly, how has your perceptions changed over time of what might be a success or failure?

Basil and Creativity

Clipped basil re-rooting along with coasters I won in a contest by Enid of Steamy Darcy.

This year, none of the tomatoes were successful. But the basil exploded, witness the photo above, these are the leftovers. So what to do with all the basil? Ah, and there's the link to increasing creativity, because after using it in spaghetti sauce and in tomato cucumber salad and giving it away to friends...what's next?

Here's a few of the recipes I created:

First, preserving it:
Rinse the basil, chop fine and bottle with olive oil. Can use as is for the basil flavor alone or add garlic, onion, pepper, lemon, etc. and make salad dressing. Keep refrigerated when not using.
Hang it upside down and dry it, although this is my least favorite way of preserving it. It loses a lot of flavor, IMO.
My favorite: Rinse the leaves and put whole into a plastic bag and freeze. When the basil is frozen, crunch it up in the bag into little bits and use. A thank you to my s.o. Bruce for this, it works great.

Now for three recipes:
Add basil to any curry to make it "Thai" style.
Basil is great added to any Chinese dish, especially fried rice and chicken dishes.
Add basil to ground chicken or any ground meat when making meatloaf.
Puree basil with garlic and butter or margarine and spread on a halved French bread loaf, bake in oven (low temp or the basil will burn) for a twist on garlic bread.
And my favorite:
Tomato Basil soup:
2 cups of tomatoes (for spicier soup, can use 1 cup green tomatoes)
2 cups milk
1/2 cup of basil (it will taste strong)
Tablespoon of olive oil
2 tablespoons nutritious yeast (optional)
touch of pepper (optional)
Puree tomatoes. Heat olive oil in soup pan and add tomato puree and cook 5-8 minutes then add slowly the 2 cups of milk and simmer for 10 minutes, then add basil, yeast and pepper and simmer another 10 minutes. Soup will be thin, if you like thicker add 2 tablespoons of flour when adding milk and stir well. And my disclaimer: I'm not a professional chef so your results may vary.

Now the creativity piece--I discovered that having such a wealth of one thing, basil, led me to be creative in how I thought about basil. It became much more than "one of the spices that goes into spaghetti." It expanded and took on a more complex role in my cooking in some unexpected ways. And showed me a way to be more creative in my writing. With a character, for example, expand the character so it becomes more complex and then use the character in unexpected ways. Same is true for the plot--try thinking of it as many different ways as possible, play the what if game. What's an unexpected event? Another? Twist and turn the elements of your creativity and then jump out of boxed in expectations to another level.

Anybody got any other recipes for basil? How about a story where a plethora of whatever led to more creative thinking?

One Lovely Blog Award

Sandra of My Little Corner presented me with this award a few days ago in her post One Lovely Blog Award. Sandra's site is great for new short story markets and other of interest to writers sites.

The rules are simple:

1) Accept the award and don't forget to post a link back to the awarding person.

2) Pass the award on.

3) Notify the award winners.

And my first rule is say thanks, thank you Sandra! (Anyone who is looking for short story markets NEEDS to visit My Little Corner.)

Passing the award on is difficult only because there are so many great blogs that I follow. Many of them are on my "Blogs I read all the time" list, so check it out, but that needs to be updated (soon, I promise). Please check it out and go to those blogs.

So, in the interests of brevity and because I'm partial I'm awarding this to one blog, to my dear friend Kathy's fun, wonderful and full of great writerly wisdom, blog: Well Placed Words.

Next, what basil has to do with creating.

Beyond and Above Platforming

This week, a good friend of mine, Lance Thompson, a script doctor will be presenting at the Idaho Writers' League's 2009 Writers Conference: Paint with Words. As well as teaching some excellent workshops, he'll be on a panel about "The State Of Publishing Today." He asked a couple of days ago for my thoughts on same, having gone to a major conference recently.

My recent experience at the conference and elsewhere is that the bottom line is (and will always be):

Like any major business, the publishing world is always in flux. At this time, two major factors are in play. One is the recession and the other is electronic publishing. So there's a lot of "It's harder than ever to sell" out there. But I've been writing and submitting and selling for a long time and that's always been the publishers' lament. In my experience, a recession helps the publishing business, which is usually slow and reluctant to change. And the electronic revolution provides a wealth of new opportunities for publication (I was published on Twitter, for heaven sakes!).

Every agent/editor who I spoke with or who was on a panel said the same thing: "We want to see the writing. It's only the writing that truly matters. Yes, we talk about platform and the publishing world and what's hot right now, but the quality of writing is everything. And as long as some people somewhere still read, we'll still be looking for good writing to publish."

It's the writing. We all need, in our desperate desire to publish, to remember it's the writing that sells.

Do you put the writing (often the most difficult part) first? Do you write first? Write every day? Or set aside times for concentrated writing and then work on other parts of your career by working on your platform or attending workshops or conferences or? Is your focus correct? Is there something you'd like to change?

Writing of workshops, Lance is also giving one of his excellent workshops, "Lance Thompson’s Screenplay Story Structure Workshop," in Eagle, Idaho on October 10 and 11--comment if you want more info.