You would be correct to chastise me for not bowing to one of the great commandments of writing. The first of the (oh, dear) three stories underway this week took a turn into “Two People Talking in a Room” which can make for a good story, but it’s quite what I’m after. The second is one that frankly hasn’t had time to gestate properly, despite how long ago I dumped the first draft out of my head… so I started yet another today. It, happily, is unrolling in a willing manner, so I should be able to stick with it until it’s ready for someone else to tell me what needs fixing in it.
†I would like the Department of Heroic Effort to take notice of this, because it happened despite incipient cold and a migraine which spread itself across three days.
Looking back at some of it, now that a semblance of coherence has returned, I’m surprised to find that this weeks production is actually pretty good. Perhaps I should do all my writing while breathing through one nostril and wearing a slowly tightening belt over one eye…
I decided to try a new thing with baking– flaky rolls. Since I had some success, I’ll share.
First, make up a batch of rough puff pastry dough (which sounds like it should be swaggering along an alley in a Carebears setting, does it not?). I amended that recipe in using common Canadian all-purpose flour and salt of unknown provenance, and rather than carefully “rubbing in” the butter, I just let my stand mixer molest the butter into the flour until it was in smallish bits before adding the water..
After the final rest and chill of the dough, roll it out, then cut it into twelve squares about 10cm on a side. With each square, fold the corners into the middle and press then down so they stick together (this is purely decorative; I expect more or less the same results from just folding in half along whatever axis tickles your fancy). Arrange on a baking sheet lined with parchment, brush with beaten egg, and cook at 375F for about 35 minutes. It’s almost like croissants, but with substantially less faffing about with rising– I finished this in under an hour and a half, and you really can’t get croissants in less than eight hours.
As a bonus, there’s the trimmed edges of the dough which you can… if you’re inclined… form into twists, throw on a sheet of their own, and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. You could even, if feeling very charitable, tell the other members of your family about having made these little side-treats.
† No sign of the misery the initial iPad offered. Indeed, 747 words of this week’s production were banged out using tablet and its Bluetooth-enthralled keyboard, as a proof of concept effort. I may soon become a stereotype writer, lurking in a corner of a cafe and clattering away for hours after ordering a single inexpensive beverage.
Merry Christmas to all. I have a few days off work, which will deform the usual schedule here. I will look in again on Friday, with a progress report. For today, here’s the foundation of a lot of our modern notions of Christmas, read in pleasing voices, to keep you company while you wait for the rattling of many hooves on your roof.
It must be more than one creature stirring up there. Right? So many hooves…
I hope you’re all done the necessary running around, and have plenty of free time to bake shortbread or speculaas or stollen… or in fact to not do any of that and just sit in a contented heap with people you want to spend your time with.
This last one takes a while to get through, and I suspect it’s not to all tastes, but it’s worth a look at the manifestation of Christmas Past and the treatment of the Christmas Yet To Be segment.
Stay warm, be happy, and I’ll make words at you next week.
Why such a low week? Well, apart from the efforts called for by events mentioned on Monday, yesterday’s writing session finished with me saying, “Well, that’s it for today. Time to save!” followed immediately by the failure of power in the entire northern half of the city. Autosave meant that I only lost about a third of the work… but still. Boo.
Oh, for those who are putting a bow on their NaNoWriMo efforts today, let me offer this admission of marginal defeat:
Marginal defeat, of course, because I’m not actually running that race, and if I claimed to be you could all shout Cheat! because that’s not talking about the first draft and I started in late August. I mention it only because it’s (sort of) close to the official participant’s goal.
Yet another rejection for a story yesterday, alas. The fact that I’ve gotten more rejections this year than I have previously made submissions is, in a way Superman’s imperfect duplicate would understand, positive… yet I do find I’m a little blue. Therefore, today’s imported film is a comedy.
There, that’s buoyed me up a bit, and reminded me that it took one of my favourite authors a while to find a market. All set for tomorrow’s free tuning clinic.
*Mondays being what they are, I left the house without the day’s selected pen, so Designated Fiction Pen had to stand in. To balance out, I managed to leave my wallet at The Regular Job at day’s end. I don’t usually Monday with that much force.
**More commentary on the forums has convinced me that Friday’s conundrum is mostly a Duofold with a replacement barrel stolen from a contemporary Mk. IV Victory; the barrels were the same size, and this explanation leaves the fewest gouges from Occam’s razor. No new page for the site, alas, but a new picture to apply to the Duofold page (the one without the imprint showing).
…and also, let me brag a little. Last weekend, after a bit of a dry patch, I got an absolute mass of pens repaired, all but one one of them for other people. These included a PFM, three Snorkels, a Vacumatic with a lock-down filler, and a Balance First Lady, plus some slightly less challenging objects. The Balance, Vacumatic, and two of the Snorkels were moving between generations in one family, which I find always provides a happy glow the the work. Since the Balance and one of the Snorkels were more than usually resistant to being taken to bits, a happy glow was a welcome counterbalance to black vexation.
The PFM, which was otherwise in quite good shape, had suffered a refit at some past date under the hands of one who was mislead into thinking rubber cement was an appropriate sealant. I’ve grumped about this sort of thing before, so I’ll leave that link and its contents to express my refreshed thoughts on such behaviour.
The third Snorkel dealt with was, for a joy, one of my own; yet another donation from a friend mentioned many times before who keeps finding things at garage and estate sales. It is also not a model I owned until she handed it to me:
That model being a Saratoga
I have a before picture, but it failed to quite capture the squalor this pen had fallen into. I suspect it lived in a smoking house, because the yellow-brown patina I mercilessly polished away certainly seemed to be nicotine (I know this because our own house was owned for fifty years by the same smoking person, and the hallway still breaks out in a nicotine sweat every winter). It cleaned up nice, and I’ll be taking it out for its first run tomorrow, making very very very thin writing in pursuit of the day’s labours. The Sheaffer catalogue of the day only claimed to go down to extra-fine, but this thing, despite acceptable wetness, is toying with the limits of human perception in the fineness of its line.
What's up at Ravens March. 