Camp NaNo preps

As they say in Dutch; een goed begin is het halve werk (well begun is half done). Which is particularly true for writing endeavours, I find, otherwise I find myself staring at blank page for the first half an hour of a writing project. Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, wrote a book called 'No plot? No problem!' but then he went on to say that his writing projects always spiralled wildly out of control and how he had to introduce aliens or magic to get everything back on track. But then, he is one of the few people to have won NaNo every year, so maybe there is something to say for his strategy. However, I am too much of a control freak to go down that route, so I actually did some planning!
Step one: something to write on. My previous personal laptop was burgled from my previous house, and since I was low on cash I didn't buy a proper replacement laptop, and have been annoyed with what I had ever since (it was slow, the keyboard wasn't centered in the middle of the laptop, it was slow, it had lots of bloatware, it was slow, I never got around to installing it properly, and also, it was veeeeery slow). I could write on my work laptop, but that would mean the temptation of opening my work email and getting some things 'out of the way' would be too hard to resist; good for my work ethic, not so good for my NaNo project. So, I decided to buy a new laptop. Which, of course, I didn't pick out myself, but my computer savvy boyfriend took care of that. It arrived yesterday, just in time, and this is in fact the first ever blog post from my new machine. So far, I'm loving it, but so far, I haven't done that much with it. We'll see whether I still like it 20,000 (or more) words down the line!
Step two: a plot. As has happened with all my great stories, the plot somehow came to me. J. K. Rowling is always saying how she suddenly got the idea of Harry travelling to Hogwarts while she was waiting for the train to Manchester to depart, and while this sounds very contrived, it actually is how it works for me; I get this image in my head, just one moment in the story, with the setting and the atmosphere, and I know which way it will go. In this case, I was thinking about my successful 2015 NaNo novel, combined with a long-held ambition; to write a story set in one day. Many of my favourite novels, from The Hours to Saturday to Mothering Sunday, are set in the space of a single day. "And in that day, a whole life", to paraphrase Virginia Woolf through Michael Cunningham. So that is what it will be; the central problem of the story (different from the central problem in the 2015 NaNo) will be resolved in that single day.
Step three: characters. As I am doing a somewhat rewrite of my earlier NaNo, I could have just nicked the characters from that story and be done with it. However, for me, that doesn't quite work. I have to know some basics about the character, what they are like, but not everything (and I know my 2015 NaNo characters pretty well by now). I don't keep character fact sheets in which I write down everything from the colour of their eyes to the name of their pet; in fact, usually my characters don't have a name themselves when I start writing. It is like I will meet them through the story: if I know too much about them beforehand they won't appear on the page properly. I do have to have a feeling of who they are, how they will respond to certain situations, what motivates them. So, for each of them I have written down key characteristics plus their answer to the central problem of the novel. They all have a 'working name', which is based on the person I know in real life that is closest to them, or the actual character name if I already know it. The rest I will discover as I write. So far, not a character has failed to surprise me in one way or another as I write, and I am curious to see who will populate my story this time.
Step four: time to write. Ah, this is going to be the difficult one. I usually keep my Novembers relatively free of social events, but this April caught me somewhat unawares, and is also very much full with evenings and weekends filled with events. To keep things manageable, I have set my goal to 20,000 words, but we'll see if I even get that far.
Step five: people to write with. I am not a social writer; I like to curl up on the couch and just hammer away at the keys without making eye contact with another living creature for an hour and a half, but once in a while I do like to attend 'write ins'; social gatherings where people NaNo (yes, that is a verb) together. Camp NaNo doesn't really have any write ins in the Netherlands, but it does have cabins; virtual groups consisting of max 20 people who spend camp 'together'. I have been randomly put into a cabin which seems to consist of nothing more than a message board, on which not a lot of the participants have written anything. I will probably opt out of this cabin and move to another one once I find a set of more active participants. However, this is not my main focus, as I don't really need the motivation of others to keep writing (basically, what I need is time. See also step four). But still, it is fun to have a group of peers around you.

So, that's about it on the preparation front. Writing starts tomorrow, which is Easter Sunday and not a good day for me, as I have two social events lined up. My writing will therefore probably start on Easter Monday, when I can get a good couple of hours in. We'll see how it goes, and I will try to keep this blog updated in between getting the 20k words out.

Pecan and chocolate tart

My successful pie-baking attempt last weekend left me hungry for more (yes, that will be the last of the food-related wordplay for this blogpost). Funnily enough, being so adverse to anything pastry-related has left me with hardly any cookbooks that contain pie recipes. After a long search I found one in Paul Hollywood's How to Bake, one of those cookbooks I should really use more often. It was called a 'pecan and chocolate tart', but it did require sweet pastry. If I ever find the time I will have to look into the difference between a pie and a tart, because I thought I had all the baking lingo figured out and this should have been a pecan and chocolate pie (similar to the infamous pecan pie I made 5 years ago) according to my semantic weather vane. But let's not worry about that now!
Funnily enough, the sweet pastry (or 'pate sucree') recipe Paul Hollywood uses is different from the one Yvette used. I thought this would be one of those 'baking basics' that are universally the same, but apparently you can give this your own twist. Still finding myself somewhat in a pastry apprenticeship, I decided to follow Paul on this one.

Ingredients
For the sweet pastry:
180 g flour
120 g cold butter, cubed
55 g sugar
1 egg

For the filling:
80 g dark chocolate, in pieces
45 g butter, cubed
160 g sugar
235 g golden syrup
3 eggs
235 g chopped pecan nuts (or 220 g in my case, as they come in 110 g packages)

As always, first make the pastry. Combine the flour and sugar and rub in the butter with your fingers until you reach the magical 'fine breadcrumbs' stage. Try to work quickly to keep the butter as cold as possible. Add the egg, combine into a dough, and form into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and leave to chill in the fridge for about 2 hours. Take it out of the fridge and leave for at least 15 minutes.

Grease your loose-bottomed tart tin. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is big enough to fill the tin. Transfer to the tin and push it neatly into the edges, not stretching or pulling the dough (that is what causes the shrinkage). Trim off the edges and put back in the fridge while you make the filling.

For the filling, put the butter and chocolate to melt au-bain-marie, stirring to an even mixture. Set aside to cool.
Next, combine the syrup and sugar in a pan, stirring all the while, until it comes to a boil. Set aside to cool, but make sure it is still runny.
Beat the eggs together, add the melted chocolate/butter mixture and whisk until smooth. Now for the difficult part; while you keep whisking, pour in the hot syrup mixture in a thin trickle until it is fully incorporated. If you're smart, you let your KitchenAid do the whisking, or have someone else pour in the syrup. If you're unprepared like me, you hold the mixer in your left hand while your right arm cramps up from pouring in the syrupy mixture (or the other way around, if you prefer).
When the syrup is all incorporated, stir in the chopped pecans and set aside to cool.

Heat your oven to 180 C. Pour the mixture into your pastry case. If you're smart, pour the mixture in the case while it is already in the oven, as it fills all the way to the top and transferring the tin without spilling the mixture is a challenge. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the mixture is set and the pastry is golden (for me, this took more like 55 minutes). Leave to cool completely.

Tart pre-bake (and pre-transfer to the oven)

Funnily enough, on this particular pie/tart concoction, the filling was more difficult to make than the pastry. The pastry actually did everything I wanted it to do. And it came out sweet and crumbly, what we would call 'bros' in Dutch; one of those words that has no direct English translation.

Pretty pie with pretty pastry

Actually, the filling was a bit of a let-down. It is rich in pecan and chocolate flavour, but the golden syrup comes through too strongly for my taste. It makes the whole tart a bit caramelly and clingy. This may well be the way a pecan pie (tart) is supposed to taste, but it is not one of my favourite tastes. I will have to look into more fresh and fruity pies, perhaps with raspberries or more lemony flavours, as this somehow feels autumny to me.
But apart from the syrup overdose, this is yet another notch on my pastry-making and pie-baking belt! I may even secretly be getting the hang of this...

Camp NaNoWriMo

November has traditionally been NaNoWriMo month. Writing 50,000 words in a crazy frenzy without looking back, together with thousands of others from around the world. However, November is usually not a great novelling month for me. November is usually not that great of a month for me, period.
Luckily, the great people at NaNoWriMo also offer 'camp NaNoWriMo', which takes place in April. April is a good month. In April, you can actually see the sun for more than three hours a day, and there are birds and flowers and lambs all kinds of happy things. If you're going to sit down and write for 2-3 hours every day, you need happy things around you to keep you going.
So, I just signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo. Didn't think that would happen, but it did.
The great thing about Camp is that the rules are a little less strict (in the NaNo universe); you can write whatever you want, be it a novel, short story, film script, non-fiction, poetry, revision of something you've already written or 'other'. I'm not sure what the 'other' could be, but I'll be happy to look into that during one of my procrastination moments in April. Also, you can set your own goal. In November it's always 50,000 words, but here you can set anything from 30 to 999,999. And that number can be words, but also lines, hours spent, or pages. So one can feel done and accomplished after writing 30 lines of poetry, or one can attempt 999,999 words (999,999 hours is sadly not possible in the timeframe, as that would equal 114 years).
I have now set my goal to 'novel'  and '20,000 words'. I'm not really sure what I will be writing; my successful 2015 novel still needs its second part, but maybe I'll go for something completely different. Writing starts the first of April (Easter Sunday, great timing) so I still have plenty of time to come up with a plan. And if past experience tells me anything, I will probably change my mind 10 times on the 31th of March alone.
The main thing is that I signed up. I will be doing this, and we'll see how far I get!

Apple Pie according to Yvette

I've written about lots of apple pies and apple cakes here; apples are my favourite fruit. The latter are the easier ones; I am more of a cake-baker than a pie-baker. Put even stronger; I always feel like channelling Gargamel when talking about pies; I hate pastry. I've only ever made one pie in the history of this blog, back in 2013: a pecan pie. There is a reason for this.
Pastry is horrible to make. It is 'just' flour, butter, some kind of liquid, rubbed together and chilled, then rolled out and put into a case. Simplicity is very much not bliss. Simplicity can go wrong every step of the way. I've had my pastry break, stick, shrink, become chewy or simply reduced to crumbs. In a way, I'd already decided never to try and make it again. But then I read this article about 'flow'; that productive state of mind in which you are completely zen. People generally only achieve flow when they're at work, but you can get into that state with every task that is taxing but not too difficult in an area you are somewhat accomplished in. In my case; baking. More specifically; baking with pastry. So I decided to give it another go.

I picked a recipe from my new-found favourite Yvette van Boven. It is an apple pie recipe, according to her 'the way it should be'. Indeed, it is a far cry from the classic Dutch apple pie I like to make for my birthday (which doesn't count as a 'true' pie, as the dough is completely different). It contains blackberries and ginger, apparently some of Yvette's favourites, which can of course be left out. As this was my first try, I made it exactly the way it was supposed to be.

Ingredients
For the pate sucree/sweet pastry:
500 g flour
250 g cold butter in small cubes
6 tablespoons icing sugar
salt
2 eggs, beaten
ice cold water

For the filling:
about 1,5 kg apples in small chunks
150 g blackberries
a thumb of ginger, peeled and diced
175 g sugar
juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 tablespoon of flour

Finally:
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon ground ginger

First make the pastry. You can do this in a food processor, but I like to work by hand. Put the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the butter and rub together until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the eggs and knead quickly into a ball. If the dough is too dry, add a few drops of water (or milk) to make it come together. Shape into a ball, wrap it clingfilm, and put in the fridge for half an hour to an hour. Take it out, and leave to rest for about 15 minutes.

Then make the filling, by combining all ingredients except the flour into a bowl. Let this sit for about 20 minutes, then drain off the excess liquid. Finally, add the flour and combine.

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Grease a pie tin; I used a 'normal' tin of 24 cm in diameter.
Now for the difficult bit: divide the pastry into three quarters for the case, and one quarter for the 'lid'. Roll out the big part onto a lightly floured surface, until it is large enough to cover the bottom and sides of your tin. Put it in the tin, leave the edges hanging over the side.
Fill the pastry case with the fruit filling. Divide the 3 tablespoons of butter over the top.
Roll out the pastry for the lid, cut into strips, and weave a nice basket shaped lid. Make sure there are enough holes in the lid for the excess liquid in the fruit to evaporate. Push the sides together in any shape you like (or can manage), so the bits hanging over the edge make a nice side to the lid.
Brush the milk on the top of the pastry. Sprinkle the sugar and ground ginger on top.
Turn the oven down to 180 C and bake for 1,5 hours.

Right, that is the theory. How did this work out in practise? Let's have a look:

Pretty apple pie

Not too bad. I would even dare to say that my cake looks quite a bit like the one in the picture (I was in no mood to shape strips of pastry in any kind of lattice work, so it looks a bit like a basket-shape, but upon closer inspection it is really a lazy piece of work).

However, when cutting into it, the pie turned into somewhat a bloody mess:

Pretty bloody pie

Ah, not all liquid had been properly drained off. The bottom of the pie was somewhat undercooked from all the moisture still in the filling. However, the pastry on the side was flaky and crumbly, a bit on the dry side, but all in all way better than I'd expected. Also, the moisture was trapped inside the pastry, meaning the case hadn't broken or shrunk. No patch up jobs needed to keep the filling on the inside.
The filling itself was moist, sweet, with a spicy heat from the ginger, with the blackberries adding another layer. I agree with Yvette that it is a great combination of flavours, but I wouldn't call it the best ever. However, it leaves lots of room for variation. And with this new positive pastry experience under my belt, there may be more pie baking in my future!

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Not tying myself up in silly rules like 'I can only read novels I haven't read before', like I did in my 2015 book challenge, gives me the peace of mind to reread novels I loved when I'm in between reading new things. When I finished The Sense of an Ending, I wasn't ready to dive into another new novel just yet. Some novels tend to stick in my mind, leaving no room for a new novel to take up enough space to really get into it. If I then do start reading a new novel, I unavoidably get lost somewhere around page 50 because I wasn't paying enough attention in the beginning, which can ruin an entire book for me.
So, rereads are a Good Thing. In this case, I wanted something short, but not too light; just a couple of days worth of reading before I could dive into the next novel on my list (The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, in case you're wondering). After digging around in my bookcases I came up with Neil Gaiman's last proper novel, which I was sure I'd written something about on this blog, but which turns out to be only a passing mention in my 'holiday reads' of 2013. Funny, how you can remember something as having a profound impact on you, but then cannot find any evidence of said impact when looking back.
Anyway, the novel in question is The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It is about a young boy in England, about forty years ago, who has a falling in with magic and otherworldly stuff and doesn't come out all that well. The story is told through the same character (now an adult), remembering things as he sits next to the ocean of the title. This framework sets us at some distance from the story, which works very well in this case, because we the readers at some point realise we know something the protagonist doesn't (I won't spoil the ending for you). However, the 'and then this happened, and then that happened, and then I said...' structure isn't the easiest read, and upon rereading I felt further removed from the action and emotional impact on the main character than I did on the first read. Maybe because I already knew what was going to happen, breaking the suspense I felt the first time around.
The great thing about Neil Gaiman novels, though, is that they are not starry-eyed, happy ending, the-hero-saves-the-day kinds of novels. His style is magic realism, and the magic and the realism are present in equal proportions. People do stupid things. People do not say important things because of legitimate reasons (and not as a plot device). People hurt one another and do not make up, or forgive, or forget. People are generally as real as they can be. The magic, on the other hand, is also as real as it can be. It is accepted as something that simply exists; not everything is logical, or explained, or analysed. Magical things happen, with a semblance of realism, and life goes on. They can be dark things, dark magic, performed not only by the 'evil characters' but also by the 'good guys'. This is also a fact of life; good guys do not only do good things. And magic cannot save everything. It is not the deus ex machina solution found in so many fantasy novels, but a means to an end that sometimes fails.
In short, you can disappear into a Neil Gaiman novel, finding yourself in a world that is connected to our own, but with some elements added that you can simply take for granted, without having to know every little thing about them. And this was exactly what I needed, going from one novel to another. Nice as this is, it somehow feels as if this isn't enough appreciation for a book I read with such anticipation and joy the first time around. Maybe the Julian Barnes novel was still roving around in my mind, or maybe knowing the ending somehow takes away the biggest emotional tension. In which case I envy all who haven't read it yet, as they will still have that experience upon the first read. As I will have with many other books to come.