Camp NaNoWriMo isn't only held in April, you can also take part in July. Which feels weird, because July has 31 days to November's and April's 30, so you get an extra day to accomplish the same feat. But who am I to complain?
So this July, I will head back to Camp. Although, can you call it 'going back to' when you're not actually talking about a physical place, but a website with reshuffled cabins? Not sure, but the image works, also because I will be returning to the story I wrote for the April camp (which is the rewrite of my 2015 NaNo novel). I put down the main storyline in April, and now I will be adding the background chapters for each main character, which will hopefully fit in between. And if they don't, I will try not to fiddle with the stuff I already wrote in April, because that will not get me more words, just a more fluent story. And as we all know, the purpose of NaNoWriMo in any form is just output, not a pretty story.
I've set my aim at 20,000 again, not because July will be a busy month (unlike April) but because I've never written in the height of summer. At the moment, the weather is 13 degrees and rainy, but that will probably turn to warm and sunny by the end of the week. Let's see if I'll keep up with my writing when I can also be sitting outside, in the sun, enjoying a novel someone else wrote!
Sunday, 24 June 2018
Saturday, 9 June 2018
Penelopiad
Margaret Atwood is a great author. I may have mentioned this before, but my admiration seems to be developing in the direction of a full-on literary girl-crush.
So I've been reading Mythos by Stephen Fry, his retelling of the Greek myths. And while mr Fry is great, and his writing style is light and humorous, I seem to be unable to get through the book at any speed. It's more a series of leaps and bounds, with long periods of reading-something-else in between. These thousand year old stories remain a bit dry and dusty, even in the hands of modern writers.
Then I came across The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, a retelling of the Illiad/Odyssey from Penelope's (Odysseus's wife) perspective. Aparently Canongate does a myth-retelling series, in which they ask a couple of great authors (including Phillip Pullman, Ali Smith, A.S. Byatt) to retell a myth from a contemporary perspective. So far, they're at 9 stories, but the aim is to get to 100 in the end.
They were smart enough to ask Margaret Atwood to do one right in the beginning, which gave the whole series a boost. And Atwood wouldn't be Atwood if she didn't give the whole thing a truly feminist twist (although she disagrees with that classification, saying that it was just written from the point of view of a woman). So Penelope is the main character, telling us the story from the realm of Hades, which is firmly set in the 21st century.
Now I hadn't gotten to the Odyssey bit in Mythos, but the story is well-known: it took Odysseus quite a while to get home from Troy, fighting monsters and sleeping with goddesses, while in the meantime his wife waited faithfully, surrounded by dozens of suitors trying to claim Odysseus's kingdom. Or, in other versions of the story, Penelope went all-out with these suitors. In The Penelopiad, she explains that she was just trying to survive the best she could. She is neither sinner nor saint, she doesn't want to be put on a pedestal like Odysseus and his big stories (the cyclops was just a one-eyed guy in a drunken bar fight, according to her), she was just a woman trying to get by.
Another element to the story are the twelve maids hanged by Odysseus upon his return. In the 'official' version, these maids were working together with the suitors and had to be hanged for their treason. In this version, Penelope reveals she asked the maids to spy on the suitors and work with her to help her get by. She never gets a chance to explain this to Odysseus before he hangs the girls. However, Penelope's chapters are interspersed by 'chorus' chapters in which the maids give their point of view, which throws yet another light on the story. But still the double standards are clearly there: the maids sleeping with the suitors earns them a hanging, while Odysseus sleeping with a goddess earns him praise.
Finally, Penelope has some beef with her cousin Helen, who of course started the whole Trojan war by running off with Paris. Helen continuous to haunt her in the underworld, showing up with throngs of suitors still following her. What it comes down to, is Penelope being jealous at Helen for being more beautiful and revered than herself. Given both their back stories, this is completely recognisable and it makes me like Penelope more as a character. She did her best trying to keep Odysseus's kingdom together while he was away, but in the end, she doesn't feel as good about herself as Helen, who does nothing but play men against each other. It should be the other way around, but as with so many relationships, things are not that logical.
The Penelopiad took me about two days of reading to get through. It is not dry, it is not dusty. It is the story of a woman trying to explain why she did what she did, firmly set in our time but describing events of three thousand years ago. And it is completely recognisable; this is a human character, with human actions and flaws. Maybe that is what makes these Greek myths slow reading; all these super-human characters who get away with everything gets boring after a while. We like superheroes best if they show some sort of flaw, some weak point that makes them more human. This is what Margaret Atwood did; she gave a human perspective on a non-human situation. And I tend to agree with her; that doesn't make the story feminist, it just gives another point of view. Something we could use more often, in classical literature. I hope the rest of the Canongate series is as good as this, for these stories, dusted and renewed, still deserve to be retold for many years to come.
So I've been reading Mythos by Stephen Fry, his retelling of the Greek myths. And while mr Fry is great, and his writing style is light and humorous, I seem to be unable to get through the book at any speed. It's more a series of leaps and bounds, with long periods of reading-something-else in between. These thousand year old stories remain a bit dry and dusty, even in the hands of modern writers.
Then I came across The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, a retelling of the Illiad/Odyssey from Penelope's (Odysseus's wife) perspective. Aparently Canongate does a myth-retelling series, in which they ask a couple of great authors (including Phillip Pullman, Ali Smith, A.S. Byatt) to retell a myth from a contemporary perspective. So far, they're at 9 stories, but the aim is to get to 100 in the end.
They were smart enough to ask Margaret Atwood to do one right in the beginning, which gave the whole series a boost. And Atwood wouldn't be Atwood if she didn't give the whole thing a truly feminist twist (although she disagrees with that classification, saying that it was just written from the point of view of a woman). So Penelope is the main character, telling us the story from the realm of Hades, which is firmly set in the 21st century.
Now I hadn't gotten to the Odyssey bit in Mythos, but the story is well-known: it took Odysseus quite a while to get home from Troy, fighting monsters and sleeping with goddesses, while in the meantime his wife waited faithfully, surrounded by dozens of suitors trying to claim Odysseus's kingdom. Or, in other versions of the story, Penelope went all-out with these suitors. In The Penelopiad, she explains that she was just trying to survive the best she could. She is neither sinner nor saint, she doesn't want to be put on a pedestal like Odysseus and his big stories (the cyclops was just a one-eyed guy in a drunken bar fight, according to her), she was just a woman trying to get by.
Another element to the story are the twelve maids hanged by Odysseus upon his return. In the 'official' version, these maids were working together with the suitors and had to be hanged for their treason. In this version, Penelope reveals she asked the maids to spy on the suitors and work with her to help her get by. She never gets a chance to explain this to Odysseus before he hangs the girls. However, Penelope's chapters are interspersed by 'chorus' chapters in which the maids give their point of view, which throws yet another light on the story. But still the double standards are clearly there: the maids sleeping with the suitors earns them a hanging, while Odysseus sleeping with a goddess earns him praise.
Finally, Penelope has some beef with her cousin Helen, who of course started the whole Trojan war by running off with Paris. Helen continuous to haunt her in the underworld, showing up with throngs of suitors still following her. What it comes down to, is Penelope being jealous at Helen for being more beautiful and revered than herself. Given both their back stories, this is completely recognisable and it makes me like Penelope more as a character. She did her best trying to keep Odysseus's kingdom together while he was away, but in the end, she doesn't feel as good about herself as Helen, who does nothing but play men against each other. It should be the other way around, but as with so many relationships, things are not that logical.
The Penelopiad took me about two days of reading to get through. It is not dry, it is not dusty. It is the story of a woman trying to explain why she did what she did, firmly set in our time but describing events of three thousand years ago. And it is completely recognisable; this is a human character, with human actions and flaws. Maybe that is what makes these Greek myths slow reading; all these super-human characters who get away with everything gets boring after a while. We like superheroes best if they show some sort of flaw, some weak point that makes them more human. This is what Margaret Atwood did; she gave a human perspective on a non-human situation. And I tend to agree with her; that doesn't make the story feminist, it just gives another point of view. Something we could use more often, in classical literature. I hope the rest of the Canongate series is as good as this, for these stories, dusted and renewed, still deserve to be retold for many years to come.
Saturday, 2 June 2018
Fahrenheit 451
Sometimes you come across a book, a Work of Literature, that has changed the world significantly, and did so quite a while ago, and you'd never heard of it before. And you can't imagine how that happened.
In the case of Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman mentioned it in his non-fiction collection The View from the Cheap Seats. In fact, he mentioned it several times, and with high praise. If Neil Gaiman likes something, and I like the things Neil Gaiman likes, then by all common logic I should also like the thing Neil Gaiman likes. So when I had a three hour lay-over on Istanbul Airport on my way back from Israel, I tried to find the novel. Oddly enough, the airport bookshop put it on number 3 of their books top 10. Not bad, for a book that came out in 1953. Also, it made me want to read it even more. Luckily I was smart enough to check it before I bought it, as the books that were in the top 10 were also all in Turkish. So I bought it when I got home.
Now I'd read enough about the genre (speculative fiction), size (just 50,000 words), title (the temperature at which paper burns), writing process (Ray Bradbury sat in a basement of the university at a typewriter you had to feed 10 cents for half an hour of typing and wrote the whole thing in 9 days) and plot (the protagonist's job is to burn books) of the novel to assume I knew quite a bit about it. Also, in hindsight, Fahrenheit 451 explains the very strange title of Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which I never quite got. Things were falling into place before I even read it.
And then I read it. This is a novel written in just 9 days, and it took me three bouts of 1-2 hours of reading to get through it. I think there is no other way to read it but fast; you can feel the speed, the urgency with which it was written, and you feel the same urgency to get through it. Not because of the plot, which is, as in any great Literary Work, not the main thing. Because of the ideas, the feeling, the atmosphere the book breathes. This not just about a guy (aptly named Guy) burning books for a living and realising that this is not right. This is about the society he lives in, a future society (the future of 1953) in which people are kept dumb and inactive through government propaganda and excessive home entertainment systems.
As Neil Gaiman writes, this book tells just as much about Ray Bradbury's vision of the future, as it does about the time he wrote it in. Some people believe in 'the death of the author', but this is one novel that cannot be seen separate from the time it was written. It was a warning, a warning against government oppression (the McCarthy trials were in full swing), against fear, against the dumbing down of the population, against the rise of television, against individualism as people isolate themselves through ear buds (Seashells) and live in a world of their own while in the middle of a crowded street. Of course, Bradbury couldn't predict things like the Internet, and in some respect his technologies seem sweetly outdated, but I think he would see his worst fears having become reality if he could see the world today.
Looking back, it is of course ironic that this novel is such a best-seller in Turkey at the moment. It is right up there with 1984 and all those other dystopian novels, the ones that seem to predict the world we find ourselves in more and more. But in contrast to many others, the main point of Fahrenheit 451 is that it's not the government doing these things to people. It's people doing them to themselves. People choosing to be entertained, to isolate themselves, to loose contact with the people that surround them. In that sense, it is closer to Dave Eggers The Circle, although there is no sense of a commercial goal in Fahrenheit.
Bradbury described himself as "not a predictor, but a preventor of futures", and it is sad to see that it did not quite work out that way. The book is on many reading lists in the US, although ironically the book is also sometimes heavily censored because of its 'foul language' and portrayal of Christians. Those who censor a book like this must not have read it for what it is.
I cannot imagine why I've never come across it before, but now that I've read it, I can see its influence on so many other works. I will have to read it again, in a couple of years or so, for all the things I missed when I went through it full speed. This is a book with layers, with subtexts, with themes that will only become apparent on rereading. Luckily for us, the book-burning prediction has not (yet) come true, so it will be waiting for me when I decide to return to it.
In the case of Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman mentioned it in his non-fiction collection The View from the Cheap Seats. In fact, he mentioned it several times, and with high praise. If Neil Gaiman likes something, and I like the things Neil Gaiman likes, then by all common logic I should also like the thing Neil Gaiman likes. So when I had a three hour lay-over on Istanbul Airport on my way back from Israel, I tried to find the novel. Oddly enough, the airport bookshop put it on number 3 of their books top 10. Not bad, for a book that came out in 1953. Also, it made me want to read it even more. Luckily I was smart enough to check it before I bought it, as the books that were in the top 10 were also all in Turkish. So I bought it when I got home.
Now I'd read enough about the genre (speculative fiction), size (just 50,000 words), title (the temperature at which paper burns), writing process (Ray Bradbury sat in a basement of the university at a typewriter you had to feed 10 cents for half an hour of typing and wrote the whole thing in 9 days) and plot (the protagonist's job is to burn books) of the novel to assume I knew quite a bit about it. Also, in hindsight, Fahrenheit 451 explains the very strange title of Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which I never quite got. Things were falling into place before I even read it.
And then I read it. This is a novel written in just 9 days, and it took me three bouts of 1-2 hours of reading to get through it. I think there is no other way to read it but fast; you can feel the speed, the urgency with which it was written, and you feel the same urgency to get through it. Not because of the plot, which is, as in any great Literary Work, not the main thing. Because of the ideas, the feeling, the atmosphere the book breathes. This not just about a guy (aptly named Guy) burning books for a living and realising that this is not right. This is about the society he lives in, a future society (the future of 1953) in which people are kept dumb and inactive through government propaganda and excessive home entertainment systems.
As Neil Gaiman writes, this book tells just as much about Ray Bradbury's vision of the future, as it does about the time he wrote it in. Some people believe in 'the death of the author', but this is one novel that cannot be seen separate from the time it was written. It was a warning, a warning against government oppression (the McCarthy trials were in full swing), against fear, against the dumbing down of the population, against the rise of television, against individualism as people isolate themselves through ear buds (Seashells) and live in a world of their own while in the middle of a crowded street. Of course, Bradbury couldn't predict things like the Internet, and in some respect his technologies seem sweetly outdated, but I think he would see his worst fears having become reality if he could see the world today.
Looking back, it is of course ironic that this novel is such a best-seller in Turkey at the moment. It is right up there with 1984 and all those other dystopian novels, the ones that seem to predict the world we find ourselves in more and more. But in contrast to many others, the main point of Fahrenheit 451 is that it's not the government doing these things to people. It's people doing them to themselves. People choosing to be entertained, to isolate themselves, to loose contact with the people that surround them. In that sense, it is closer to Dave Eggers The Circle, although there is no sense of a commercial goal in Fahrenheit.
Bradbury described himself as "not a predictor, but a preventor of futures", and it is sad to see that it did not quite work out that way. The book is on many reading lists in the US, although ironically the book is also sometimes heavily censored because of its 'foul language' and portrayal of Christians. Those who censor a book like this must not have read it for what it is.
I cannot imagine why I've never come across it before, but now that I've read it, I can see its influence on so many other works. I will have to read it again, in a couple of years or so, for all the things I missed when I went through it full speed. This is a book with layers, with subtexts, with themes that will only become apparent on rereading. Luckily for us, the book-burning prediction has not (yet) come true, so it will be waiting for me when I decide to return to it.
Saturday, 26 May 2018
Israel
After staying in Europe for far longer than I'd ever expected, my next journey to another continent finally came about. I could let you guess where we went, but the title kind of gives things away. I could have put 'the Holy Land', which is how Israel likes to sell itself to tourists (and hotels, and shops, and what not...) but I don't actually belief land can be holy, even after visiting what is supposed to be just that.
So Israel. We planned the trip around Christmas time (appropriately), when the world seemed somewhat at peace and somewhat quiet. We picked tour dates (we went with a group, because my sense of adventure is not so big that I want to travel this country alone) that would fit in nicely with our days off (Ascension and Pentecost) without checking what would be happening in the country during that time. As we found out, a lot is always happening in Israel, even without the US president deciding to move an embassy. Somehow we ended up in the middle of its 70th birthday, the national Palestinian grief day, a Jewish holiday, and Ramadan. Which gives a nice glimpse of the many sides you encounter: Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and somewhere in between Christians. With several layers of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history thrown in the mix.
Several Israelis and Palestinians complained that there were very few tourists this year, probably because of the protests or political boycott or general apprehension. But let me start by saying; not one moment during this trip did I feel unsafe. On the contrary, everyone we met was friendly, helpful, and generally relaxed. I wandered around Akko's souk after sundown, with all the shops closed up and the call for prayer streaming from the minaret, and I felt as safe as I could be on the deserted streets. We visited a coffee shop on a Golan mountain (aptly named Coffee Anan), which had been closed the week before due to missiles launched from Lebanon, and the staff was as cheerful as your next door Starbucks (probably cheerfuller, come to that). I did not hesitate to leave my belongings on the beach when I went swimming in Tel Aviv. And even when we were in Jerusalem, where tension is highest and several groups jostle with each other on a very small piece of land, there was no feeling of direct danger. This is a very safe country to visit, unless you go to Gaza, or find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that could happen anywhere on Earth.
As I said, the country is many-sided, but it is also pretty small. It is about half the size of the Netherlands, and two weeks were enough to see all we needed to see. We started in Tel Aviv, which feels like nothing more than very fit people running and swimming and relaxing on the beach, but a short walk to Jaffa, the old town, and a nice tour by Sandeman showed us the history of the place. We then went to Haifa, which didn't do that much for me, and Akko, which has a very nice old city full of Arabic influences. We left the coast to go, via Nazareth, to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, which is the most depressing 70s kitch hotel conglomerate you'll ever see, but does provide access to some of the religious sites, as well as the aforementioned Golan Heights and nature reserves. We travelled through the West Bank to Jericho, stayed in Jerusalem for two days when we visited the old city, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and Yad Vashem, with a trip to Bethlehem thrown in, floated in the Dead Sea, were amazed at Masada, and finally spent the last afternoon on the beach in Tel Aviv, where it all started.
It reads like a lot, and it probably was, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like we visited several different countries, some very historic and some very modern, some deeply religious and some completely secular. From Arabic souks to the wide streets and light rail of Jerusalem's modern city, from the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock to the stilled beauty of a Greek Orthodox monastery hidden away on the West Bank, from the hip and happening (and culinary delights!) of Tel Aviv to the quiet conservatism of the Jews at the Western wall, there are so many sided to the country you start anew with fresh wonder each day. Your mind doesn't get bogged down with more of the same, for no two places are the same. And as I said, two weeks was about enough to see it all.
Our group was almost as diverse as the country we visited, with the youngest (me, apart from the tour leader) and the eldest separated by 47 years. The group consisted of people who travelled alone, couples, friends, brothers. Some had travelled all over the world, for others this was the first time outside of Europe. Some had prepared every day minutely, others had no idea of the country they were going to visit. Some were deeply religious, some had already lived in the country for several years, some were very pro-Palestinian, some were more interested in shopping for souvenirs. Somehow, it worked.
All in all, it was a good trip. I won't get into politics now, although those are hidden just beneath the surface of almost every conversation we had. I take no part in those. I just partook of a wonderful, many-layered, many-faced country, with all of its history, all the different religions and cultures and customs, and I was enchanted.
So Israel. We planned the trip around Christmas time (appropriately), when the world seemed somewhat at peace and somewhat quiet. We picked tour dates (we went with a group, because my sense of adventure is not so big that I want to travel this country alone) that would fit in nicely with our days off (Ascension and Pentecost) without checking what would be happening in the country during that time. As we found out, a lot is always happening in Israel, even without the US president deciding to move an embassy. Somehow we ended up in the middle of its 70th birthday, the national Palestinian grief day, a Jewish holiday, and Ramadan. Which gives a nice glimpse of the many sides you encounter: Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and somewhere in between Christians. With several layers of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history thrown in the mix.
Several Israelis and Palestinians complained that there were very few tourists this year, probably because of the protests or political boycott or general apprehension. But let me start by saying; not one moment during this trip did I feel unsafe. On the contrary, everyone we met was friendly, helpful, and generally relaxed. I wandered around Akko's souk after sundown, with all the shops closed up and the call for prayer streaming from the minaret, and I felt as safe as I could be on the deserted streets. We visited a coffee shop on a Golan mountain (aptly named Coffee Anan), which had been closed the week before due to missiles launched from Lebanon, and the staff was as cheerful as your next door Starbucks (probably cheerfuller, come to that). I did not hesitate to leave my belongings on the beach when I went swimming in Tel Aviv. And even when we were in Jerusalem, where tension is highest and several groups jostle with each other on a very small piece of land, there was no feeling of direct danger. This is a very safe country to visit, unless you go to Gaza, or find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that could happen anywhere on Earth.
As I said, the country is many-sided, but it is also pretty small. It is about half the size of the Netherlands, and two weeks were enough to see all we needed to see. We started in Tel Aviv, which feels like nothing more than very fit people running and swimming and relaxing on the beach, but a short walk to Jaffa, the old town, and a nice tour by Sandeman showed us the history of the place. We then went to Haifa, which didn't do that much for me, and Akko, which has a very nice old city full of Arabic influences. We left the coast to go, via Nazareth, to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, which is the most depressing 70s kitch hotel conglomerate you'll ever see, but does provide access to some of the religious sites, as well as the aforementioned Golan Heights and nature reserves. We travelled through the West Bank to Jericho, stayed in Jerusalem for two days when we visited the old city, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and Yad Vashem, with a trip to Bethlehem thrown in, floated in the Dead Sea, were amazed at Masada, and finally spent the last afternoon on the beach in Tel Aviv, where it all started.
It reads like a lot, and it probably was, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like we visited several different countries, some very historic and some very modern, some deeply religious and some completely secular. From Arabic souks to the wide streets and light rail of Jerusalem's modern city, from the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock to the stilled beauty of a Greek Orthodox monastery hidden away on the West Bank, from the hip and happening (and culinary delights!) of Tel Aviv to the quiet conservatism of the Jews at the Western wall, there are so many sided to the country you start anew with fresh wonder each day. Your mind doesn't get bogged down with more of the same, for no two places are the same. And as I said, two weeks was about enough to see it all.
Our group was almost as diverse as the country we visited, with the youngest (me, apart from the tour leader) and the eldest separated by 47 years. The group consisted of people who travelled alone, couples, friends, brothers. Some had travelled all over the world, for others this was the first time outside of Europe. Some had prepared every day minutely, others had no idea of the country they were going to visit. Some were deeply religious, some had already lived in the country for several years, some were very pro-Palestinian, some were more interested in shopping for souvenirs. Somehow, it worked.
All in all, it was a good trip. I won't get into politics now, although those are hidden just beneath the surface of almost every conversation we had. I take no part in those. I just partook of a wonderful, many-layered, many-faced country, with all of its history, all the different religions and cultures and customs, and I was enchanted.
Friday, 11 May 2018
The noise of time
After reading two Agatha Christie novels while finishing up Camp NaNo (I'd never read anything by her before, and they were on sale, and I am not so snobbish about books that I am above reading 1930s crime novels - which were highly entertaining, by the way) I started in my newest Julian Barnes novel, The Noise of Time, which I picked up because The Only Story still hasn't come out in paperback. The Noise of Time is from 2016, but I'd never heard of it, and it felt like a good substitute while waiting for the novel I actually wanted to read. Which must be one of the worst reasons for reading a book, but there you are.
According to the blurb, it is about a man in 1930s Leningrad, waiting to be taken away to The Big House. Funnily enough, it took me quite some time to realise that this man was not all that happy in his life, that he was living under Stalinist oppression, that being taken to The Big House was not in itself a good thing. The novel goes on about this man, a composer, and how his life during the Soviet regime has played out. He is not a friend of Power, in fact he has three daunting Conversations with Power, which form the main subjects of the three parts of the novel, but in the end, when he is tired, he seems to give in to the Party's wishes after all. Or does he? The oppression, the manipulation, the false accusations and sudden disappearances of his fellow musicians are felt throughout the novel, but the protagonist considers himself a coward, someone who will survive because he doesn't stick his neck out.
It was only until I read the afterword by Barnes that I realised this man has really existed. Dmitri Shostakovitch, one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. This was not fiction, but a fictionalised biography. I've mentioned this before, but really, why do stories seem so much more important, seem to carry so much more weight, when you discover that they really happened?
But even if it hadn't really happened, this book still carries weight. The atmosphere, the way he paints an entire decade with just a couple of words, the short paragraphs of just three sentences invoking a whole life. And there are some great sentences in this novel. "Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time" will stay with me for a while.
In the Soviet Union, art belonged to the people, as Lenin had decreed, but in reality, art belongs to no one but itself. The only way the protagonist made it through those dark times was to cling to his art, to cling to what he believes to be real and beautiful, even when Stalin decides his work is awful and should be banned. Whether everything in this novel is 'true' I will leave for others to decide; this story of suppression and creativity serves as a remembrance of darker times that once were.
According to the blurb, it is about a man in 1930s Leningrad, waiting to be taken away to The Big House. Funnily enough, it took me quite some time to realise that this man was not all that happy in his life, that he was living under Stalinist oppression, that being taken to The Big House was not in itself a good thing. The novel goes on about this man, a composer, and how his life during the Soviet regime has played out. He is not a friend of Power, in fact he has three daunting Conversations with Power, which form the main subjects of the three parts of the novel, but in the end, when he is tired, he seems to give in to the Party's wishes after all. Or does he? The oppression, the manipulation, the false accusations and sudden disappearances of his fellow musicians are felt throughout the novel, but the protagonist considers himself a coward, someone who will survive because he doesn't stick his neck out.
It was only until I read the afterword by Barnes that I realised this man has really existed. Dmitri Shostakovitch, one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. This was not fiction, but a fictionalised biography. I've mentioned this before, but really, why do stories seem so much more important, seem to carry so much more weight, when you discover that they really happened?
But even if it hadn't really happened, this book still carries weight. The atmosphere, the way he paints an entire decade with just a couple of words, the short paragraphs of just three sentences invoking a whole life. And there are some great sentences in this novel. "Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time" will stay with me for a while.
In the Soviet Union, art belonged to the people, as Lenin had decreed, but in reality, art belongs to no one but itself. The only way the protagonist made it through those dark times was to cling to his art, to cling to what he believes to be real and beautiful, even when Stalin decides his work is awful and should be banned. Whether everything in this novel is 'true' I will leave for others to decide; this story of suppression and creativity serves as a remembrance of darker times that once were.
Saturday, 28 April 2018
Camp NaNo Days 21 to 28: Winner!
Yes! I did it! 20,027 words in a month filled with almost every social engagement and work obligation known to man!
This was not easy going. If I'd optioned for the full 50,000, I never would have made it. 25,000 words may have been possible, but even as it is I had to do some of my writing on my work laptop on the train towards a meeting...
Combined, this must be the wonkiest word count graph I have ever had:
But who cares? I got there in the end. And not totally the end, of course; my personal deadline in my head is always two days ahead of the official deadline.
So, what is next? Hopefully, to continue writing. My story is only about a third of the way through, I'm still liking (and discovering more about) my characters, and the main problem has not even come close to being resolved. Enough work left to do, and as always I'm optimistic about keeping it up, but the reality is I have so far never managed to actually do that. The difference between April and November is that the latter is followed by holiday-filled December, while the former is followed by going-into-summer-relaxation May. So maybe things will be different this time around.
For now, I'm just going to enjoy my achievement!
This was not easy going. If I'd optioned for the full 50,000, I never would have made it. 25,000 words may have been possible, but even as it is I had to do some of my writing on my work laptop on the train towards a meeting...
Combined, this must be the wonkiest word count graph I have ever had:
But who cares? I got there in the end. And not totally the end, of course; my personal deadline in my head is always two days ahead of the official deadline.
So, what is next? Hopefully, to continue writing. My story is only about a third of the way through, I'm still liking (and discovering more about) my characters, and the main problem has not even come close to being resolved. Enough work left to do, and as always I'm optimistic about keeping it up, but the reality is I have so far never managed to actually do that. The difference between April and November is that the latter is followed by holiday-filled December, while the former is followed by going-into-summer-relaxation May. So maybe things will be different this time around.
For now, I'm just going to enjoy my achievement!
Friday, 20 April 2018
Camp NaNo Days 11 to 20: quarts and thirds
Wow, this April is going by fast! Just a minute ago we were at day 10, and suddenly we're a third of the way through at day 20. Of those 10 days in between, I spent a total of 7 days not writing. That does not sound like a very productive NaNo, but strangely enough, I am just100 words shy of 15,000, which means I'm three quarters of the way through!
I've been going through in leaps and bounds, writing 1,000+ words on some days and nothing at all on others. This would never work with the 'real' NaNo, and is in fact in direct violation of the 'idea' of NaNo; make time every day to write, but it does work for this Camp NaNo. With only 5,000 words and 10 days to go, I feel pretty confident I am going to make this. Also, because I didn't write every day, and just on those moments I could actually find the time to sit down and hammer out big chunks of chapters, I feel like I should be able to keep up this routine when we get to May. This is far less demanding on my time and mind, giving me the space to actually develop the story and the characters in between. I should have thought of doing this camp thing years ago!
I've been going through in leaps and bounds, writing 1,000+ words on some days and nothing at all on others. This would never work with the 'real' NaNo, and is in fact in direct violation of the 'idea' of NaNo; make time every day to write, but it does work for this Camp NaNo. With only 5,000 words and 10 days to go, I feel pretty confident I am going to make this. Also, because I didn't write every day, and just on those moments I could actually find the time to sit down and hammer out big chunks of chapters, I feel like I should be able to keep up this routine when we get to May. This is far less demanding on my time and mind, giving me the space to actually develop the story and the characters in between. I should have thought of doing this camp thing years ago!
Saturday, 14 April 2018
The Blind Assassin
So April wasn't just write, write, write, I also did some reading. Not a lot, mind you, most of the reading of The Blind Assassin took place in March, as this book took a long time to get through. Not because I didn't like it, mind you, but because this is one heavy book. It's 600+ pages, filled with one of the saddest stories I've read in a long time. Margaret Atwood is known for her dystopian novels and this is no exception, but this story takes place in our world. It could actually have happened. Maybe that is what gives it weight over The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx & Crake; this novel deals with places and events that actually were real, so it may well have really happened.
So, what is it about? As the blurb tells us, 10 days after WWII ended, Laura Chase drove herself off a bridge. In the novel, her sister Iris describes the events leading up to Laura's suicide, writing a diary fifty years after this happened, when she is the sole survivor of the events that took place. Interspersed with the 'diary' Iris keeps are chapters filled with other written sources; letters, obituaries, news articles, and most importantly, The Blind Assassin itself, the novel published after Laura's death.
In their youth, for that is how far back Iris goes, they lived a live of luxury; their father owned some big factories and they were the rich family of the village. Their mother died when they are quite young, but otherwise they appear to be the typical upper-class ladies you find in so many novels, educated at home, snubbing their teachers, being a star at social events, etc. This isn't another one of those 'Downton Abbey' novels, however, for they quickly fall down the social ladder when the Depression hits. Their father should close the factories but can bring himself to fire his employees, thus only worsening his own situation. There are rumours of Communists in the ranks and Iris and Laura hide one of these rebellious youths in the attic. To save himself, their father decides to marry Iris off to his main competitor, only to find that the guy didn't keep his end of the bargain. Iris never discloses much about her marriage, but we can read between the lines that it wasn't a happy one.
Then WWII hits, and you can feel the story nearing its climax, with a plot twist that shimmers beneath the lines for at least 100 pages, but you can't really lay a finger on until it hits you. Somehow, all the written sources, all the articles and novel excepts and diary fragments combine to form one great narrative. I reread some of the earlier bits as I neared the end, but this is one of those novels you should reread after you've finished, just to pick up on the hints that must be hidden in the pages.
In short; it is one of those novels that stays with you. A deserved Booker Prize winner, and as such it ticked two of my reading goals for this year; read more Atwood and read more Booker Prize winners. But it also ticks the box of a great story, told with understated feeling, with such imagery that I feel like some of the events actually happened before my eyes, as if they are memories rather than words written down. Now on to happier stories!
So, what is it about? As the blurb tells us, 10 days after WWII ended, Laura Chase drove herself off a bridge. In the novel, her sister Iris describes the events leading up to Laura's suicide, writing a diary fifty years after this happened, when she is the sole survivor of the events that took place. Interspersed with the 'diary' Iris keeps are chapters filled with other written sources; letters, obituaries, news articles, and most importantly, The Blind Assassin itself, the novel published after Laura's death.
In their youth, for that is how far back Iris goes, they lived a live of luxury; their father owned some big factories and they were the rich family of the village. Their mother died when they are quite young, but otherwise they appear to be the typical upper-class ladies you find in so many novels, educated at home, snubbing their teachers, being a star at social events, etc. This isn't another one of those 'Downton Abbey' novels, however, for they quickly fall down the social ladder when the Depression hits. Their father should close the factories but can bring himself to fire his employees, thus only worsening his own situation. There are rumours of Communists in the ranks and Iris and Laura hide one of these rebellious youths in the attic. To save himself, their father decides to marry Iris off to his main competitor, only to find that the guy didn't keep his end of the bargain. Iris never discloses much about her marriage, but we can read between the lines that it wasn't a happy one.
Then WWII hits, and you can feel the story nearing its climax, with a plot twist that shimmers beneath the lines for at least 100 pages, but you can't really lay a finger on until it hits you. Somehow, all the written sources, all the articles and novel excepts and diary fragments combine to form one great narrative. I reread some of the earlier bits as I neared the end, but this is one of those novels you should reread after you've finished, just to pick up on the hints that must be hidden in the pages.
In short; it is one of those novels that stays with you. A deserved Booker Prize winner, and as such it ticked two of my reading goals for this year; read more Atwood and read more Booker Prize winners. But it also ticks the box of a great story, told with understated feeling, with such imagery that I feel like some of the events actually happened before my eyes, as if they are memories rather than words written down. Now on to happier stories!
Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Camp NaNo Days 3 to 10: ups and flats
You thought I'd given up by now, right? Writing a novel in April, when work is busy, the weather is turning balmy and you want to be outside as much as possible? Insane! But yet, I'm still doing it.
True, I had some no-writing days in between, but these were planned, as my goal was only 20,000 words. I am currently, on day 10, before I start my writing of the day, at... (drumroll)... 8,388 words! That is almost halfway! And the month isn't even halfway yet!
Stats, because who doesn't love them:
It goes up a bit shakily, but there you are. Ups and flats, as there are no downs in NaNo (unless your laptop gets burgled and you didn't have a backup, but let's not get into that...).
My average per day is still 838, while I should write 667 to keep up. Now I know there will be a couple of days this week that I won't be able to write, so the goal tonight is to get to 10,000, which is where I should be on day 15. That gives me some room to bide time until the weekend, when writing will commence again in full swing.
Enough with this blog update, I will now get back to writing what I'm actually supposed to. Sorry for the 'mostly numbers' update, I'll get back with some more content when I feel like I can actually waste the time to meta-write!
ETA: I finished at 10,164 words tonight. It took a while, but I got there!
True, I had some no-writing days in between, but these were planned, as my goal was only 20,000 words. I am currently, on day 10, before I start my writing of the day, at... (drumroll)... 8,388 words! That is almost halfway! And the month isn't even halfway yet!
Stats, because who doesn't love them:
 |
| Blurry stats, the bars are my wordcount, the line is the projected wordcount to make a steady pace to 20,000 words. |
My average per day is still 838, while I should write 667 to keep up. Now I know there will be a couple of days this week that I won't be able to write, so the goal tonight is to get to 10,000, which is where I should be on day 15. That gives me some room to bide time until the weekend, when writing will commence again in full swing.
Enough with this blog update, I will now get back to writing what I'm actually supposed to. Sorry for the 'mostly numbers' update, I'll get back with some more content when I feel like I can actually waste the time to meta-write!
ETA: I finished at 10,164 words tonight. It took a while, but I got there!
Monday, 2 April 2018
Camp NaNo Days 1 & 2: pretty number updates
Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 has started! Wooo!
It started a day late for me, but I made up for that by reaching 2,626 words at 15:15 today. Look at those pretty pretty numbers. I kept my word count at 1,337 (nerd humour) for quite a while after my writing spree this morning, but just now I went back to the story and almost doubled that amount. My NaNo stats page tells me that if I keep going at this pace (as if) I will finish on the 16th of April. And if not, I only have to write 600 words per day to finish on time. Doesn't that sound like something I could actually do?
Now, looking at quality rather than quantity, I am actually pretty happy with what I wrote. I did the prologue early this morning, made a small start on the first chapter, and finished the first chapter just now. Not sure this will be the entirety of the chapter, as it is a bit short and a bit too much 'to the point'; it seems to be in quite a hurry to get the rest of the story started. But I can always go back and edit that later. Now for the second chapter, which is one of the big expositional ones. I really like writing those, as they combine the knowledge I already have of these characters with the new surprising bits I will discover along the way, but they do take a lot of attention to write, and it is usually in these that the little errors creep in which cause inconsistencies later on. But 20,000 words keeps things manageable, so I may even correct those as I write more. When I write more. If I write more.
Onwards!
It started a day late for me, but I made up for that by reaching 2,626 words at 15:15 today. Look at those pretty pretty numbers. I kept my word count at 1,337 (nerd humour) for quite a while after my writing spree this morning, but just now I went back to the story and almost doubled that amount. My NaNo stats page tells me that if I keep going at this pace (as if) I will finish on the 16th of April. And if not, I only have to write 600 words per day to finish on time. Doesn't that sound like something I could actually do?
Now, looking at quality rather than quantity, I am actually pretty happy with what I wrote. I did the prologue early this morning, made a small start on the first chapter, and finished the first chapter just now. Not sure this will be the entirety of the chapter, as it is a bit short and a bit too much 'to the point'; it seems to be in quite a hurry to get the rest of the story started. But I can always go back and edit that later. Now for the second chapter, which is one of the big expositional ones. I really like writing those, as they combine the knowledge I already have of these characters with the new surprising bits I will discover along the way, but they do take a lot of attention to write, and it is usually in these that the little errors creep in which cause inconsistencies later on. But 20,000 words keeps things manageable, so I may even correct those as I write more. When I write more. If I write more.
Onwards!
Saturday, 31 March 2018
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.
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.
Sunday, 18 March 2018
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.
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.
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...
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) |
 |
| Pretty pie with pretty pastry |
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...
Friday, 16 March 2018
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!
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!
Sunday, 11 March 2018
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:
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:
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!
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 |
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!
Sunday, 4 March 2018
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.
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.
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