I'd Rather Read About Cooking

I'd rather read about cooking than actually do it. Cookbooks are like relaxing beach books to me...they transport me to a parallel universe where I have intimate dinner parties featuring sophisticated conversation, rustic red wines and homemade pasta.

A light of recognition flashed as I read this passage in a Daily Muse e-mail from Skirt.com. Yes! I too love to read cookbooks. I almost never use them, because I’m more of a right-brain cook, making do with whatever is in the fridge when it’s time to feed faces, but having a solid grounding in exotic recipes gives me new ideas for how to use old ingredients.

I’ve been an impulsive cook since since my days as a bride, but my attitude toward cooking has changed considerably over the years. For the first twenty or thirty years, I regarded cooking as a maintenance chore, to be hurried through in minimum time. About twenty years ago I had lunch with a business contact who was old enough to retire and about ready to. I don’t remember her name, but I do remember a question she asked. In the middle of the meal she leaned toward me and asked in a conspiratorial tone, “Tell me, do you cook?” Obviously the right answer was “Oh yes!” But I knew I’d be over my head within seconds , so instead I quipped, “Only when I want to eat.” A brief flicker of disappointment passed across her face and we returned to business matters.

I’d answer that question differently today. I don’t “cook” in the sense of pouring over gourmet magazines and preparing dishes that use every pot in the kitchen and take seven hours, but I have come to appreciate the art of fine slicing and being more aware and present as I prepare food. I enjoy trying new seasonings and occasionally even resort to a recipe from one of the gorgeous books that fuel my imagination.

Today the average American has more food choices available than any people on earth have ever had. We have more variety in an average supermarket than chefs in the golden age of Rome could imagine (though the Chinese royalty may have come close). We have the cuisines of the whole world to enrich our menus. And then there is the whole field of nutrition, “eating healthy”, and “eating local”. Cooking and eating has become a complex and fascinating adventure for those who pay attention.

Passion for variety and quality in food extends to reading. Besides the cookbooks mentioned above, food is a popular memoir topic. Several titles I've enjoyed come quickly to mind:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by novelist Barbara Kingsolver.

Tender at the Bone, Comfort Me with Apples, and Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl, currently the editor of Gourmet Magazine.

Untangling My Chopsticks by Victoria Abbot Riccardi.

Educating Alice by journalist Alice Steinbach.

Take Big Bites by Linda Ellerbee.

You may not want to write a whole book about the food in your life and how you cook it, but a story or few about it will surely fascinate future generations, especially if your descriptions of food and meals include plenty of detail. Who knows? Kitchens may disappear in favor of reheating stations. Or, as global warming advances, people may have to go back to simple diets with limited ingredients. Time will tell, but in either event, your stories may be helpful as well as interesting.

Write now: about your evolving eating and cooking habits if you’ve been cooking for more than a couple of decades. Or write about the foods you grew up with, and how your current menus incorporate and/or transcend that food.

Wishing for Do-Overs

I just read a blog post, Learn From Others' Mistakes: What Non-Best-Selling Writers Can Teach You on the Cute Writing creative writing tips blog I’ve recently begun following, and added to the links list. In the spirit of that message, I’m sharing selected humorous bloopers that just arrived in an e-mail. Although a good laugh is as good for your body as your spirit, that's not my primary reason for this list. I’m sharing it because things like this can slip into our writing as easily as speech, and they are easy to overlook when editing.

These purportedly are true comments made by sports commentators during the just-concluded Olympics. I'm pretty sure that I've seen most before, but whatever the original source, court-testimony quality validity isn't as important as the message.

• Dressage commentator: “This is really a lovely horse and I speak from personal experience since I once mounted her mother.”

• Paul Hamm, Gymnast: “I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.”

• Boxing Analyst: “Sure there have been injuries, and even some deaths in boxing, but none of them really that serious.”

• Softball announcer: “If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.”

• Tennis commentator: “One of the reasons Andy is playing so well is that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them ... Oh my God, what have I just said?”

Let this serve as a reminder to have someone else read your work before you commit it to final copy and not to take yourself too seriously — those commentators have lifted the spirits of millions of people.

Some bloopers are funny and others are pretty awful. But unless repeating them would be cruel or hurtful, including an embarrassing moment or two in your stories keeps them real and honest sounding.

Write now: about an embarrassing occasion when your tongue moved faster than your mind. It may be funny or not.

Memory Is a Fragile and Fickle Thing

Fragments of memory shimmer like shards of glass in the sun. How do I make sense of them? How do I glue them together into a coherent vessel of story? Where is the thread of shared meaning?

“You remember the time we went to that party at the Myers’ house on the fourth of July?”
“No. Who were they?”
“You remember — I worked with Jerry in 1978 for a couple of years, and they had those dogs ...”
“Oh, yeah. His wife was Marilyn. But I never would have thought of that if you hadn’t mentioned it.”

“I still get mad every time I think of the way Max refused to ... ”
“Have you ever stopped to think that if he had done things your way, you never would have ...?”
“No. I never thought of it that way!”

I didn’t play or listen to a particular Kingston Trio album for several years after a high school party one night, where I sat snuggled up with a fellow I’d had my eye on for awhile. Six or seven years later, I found a copy on a clearance table and picked it up for next to nothing. As I listened to “Tom Dooley” and the MTA song, and all those others, I was right back in that darkened party room, sitting shoulder to shoulder with my heartthrob, and oh, my! My heart raced all over again, and the memory of his body heat warmed my right arm. But alas! After spinning that platter a couple of dozen times, I began remembering about remembering and no longer felt the intensity of the original passion. Today that string of listenings is indelibly imprinted in the memory and the original party is a dim image at the end of a long tunnel, showing the forms of two young people I hardly feel I know.

---

On some core level, we all know that memory is a fragile and fickle thing, yet we have a strong need to believe that it’s dependable, stable, and meaningful. In a very real way, our memories define who we are.

New discoveries about the way memory works continue to flow forth from neuroscience labs. These discoveries are beginning to shake that belief in the stability of memory. Stephanie West Allen, author of the Brains On Purpose blog, posted a link the other day on the Life Writers Forum to an article on the Science Daily.com site. The article, False Memories Affect Behavior, details the ease with which we can form false memories that are so real, we’d go to the wall to defend them. Other articles on the page shed further light on this and related topics.

So, if memory is so easily warped, so plastic and fluid, can we believe anything we remember? What’s the value of our memories?

My current understanding (subject to the next round of scientific discoveries), is that whatever memories we believe to be real are the ones that shape who we are today, and how we’ll interact, make decisions, and interpret our perceptions. They still define who we are, and that person we are today will change a bit, evolve gradually, as our memories develop, mature, fade and morph.

However we remember them, writing about those memories will help order them in threads of meaning. It will help us discover previously elusive memories, and shed new light on old ones. If those memories take on a rich patina from running through our fingers and neurons time after time, they’ll glow more brightly for having done so.

Although I’ll continue to loosely follow developments in memory research, I’ll hold fast to the ones I have and not worry about their basis in documentable fact, whatever that may be. After all, I am my father’s daughter, and he has long held to the tenet, “Don’t let a few facts get in the way of a good story.” So why should I be concerned about a few warped memories?

Write now: about times when your memories have morphed and merged into a stream of related ones. Have you replayed a specific memory so often that you became confused about the original event? How much do your memories overlap with those of your mate or siblings? Which memories are real? (That’s a trick question!)

Grand Reopening

Every now and then it’s time to redecorate. When I was younger, I often rearranged the furniture when this urge hit. Today our furniture is more complex and the rooms more limiting, so moving furniture isn’t an option. Not wanting the exertion, disruption or expense of painting walls, I turned to something more manageable: I redid my website.

When I set up The Heart and Craft of Life Writing site on sharonlippincott.com, I planned to fill it with downloads, articles on writing, book recommendations, and other useful information. I wanted it to be the premier site for free information and downloads. Alas, I’d fallen far short of that goal. This blog holds what would ordinarily be the articles I’d post there, but it's more than that. Basically, I find web design stressful and had left many aspects of the site “under construction”.

The urge to dig in and finish the site's structure came when I discovered that Ritergal’s Story Site, which had been hosted on free space on ThirdAge.com since 2001, went POOF! sometime over the last few weeks. Although I hadn’t posted anything new on that site for seven years, I liked the design. Fortunately, the files were all backed up, making it relatively easy to rebuild on my own turf.

After several days of riding alternate waves of tedium, adrenaline and elation as I worked on both the Heart and Craft and Story Site portions, I’m done. Let me assure you that for those of us who don’t work on websites very often, haven’t mastered the high end tools, and insist on custom design, this stuff is seriously tedious. Believe me, I’m celebrating now that it’s done!

Please click over to take a look at the new additions. You’ll find listings of programs and workshops, a link to the newly reinstalled Story Site, links to articles and stories I have published various places in cyberspace, and a page of downloads, many of which you may already have seen. I’ve also included a long list of recommended books. I have read each of the books on the list and recommend them to others. These are the cream of the crop. I have many books on my shelf that did not make the list. Clicking on any title will direct you to the book’s Amazon page where you can read reviews and other information. (Most of the titles will be in your local library, or available through interlibrary loan.)

This whole adventure is a good example of the value of backing things up. I would never have redone that site from scratch. It’s also an example of technology creep. After seven years there were some aspects of the coding in those pages that needed to be updated to comply with current standards. It still worked, but it’s likely to keep working longer with the touch-ups I did.

Your story files are the same way. Very old files, say ten years old or more, should be opened and resaved to keep them current. I have some old WordPerfect files from around 1990 that are clunky to open, even in WordPerfect (which I keep around for such purposes). I’ve been opening a few now and then and freshening them up if they are worth saving at all.

Maybe now that I have the site set up the way I intended, I’ll add material more often. Stay tuned.

One last thought: Although I finally bought a basic HTML book for ease of reference, I learned nearly everything I know about web design from online tutorials and searches. You can find free lessons for nearly anything on the web, including grammar and punctuation.

Write now: about how you handle the urge to change things. Have you redone your house? Bought new furniture? Moved? Redone a website? Bought a new wardrobe? How do you approach changes in technology?

Down With Dull Descriptions

Consider this sentence:

Uncle Jake was a handsome man. He married Aunt Zelda when he was twenty-six and worked as a beer distributor all his life.

Anyone who knew Uncle Jake would probably agree that he was handsome, but the rest of us have to fill in the blanks with our own idea of what a handsome man looks like. Are we talking Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, or maybe JFK? Was Uncle Jake pale, swarthy, or well-tanned? Big muscles? Tall? Well-dressed?

One of the keys to writing vivid descriptions of people is to close your eyes and picture the person standing in front of you. Wrap the person in your thoughts and focus on your feelings as you focus on the image. Scan it for three or four outstanding characteristics, and fix them firmly in mind, then open your eyes and write about what you saw and felt.

After doing this exercise, Uncle Jake's description might read like this:

Uncle Jake had the bearing of a retired general who would command respect in any setting. He stood ramrod straight all his life, looking even taller than his six-foot-two height. His face bore the patina of age, and even at 72, the short-cropped hair surrounding his shiny pate still had more pepper than salt. When he gazed across the room, his blue eyes took on a steely glint, but when he saw a friend (which included most people — Uncle Jake had more friends than most of the rest of the family put together), those eyes twinkled with a mixture of pleasure and mischief. His face broke into a smile that always melted my heart, as it must have melted Aunt Zelda’s when she first saw him when she was twenty-one and he was four years older. They were married the next year. The combination of his magnetic personality and distinctive appearance surely contributed to his success as a beer distributor.

I haven’t mentioned his slightly crooked nose, the way his ears stuck out, or his gold tooth. I haven’t mentioned the patches of hair on the base of his fingers, his ruddy complexion, or his bushy eyebrows. You haven’t read about his tendency to five-o’clock shadow by 2 pm, or his penchant for loose-fit Levis and plaid flannel shirts. I only used the details that define him the most vividly to me. If Uncle Jake plays a major role in a long story, I may work a few of those other details in later, but using all of them at once would be overwhelming.

One of the best ways to develop skill in writing descriptions of people is to pay close attention to those you encounter every day. Notice how some noses remind you of a ski run, or ears look like the handles on a pitcher. Notice how the woman ahead of you in the checkout line has a mop of curly hair with several strands dangling three inches lower on the right and think what they would look like supporting a Christmas Tree ornament. What could you say about the high school friend who shows up at a reunion looking as if he hasn’t been in the same room with hair-trimming shears in about a decade? Is that pink thing a nose? What creature’s eyes are peeking through that chestnut thicket? What else lives in there with him?

Take joy in the diversity of appearance and celebrate it with words of appreciation for differences. These people made enough of an impression on you to merit inclusion in your story. Make them memorable for your readers too.

Oh yes! It goes without saying that writing with a mean spirit is okay in your journal, but ... think very carefully before sharing mean, angry or hurtful descriptions.

Write now: one or two paragraphs each describing four to six people who have enriched your life. You don’t have to write full stories, just make the descriptions vivid. Post your favorite as a comment on this post.

Sand Castles of the Mind

Photo by Andrew Miesem

I often have trouble writing a blog post because my point of view shifts like the surface of the sand under the incoming tide. The sand stays there, but the sand castles built on it during the low tide are gone by the next low tide.

In case you wonder what sand castles have to do with blog posts, let me flesh it out: I read voraciously, favoring mystery, memoir, metaphysics and writing instruction. Sometimes I pick up a good novel, a historical work, or a volume of neuroscience discoveries. As I read this material (mostly print volumes, but I do read occasional eBooks, web material, and magazines), I have lots of “Aha” moments that relate to writing. I’m learning to grab my journal to capture these moments, because they tend to be as fleeting and changeable as story ideas.

Sometimes I even sit down to write a blog post about one of these flashes of insight. I started such a post yesterday based on my euphoric memory of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. I was distracted about two paragraphs into the post and set it aside. This morning I sat down to finish it, read what I wrote, and scratched my head. What was I thinking about when I started it? These words that were so blazingly alive and compelling in my mind when I began writing had become ashes on the screen. All I can tell you about it this morning is that I was utterly transported as I watched the magic of those performances, and I marveled at the repeated ability of groups of 2008 human beings to move with the collective grace and synchronization of a flock of birds on the wing. The technological innovations and sheer creativity of the event were beyond anything I could imagine. But what does that have to do with writing? I’m stumped!

I have other half-finished blog posts that are equally baffling. And it’s not just blog posts. I have piles of half-finished stories that have grown cold in storage (most are technically essays or interpretations of memories more than actual stories)). I start out to record some insight about the past, and it’s often as ephemeral as the morning mist that disappears in less than an hour after the sun rises.

What’s a person to do? These insights seem so compelling at the moment, and even if they are only half formed, they are thoughts I want to hang onto, whether to share or further develop. I wish I could give you some sage advice, but the best I can do is urge you to keep paper handy and jot them down. With story ideas it’s enough for me to jot a few words to capture the memory. Insights are different. I need to capture a more complete image, because the insight is unlikely to embed itself firmly in memory.

But perhaps the greatest wisdom on this matter comes from a friend whose granddaughters always paint her toenails when they visit. Dorothy’s toenails are works of art, each nail unique and different from the others. On recent visits, the girls have begun naming each image.

“Do you take pictures of them?” I asked after admiring her latest pedi-gallery.

“Heavens no! Why would I want do that?” she replied.

“They’re art. Don’t you want to immortalize them?” No. She does not. The important thing is to remember the time with her granddaughters. The laughter and love are what matter, not the collection of dots and curlicues.

I’m starting to look at my insights that way. They are visits with some vast reservoir of infinite wisdom, refreshing as sips of water from a mountain spring, but that reservoir is always there. I don’t need to capture each sip. That would only matter if I believed I’m responsible for the insights. My current point of view is that I’m not. They are gifts, much like birds and butterflies, or like sand castles — to be admired, but not captured. Over time, like drops of rain, each insight contributes to my evolving understanding of life, of truth, and of writing.

Write now: about an insight you've recently had, your beliefs about insights, or your experience with forgetting them. How have your insights evolved over time?

Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper

SARK, poster child for Coloring Outside the Lines and Succulence, has scored another hit, and this time she is squirting her juiciness directly into the souls of life story writers. The lengthy subtitle of her fifteenth volume, Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper, is Gifting the World with Your Words and Stories and Creating the Time and Energy to Actually Do It. In her inimical style, words flow in every color of the rainbow, enhanced with her trademark doodles and fillips, fulfilling the promise of the title.

Her Writer’s Manifesto appears on the very first page, showcasing her spirit and serving as an example for writing our own:

May words and letters assemble themselves and collect without effort on pages and screens.

May I live my life joy-fully and in between and during these times, learning to dance with distractions, being conscious of the ways my writing practice fills my soul.

May my writing teach me to leap forth and lead my words to be read when this serves me and others.

May my writer’s heart be free of competition, comparison or questing for money or recognition, and remember that we all write for everyone.

May I write my truth and write authentically even after times that I might write falsely, timidly or with ulterior motives. May I embrace the challenges as well as the joys of writing.

Throughout the book, words tumble forth like frolicking children, That’s how SARK is. Bubbly, Exuberant. Colorful and juicy. She makes readers believe anything is possible, because she has done the seemingly impossible herself. Like her other books, this one sounds like it’s written by the nicest, most lovable cheerleader you could ever hope to meet. I felt like a kindergarten kid standing at a painting easel as I read, and although I’ve already written stacks and piles of stories and a growing list of books, she inspires me to write more, to keep “moving my tools” and trying new ways of writing.

Despite her sometimes simplistic approach, the book contains solid, useful advice, helping the timid get those tools moving through first drafts. She gives instructions for teaching friends and family how to be helpful. She explains how to fit writing into over-crowded schedules. She convinces us we do dare write about that! and how to manage our inner censor and writer's block. She explores ways of making our writing real and going deeper. She includes project management tips and oodles of writing prompts.

Although this is not specifically a workbook, she includes space to do some of the exercises she recommends, and peppers the pages with inspirational quotes. At the end of the book she includes interviews with five other writers, explains how she produces her own books (writing/drawing each page by hand at least four times) and fills eight pages with resources for writers that include self-publishing sites, writing tips, inspiration, and supplies. She includes lists of writers’ organizations, retreats, music for writers, and thirty-three recommended books.

It is worth noting that while SARK’s wildly colorful, handwritten pages excite and inspire most people, some find their busy-ness overstimulating, even hard to read. If you want to take a look at SARK’s style before ordering, check out her monthly eletter or take a look inside the book on the Amazon site (this Amazon feature is not yet active on August 5, but should be soon).

Write now: with a juicy pen or several, on thirsty paper, about something dashing and daring that you have done. Let your inner child out to play. Scribble, doodle, make a mess. You can edit and clean it up later. It’s play time! Or, get out your crayons and draw a picture of a childhood memory. Check out my example of such a picture.

Triumph!

My heart goes pitter patter for a few seconds as we walk up to the ticket window at Cedar Point. I know I'm going to have to live up to the commitment I brazenly made in my last post. I can't imagine going on the first ride the fellows select—a pair of yellow towers seemingly seventy stories high that corkscrew straight up, then back down again. The second is just as bad, shooting up straight up a tower, then straight down the other side.

On the third coaster of the day, the Magnum XL 2000, I decide to just do it. I don't look at the track. Whatever it is, I'll do it. I settle into the seat next to Tosh, buckle up, and check out the hand grips.

“Grandma, I hope you can hang on.”

“Hang onto what, my breakfast?”

“No. A bar or something,” says this sage eleven-year-old. His concern is touching.

“You better believe I'll be hanging on!” I say, reassuring myself as much as him.

I do a quick scan for apprehension and feel surprisingly calm. Just then the cars start to move, beginning a climb up a slope that reaches beyond the range of my vision. I breathe deeply, look out at the landscape unfolding beneath our rapidly ascending perch, and hear people begin to scream. I'm still calm — this is preferable to thinking ahead!

We pause for a fraction of a second and suddenly I'm hurtling straight down, holding on for dear life. I scream because it's what you do. And I feel like screaming. It's not scary, but it is disorienting. The only thing I'm actively afraid of is being shaken to death. I feel like I'm on a buckboard racing across the Pony Express track. My head jerks in every direction as we go up, down, and around curves at 45º angles. An instant headache quickly escalates to a full throb, threatening to burst open and spew my brains all over the island. Up, down, around. We keep screaming along the track. Every muscle in my body is clenched, trying to hold my body together to avoid major damage.

In a mercifully short period of time, we pull back to the dock. I hop out with no sense of triumph. I'm too busy trying to relax my neck, hoping to ease the throbbing in my head, and the warning signals from a mildly twisted lumbar region.

I survived riding the Magnum XL 2000 in background.
Compared to many others, this is a kiddy park ride!

I decide I could ride again. I could ride anything in the park. I'm no longer afraid. I'm not afraid of surviving, even surviving sheer plunges of hundreds of feet, or the most severe loops. I can even imagine enjoying the experience. But I am afraid of the pain it's likely to entail. My body is no longer as forgiving as it was thirty or forty years ago.

In a flash, I realize that I no longer have anything to prove. I could do it. That's enough. I don't have to endure further pain to prove that. I declare myself the official photographer of our expedition, silently bless Cedar Point for their compassionate Senior Citizen admission fee, and feel victorious. This day is a milestone in my life, but not for the reason I expected.

Write now: about a personal victory over fear. Did it have a surprise ending? What about pain? Does that deter you? How do you adapt to the aging of your body and newly discovered limitations?