The Fuel of Stories

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! As was the case last year, I've come up to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit family. Because I wanted to avoid the chaos that is the airports at Thanksgiving, I drove. I felt better about my choice when my sister and I drove past the SF airport on Friday night and saw the massive line of cars waiting to get to the terminal.

I’m well-practiced at driving long distances. I’ve gone back and forth across country (alone) several times, and I’ve made the drive between Northern and Southern California a dozen times or more, driving and as a passenger. I cope through methods like coffee drinking, good music, podcasts, and creative corn nut consumption, to name a few.

But on the most recent drive, I found that I was missing the most important coping skill of all. You see, my imagination was malfunctioning.

It was very perplexing. When I tried to consider the stories I had in progress, my mind seemed only able to move within the bounds of existing scenes and plotlines. I couldn't even garner interest in my silly sci-fi/fantasy stories that I never intend to write down. It was hours and hours of pure torture. How do non-writers survive such long periods of boredom? 

Near the end of the drive, steel-gray clouds drifting over butter-yellow hills caught my fancy and re-fired my imagination. But that wasn't until hour seven of eight. My imagination seems to be back to normal now, but I do not want to tolerate this condition again on the eight hours back to San Diego.

And so, in this time of stuffing our bodies full of food, I decided to look up and share ways that we might feed our imagination. Not literally - that imagining food diet sounds kind of silly to me.

What works for inspiration for me? Beautiful images, unusual places, and nature walks. I listed some of my favorite triggers for stories in this post. Susan just blogged about the power of the what-if. 

To further fuel your imagination, here are some lovely images from Wikimedia Commons' Picture of the Year for 2011.

 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lake_Bondhus_Norway_2862.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lanzarote_5_Luc_Viatour.jpg

This is my favorite, because it makes me think of a world frozen over:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snowy_%C3%85reskutan_Ski_lift.jpg

And here are some quotes about enhancing your imagination:

From Seven Sentences:

One simple way of increasing your creativity is to use the law of opposites . When you come up with an idea of what to write, of how to play a character, or of what to paint on that canvas… STOP……ask yourself what is the opposite of that idea; now create something about that.  

 From W. I. B. Beveridge, quoted at Brainpickings.org

Many people will not tolerate a state of doubt, either because they will not endure the mental discomfort of it or because they regard it as evidence of inferiority.
To be genuinely thoughtful, we must be willing to sustain and protract that state of doubt which is the stimulus to thorough enquiry, so as not to accept an idea or make a positive assertion of a belief, until justifying reasons have been found.

And from Suzanna Stinnet:

Notice in Categories: Start by deciding what it is you want to notice today. Once I did this exercise by actively looking at noses. People's noses, dog's noses, noses on billboards and beaks on birds. Crowdwatching while only noticing noses is absolutely hysterical. You bring your focus to one thing and it compounds. You begin to notice many aspects, and suddenly you can't see anything but noses, noses, noses!! The laughter this induced is another great component to brain health, inducing circulation and releasing many natural chemicals related to brain stimulation. Now, while you are noticing and observing these noses, tell yourself about them. Engage the storytelling part of your brain by actively using descriptors. See the details. Make up new words to tell yourself about the noses everywhere in your environment.

So Happy Thanksgiving again to you all, and I hope you remember to nourish your mind as well as your body, and that there is no such thing as too much pie.

Bonus wikimedia picture: yaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!

Friday Guest Post by Trisha

Hey guys, Melanie is out this week, so I'm filling in for her.  It might be a bit early, but I've got a Thanksgiving post I want to share, and figured this was the perfect day to do it.
 

I’ve been helping make Thanksgiving dinner since I was nine.  We had just moved to Italy earlier that year, and it was the first time my mom was in charge of cooking for the holidays.  It was also the first year I got to help her cook anything, so I was on pins and needles with anticipation.

I was so excited that I spend most of the day scuttling around the kitchen, poking my head over the counter to see what we were supposed to next.  We burned a casserole, couldn’t get the turkey to thaw in the middle, and in general ruined half the dishes.  At one point my mom asked me to take a dish out of the oven, and I was so eager to help that I forgot to put on oven mitts.  Half way from oven to kitchen table, I realized my mistake and, deciding I was better off burning my hands than my bare feet, I ran across the room to deposit the dish.  My fingers blistered and bled, and I couldn’t hold a pencil (or a fork) for at least a week.

Despite all the missteps and blunderings, that Thanksgiving has never left my memory.  Every year I arrive at my parents’ house the night before to get the turkey in the brine, and my mom and I laugh and tell stories about all the cooking mistakes we’ve made over the years.  The time she mistook salt for sugar.  The year my sister set the stove on fire.  The year I dropped a twenty pound turkey into a bucket of brine and ended up with a mouthful of raw turkey salt water.  But above all, the first year we cooked Thanksgiving dinner together.

This year, my husband has to work the week of Thanksgiving.  So next week, I’ll be cooking in my own home, making a small meal for just us and the kids.  I don’t intend to forget the oven mitts, and I’ve made enough pies that I doubt I’ll burn the edges.  I’m even going to let my kids help mix things a few times.  But I’m going to miss the late pre-Thanksgiving talks with my mom.  No matter how great dinner turns out, I think my favorite will always be the year my mom and I made every mistake in the book.  I learned more from that one year of failure than I would have if we’d stumbled our way into a Rockwell-esque feast.

So I’m thankful for mistakes.  I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow, becoming a better person—a better mother, wife, daughter, writer, and cook—along the way.

It’s a little early, but happy Thanksgiving, Prosers!

2 1/2 Things Worth Driving 28 Hours For

(bad grammarly title & all)

How was your Thanksgiving?

Ours? Six people squashed in a minivan for 14 hours each way to visit the relatives. Realizing two hours in that the cigarette lighter doesn’t work so we can’t plug in the computer or the portable dvd player (it has the battery life of a peanut).

28 hours, 4 children, no discernable means of entertainment. Let that sink in for a minute. Was it worth it to spend 72 hours with the people we love? Definitely.

Here are two and a half reasons why:

#1 Best Thanksgiving Speech Ever

You’ve heard them, so have I - the speeches about being thankful, maybe something about pilgrims, loving your family, blah, blah, blah. If the talking goes on too long we wonder if we’ll drown from salivating over the food piled before us. Well, this year was a little different. My amazing chef bro-in-law had lovingly brined and smoked a massive turkey. It's crisp-juicy presence drew us near, but before we dug in, we learned that my little nephew had something to say.

Interesting.

He stood up and proceeded to give a Thanksgiving speech - from the turkey’s point of view. Why are we murdering turkeys, ripping wives from their husbands, and leaving poor orphaned turkey children running around the countryside cold and homeless? The speech came complete with visual aids done in crayon. I was left dumbfounded, staring at my plate. Should I contribute to the PTSD turkey fund? Should I go vegan? Meanwhile my nephew had heaped his plate high and was munching guiltlessly away – on turkey.

It was awesome.

#2 Black Friday Shopping on Thursday

It’s a ritual I married into. Thou shalt go Black Friday shopping with the girls. This year’s rush started Thursday at 9pm hovering protectively over a pile of $5 Walmart boy pajammies for an entire hour until the sale actually started. I texted my sister (who has yet to be indoctrinated into the practice) a blow by blow as the night progressed. Midnight: Target. 4am: craft store. The best part? The two hour waits in between the ten minutes of store madness, standing out in the freezing cold, laughing and chatting and teeth-chattering with my sister-in-laws.

# 1/2 The Confession

Not so many people know I write. Okay, almost no one does – did. My dear husband suggested I let my teen nieces (who love to read and write stories) take a look at my YA novel. A critique by my target audience? It seemed like a good idea right up until my dh pried the manuscript out of my cold, dead-from-fear hands and gave it to them.

This is what it felt like:

It’s great for kids to write. It’s great for teens. But me? A grown up? That manuscript was the trash can lid around my neck. No denying who’s a little wacko now (okay, that was probably never really in question).

This is what I expected to hear: Who, who left that mess of words on these pages? You Tank, uh, Sue? You’re supposed to be the adult here. You’re supposed to know better than to leave metaphors and similes strewn around like yesterday’s garbage. You’re lucky we don’t laugh you out of here and all 14 hours back to your house.

But what I got was ‘When can you send more?’ and ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ And I don’t think they were just saying it. At least I hope not.

Maybe sticking your neck out isn’t so bad.

Unless you’re a turkey.

~ Susan

The History of Food

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I celebrated by eating giant quantities of food, and chasing my nieces and nephews around the yard. Later, alas, it began to rain. Fortunately, video games were there to save the day!

Pretty much a fantastic day.

In case you hadn't heard enough about food today

I have a new favorite website.

I was mining through the fabulous list of articles over at the SFWA website, and I came across this website regarding the history of food.

The main feature of a site is a timeline with the most basic origins of food and recipes, with articles giving the details of each. Who knew, for example, that mozzarella sticks have been around since the 14^th Century? Or that chocolate covered potato chips pre-date chocolate covered pretzels? Or that it took humanity until the 16^th century to figure out that you could use eggs as a raising agent (such as meringue)?

The very first thing on the timeline is water, which cracks me up. This addition of water seems to hint that there was some point in human history in which water was not consumed. But I suppose that the creators of the site just wanted another excuse to link to the articles on food at the Cambridge site.

The good folks of Cambridge have written a large number of articles for a book called The Cambridge World History of Food. I'm sure that all of them are extremely fascinating, if they weren't clogged with the worst use of jargon I've encountered in a long time (and I read a lot of scientific journal articles). For example, the following passage on rice: "The origin of rice was long shrouded by disparate postulates because of the pantropical but disjunct distribution of zzzzzzzzzzzz"

That, of course, being the point where my eyes glazed over. The article on water is even worse:

"Even earlier ideas of water as one of the four (or five) elements will mislead us, for in many such schemes elements were less fundamental substances than dynamic principles (e.g., in the case of water, the dynamic tendency is to wet things, cool them, and dissolve them) or generic labels for regular combinations of qualities. In one strand of Aristotelianism, for example, water can be understood as matter possessing the qualities of being cold and wet…."

Uh, right. As my lawyer friend commented, "This article can be understood as possessing the qualities of being obvious and stupid." That’s right, folks, this passage makes even her brain hurt.

But I digress. I was particularly fascinated by some examples, like the fact that ketchup has its origins in Asia. My lawyer friend tells me that I should spell it as "catsup," because "ketchup" is a trademarked brand that has fallen into general usage, and I told her to stop reading over my shoulder. Anyway, ketchup at its origins could really be made with any vegetables, and apparently, it was at one time a close race between tomato and eggplant ketchup. I, for one, am relieved.

Seriously though, there's a lot of really great information there. It is in no way a complete or thorough guide to food history, but it's a good starting point, and as all good websites will be, lots and lots of fun. It's certainly inspired me to look more into the topic.

Or to try my own vegetable ketchup recipe. Brussel sprouts, your day has come at last.

Let us close with another passage from the Cambridge water chapter:

"It is probably right to see this linkage of macrocosm and microcosm as something more than analogical; such linkages would remain a part of popular understanding even after the rise of a mechanistic cosmology in the seventeenth century."

For the rest of this holiday season, may both your microcosm and macrocosm continue to be so much more than analogical.

Gather Round the Dinning Room Table

I’m a hunter and a gatherer, a flea market, second-hand, never look a gift horse in the mouth, bargain shopping princess. So when it came to finding a table, Craigslist was a natural magnet. And there among the headlines calling out like orphaned royal waifs - Queen Anne chair, Louis XV buffet - I found more than once the clarion call, beckoning me to buy a dinning room table.

Did you snort at the misspelling? I did. ‘Dining,’ not ‘dinning.’ Didn’t everyone know din meant noise, hubbub, commotion?

We finally found our table, not on Craigslist, but at a local consignment store (they’d even spelled ‘dining room table’ correctly on the placard, just in case we couldn’t recognize the slab of wood with four legs and a set of six chairs.). The table is huge, and I do mean huge, with an extra leaf for the option of extra hugeness.

Over the years it’s had its share of breakfast cereal overflow, Play-doh mayhem and dinnertime calamities. But what I notice most about the table is the noise. Always around it there are voices, laughing, prattling, squabbling, tattling. I realized at last, that although I had not intended to, I had indeed purchased a dinning room table.

Some nights the clatter of dropped silverware, the repeated please pass (sometimes hold the please), the family talking over and under and sideways one another makes my head spin. But it’s nothing compared to the nights when the house is empty. Then the dinning room table is hushed to a timid murmur. A single clink of silverware on plate, a single glass set down. The paper napkin crumples up in my hand amid the stillness. Then our table transforms into what, I suppose, it was always meant to be, a dining room table. Sedate, elegant, uniformly well-mannered.

And do you know, I don’t like it. I can’t stand having a dining room table. Give me the din, the mayhem, the commotion, because in our house that is what lets us know we are alive, and together -this incredible mishmash of family and friends.

When this table has worn itself out, when it is time for it to go, I hope I will be able to proudly list it on Craigslist:

Dinning Room Table - to a good home.

And I hope that another gathering of family and friends can sit around it and fill their lives with a feast of memories.

Wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving with the people you love gathered near.