Category: butternut squash

NaNoNonsense – the aftermath!

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The Writing Bit

This is the last post that will mention NaNoWriMo (until next year!) So, it’s over! You have 50,000 words of story and a hangover from the champagne you’ve been knocking back in justified celebration. What do you mean, you haven’t had any champagne? As I pointed out in last week’s blog, NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty advised us to purchase champagne at the start of week 4 so it could be chilled and ready for when we crossed the finish line. If you haven’t had champagne yet, buy some now. It’s THE LAW!

For me, it’s been an enjoyable but intense month. It’s been pretty time-consuming; the house is a tip, the laundry’s piled up and I’ve been neglecting friends and family. (I really must phone my mother.) And apart from the less-than-riveting prospect of catching up with the housework and laundry, I’m aware of a very slight ‘down’ feeling, too, a bit of a sense of anti-climax. All that writerly camaraderie is over, and instead of the buzz and excitement that goes with the daily challenge of hitting the word count, we’re left with the reality – a very, very veryrough draft.

I don’t know about you, but mine’s a bit of a hotch-potch, a Frankenstein’s monster of a draft with lots of bits that might work in themselves but don’t necessarily go together. Between page 1 and page 109, I’ve changed the ages of the two main characters; I’ve changed their parents’ personalities; I’ve turned a nice experience one of them has in the early pages into an unpleasant episode later on, and on page 100, or thereabouts, I decided it might work better if my characters were sisters rather than friends – a change that will alter at least the first few chapters.

So basically, it’s all over the place, and the ideas are still coming – and changing. But I’m not going to be too disheartened by the problems with my manuscript. The process of writing a novel involves a massive amount of rethinking, reshaping and rewriting, and the great thing about having taken part in NaNoWriMo is that I feel I’ve taken a bit of a shortcut – I was always going to write thousands of words that would end up being changed or cut; I’ve just done it much more quickly. 

My plan now is to print it out, read it through and see what I’ve created. I’ll use a highlighter pen to mark the bits I want to keep, then I’ll try to put them in some sort of order, even if it’s only ‘beginning, middle and end’. And then I’ll start the long, slow process of redrafting.

Did you take part in NaNoWriMo? How did you find the experience? And if you didn’t do it this year, are you tempted for 2012?

The Reading Bit

I heard M J Hyland speak recently at a writing Masterclass; she was incredibly generous with her insights into the writing process, and she was also enormously entertaining and good fun, so  I bought her most recent novel, This Is How – I often buy books largely because I like the author!

This Is How is written in the first person, present tense, from the point of view of Patrick, a young man who arrives to start a new life in a seaside town after a broken engagement. Patrick is a loner, at odds with the world. Clearly much brighter than the rest of his family, he studied psychology at university, but dropped out after a year in order to become a car mechanic, something at which he excels. Patrick knows where he is with engines – they’re less complex than people. Although Patrick would like to have friends, he finds it difficult to engage with people and to express his feelings. Throughout the novel, he says one thing while feeling something completely different. Often what he feels is intense and even violent anger, but it’s a repressed anger. Repressed, that is, until one day when he commits a single, violent act, apparently not realising the magnitude of what he’s doing until afterwards.

The novel then follows Patrick as the consequences of this spur-of-the-moment act unfold. The prose is spare and there’s a lot of dialogue. Patrick’s observations are brief and straightforward. The complexity of his thoughts and feelings is shown by what he says and does, rather than by us being privy to his thoughts. I can’t say a lot more about the plot without giving too much away, but suffice to say that the closeness with which we follow Patrick has the effect of making him a hugely sympathetic character, even though he often seems strangely detached and emotionless. Despite his sometimes violent feelings, he is usually polite and courteous to everyone, and when he acts on his violent impulse, his regret and guilt are almost palpable. Hyland writes Patrick so vividly that we feel almost part of him; we feel the physical sensations he experiences, seemingly in place of emotions. We even feel the unexplained pains in his neck and shoulders that plague him throughout the novel – a subtle touch suggesting a character who is contantly burdened.

This is not a thriller or a ‘secret-to-be-revealed’ type novel, and yet I still found it an absolute page turner. Patrick is a powerful, heartbreakingly sad and brilliantly evoked character, and he will stay with me for a very long time.

The Food Bit

This section is where I tell you how I’ve managed to feed Vegan Husband in a reasonably interesting way over the past week. I occasionally still eat fish and dairy products, so I’ll talk about non-vegan food now and again.
Father-in-law coming for Saturday lunch, so we’re going to start with a spicy butternut squash soup, then veggie sausages and mash with red wine onion gravy, followed by baked peaches and vegan ice-cream.
For the soup: peel and dice a butternut squash, put in a roasting dish with a quartered onion, a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, some fresh thyme and a sprinkling of chilli powder and salt. Pour over some olive oil and mix so that everything’s coated. Roast until the squash and onion are soft, then add about a pint of vegetable stock and whizz until smooth. Add more stock for a thinner consistency, check seasoning and serve.

For the sausage and mash: we love the Linda Mc Cartney veggie sausages. The trick is to make sure you don’t overcook them. For the mash: when the potatoes are cooked, add some unsweetened soya milk, a dollop of vegan sunflower spread, (or just some olive oil), and about a tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Season to taste. For the gravy: slice an onion and fry gently in olive oil until soft. Stir in a little flour and cook for a minute or two, then add some strong vegetable stock, some red wine, a bay leaf, a good pinch of dried sage and a dessertspoon of dijon mustard. We’ll probably have some broccoli and carrots with this, or whatever veg is knocking about in the fridge.

For pud: cut a peach in half, remove the stone and fill the hole with chopped pistachios, hazelnuts or almonds (or all three). Sprinkle on some  muscovado sugar and bake in the oven until soft. Serve with ice-cream or non-dairy ice-cream – Swedish Glace is very good.

 

Creating believable characters

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The Writing Bit

Have you ever been handed a sheet of paper with a list of questions, like: what is the colour of your character’s eyes /hair; where was s/he born; what did his/her parents do for a living; what sort of clothes does s/he wear? Who is his/ her best friend?  And so on.

I know some people find these ‘Character Generators’ genuinely helpful in creating characters, but I personally have a major problem with them, and I think they can sometimes set you off on the wrong track.

I believe that characters in fiction should develop organically; that fictional characters, like real people, are formed partly by where they come from and what their parents did, but also by the things that happen to them and the people they come into contact with. I tend to think about new characters almost as new babies; now if you’re a parent, you’ll know that a newborn baby, despite being the most precious, wonderful thing that ever happened to you, doesn’t appear to have much of a character when it’s first born. But gradually, over the weeks and months, as your child comes into contact with various people, goes to new places and has new experiences, he or she begins to develop a very definite and unique personality and character. If you decide before you start writing how your characters dress, who their friends are, what they eat and so forth, it’s like trying to impose a ready-made character on your newborn baby. Parents help to gently shape their child’s character over many years; they don’t dictate it at the moment (or even before!) of birth. 

So before you start writing, by all means decide that you want to write about a forty-something doctor living in a caravan in Aberdeen, or a twenty-something mother at Greenham Common in the eighties. But let the characters themselves tell you the finer details by putting them in situations and seeing how they react. If you send your character on a date or for a job interview, let us see her choosing what outfit she’ll wear; if a character has just had some news he needs to share with a friend, let us see who he calls and what he says.

Character should be slowly revealed;  don’t tell us she’s shy and lacks confidence; show  her trying to think up excuses to avoid a party, or rejecting a red dress  in favour of something less noticeable. Try to show, through thoughts, action and dialogue, not only how your character acts, but how s/he reacts. Obviously, you need to orchestrate your characters to a certain extent – you don’t want to give them a completely free hand, in the same way you don’t let your kids do exactly as they please. But if you put your characters in a situation and let them react, hopefully they’ll surprise you now and again and do things you didn’t expect – and that is the real joy of fiction!

 

The Reading Bit
I was immediately engaged by Isabel Ashdown’s Glasshopper. The narrative alternates between  thirteen-year-old Jake and his alcoholic mother, Mary.  When we first meet Mary, she’s recently separated from Jake’s father and she’s in a bad way. In the absence of a competent parent (Mary spends much of her time in bed, drunk) Jake does his best to hold things together, clearing up his mum’s sick, doing the household chores and looking after his younger brother, Andy.  Jake is a thoroughly likeable character but he’s not whiter-than-white, so he’s convincing. True, he steals from the kindly newsagent a couple of times , and sometimes he thumps his brother unnecessarily. But we forgive him, because he’s hard-working and intelligent and kind and vulnerable. 

The book opens in 1985 and goes back in time to Mary’s childhood. As we follow her life through her teens, twenties and thirties, we see the choices she’s made and the consequences of those choices, and we begin to understand what has led her to the depths she’s reached when we first meet her.  Both Jake’s and Mary’s voices are strong and convincing, and as the family’s history unfolds and the narratives move closer together, there are moments of both joy and heartbreak as a number of secrets are revealed.  I enjoyed the period detail, and I loved the minor characters. I felt Jake’s voice was slightly stronger than Mary’s, but maybe that actually emphasises the fact that Mary is in some ways a slightly diminished  character. I found her story convincing and tragic, and I felt hugely sympathetic to her; if anything, I wanted more of Mary. I found this an immensely engaging and satisfying read.

The Food Bit

Butternut squash and walnut risotto
Even though they can be a faff to make, I absolutely love a good risotto, so when my husband became vegan, I set about trying to find a decent vegan alternative. Now, I have to be honest, real butter and parmesan definitely give this a more gorgeous flavour and texture than the vegan alternative, but this version is really most acceptable, and still counts as comfort food (especially when served with a large glass of red!)

Take one small or half a large butternut squash, peel and dice into cubes a bit bigger than 1cm. Season, coat with olive oil then roast in the oven until soft and slightly caremelised. While the squash is cooking, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, then add a finely chopped shallot (or half an onion). Fry for a couple of minutes. Make about 600ml of vegetable stock in a small saucepan and keep it on a low heat. Add 150g Arborio rice and a crushed clove of garlic to the onions. Stir so the rice is coated in oil. Pour in a slug of white wine (if you’re vegan, check that the wine is suitable) and when that has evaporated, add a ladleful of hot stock. Stir. When this has been absorbed, add another ladleful. Repeat until most of the stock has been absorbed and the rice is cooked, but still ‘al dente’. Stir the risotto every couple of minutes. When the risotto is cooked, add a heaped teaspoon of vegan sunflower spread, a good shake of vegan ‘parmesan’ – it’s called Parmezano and you find it in the ‘free from’ section of the supermarket. Taste to get the amount right. For non-vegans, add butter and grated parmesan at this stage instead. Add the roasted squash , a handful of chopped walnuts and a good grind of coarse black pepper. Serve in the centre of the plate, topped with rocket and drizzled with olive oil.