This one kinda proved why people might look at me askance for posting recipes. You can learn from my mistakes, okay?
This is a bit of a quick one because I’m going out. I’ve made qite a few changes to the original recipe, because 2 oz of tea is a lot, it didn’t taste great, and no one needs that much sauce for only two chicken breasts.
Wolf-Spider has gone to Three Crows Press. I haven’t done much more work on selkie (though I’ve significantly rewritten the first third – the second third has a chunk in the middle that requires it to be rewritten, and hopefully the third third is alright). After posting on the SYL forum at AbsoluteWrite (which keeps crashing at the moment) I’ve found a new approach to Asylum. Which also requires it to be completely rewritten.
I have drunk about half of Friday’s tea-punch (about three quarters of a litre).
Not just now; since friday. It’s delicious. It’s absolutely delicious.
The SYL forums conform with most of my previous experience with online crit groups (not all – the_literatzzi actually works). You have to really thoroughly prod people to get constructive criticism – to be fair to the person I prodded, she responded quickly and relatively thoroughly – beyond “work it some”. One crit forum seems to be entirely full of people being lovely to each other with almost no suggestions at all. Once prodded, they come up with a list of things, which is what’s most annoying.= – if you saw those things before, why not mention them?
On the other end of the scale, the feedback on Asylum was… condescending. It was correct (I hadn’t got the aim of the piece across, which is my own fault, hence why I’m trying a new approach) but the phrase “I’m not even going to bother going on” got my goat up a little. His own acknowedglement that his tone might put me off taking his advice shows he knew he was being rude. Comments like that (and it’s not just one individual, but something you see across the internet) suggest the poster is providing crit of pieces not to help a person but because they feel better about themselves when putting down pieces inferior to their own. I deliberately stopped myself from checking out any of my critter’s work – I didn’t need another reason not to take good advice.
It really didn’t help me swallow my pride that his post was riddled with spelling and grammar errors, either, but I’m learning to accept that even people in the industry don’t apply the same standard to their internet posts as they do to their professional work (a terrible advertisement for themselves, but that’s their call). It baffles me a little, especially when it’s editors and agents. What they do reflects on their business; would you buy from a publication if you weren’t confident in their ability to maintain professional editting standards? If not, why would you submit to them? This is true for writer’s as well, but since so few authors are picked up from what they post online compared with what they submit, it’s more of a concern after publication than before. Not that it doesn’t raise my eyebrows every time I see a published author who sees no reason to use punctuation or capital letters.
There is a word I am thinking of, but the closest my mind can call up for me is “profriterole”. Um.
Maybe some tea punch will help!
It’s friday again, so it’s recipe time. Staying on the subject of tea, and even on the subject of liquid, this week I present a favourite Victorian recipe: tea punch.
In fact, I have four recipes for tea punch. I’ll start with the one I’ve actually made (the one that doesn’t take over a week to make…), and include the others for general interest. You know, since distilling your own alcohol is illegal in this country.
I was going to do a spiel on how tea is produced, but with four recipes it doesn’t seem relevant. Next week is Earl Grey Chicken Supreme, so that can come then.
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You might be wondering why I’ve decided to post recipes here – my family certainly would be, considering my reputation in the kitchen! Partly, it’s to make this blog a little more interesting than a list of submissions, but mostly it’s a way of sharing my love of my job. Well, one of my jobs.
I work part time at a museum of social history. One element on this is working in our Kitchen Studio, an interactive area focussed on cooking and the home. Mostly cooking. It tends to be historical recipes, though sometimes we go for foods with an interesting history.
I have a real soft spot for unusual foods. I love game and offal, and I like to play around with recipes I find online (like tomato soup cake, which is delicious). I’m not going to regurgitate my training packs from work; I’m going to explore foods and themes that interest me. Hopefully, some of these recipes will be useful in writing, especially historic or fantasy pieces. And hopefully they’ll give you something good to eat!
Since I’m British, all measurements will be in metric (unless I’m sharing an American recipe…). There’s a lot of websites dedicated to conversion.
Anyway, on to the show. The first month’s theme is Tea! It’s hot, wet, and British, and it’s just what you want at this time of year. Let’s start with the basics: making the perfect cuppa
I’ve decided that, to make sure I update regularly, I’m going to declare Wednesdays days for blogging about writing (in general), and Fridays for Food (because I can). Website updates and submissions and so on will appear whenever relevant.
So, first Writing Wednesday post is on the subject of sex! Namely, vocabulary in sex scenes.
It’s easy to feel silly writing sex. You don’t want to sound too clinical, but you don’t want to get too euphemistic, either. You need to bear in mind the view point character’s speech patterns, but you don’t want to get bogged down in slang.
So, these are my personal Nos for a sex scene. Unless you’re deliberately trying to make me giggle.
