Continue reading »]]> The week before last was a difficult one—I only wrote one day out of seven. While it was an awesome day (to the tune of 1,180 words and the end of chapter seven), my consistency left much to be desired.

I decided this week to change that and challenged myself to write at least a thousand words every weekday. In the end, I didn’t achieve perfection, but I did write four out of five days. Those four days gave me 3,942 words and the entirety of chapter eight. All of those words didn’t come easy, especially since I am still writing without an outline. But they still came—I just had to sit down at my computer for a few hours each day and force myself to write.

Rich in Color continues to be a highlight of my week. Jon has been working on the site re-design—it’s fantastic. I read The Summer Prince last week in preparation for our upcoming group discussion on the book, and I’ve asked another author if she would be willing to do a guest post/interview for us. She has accepted, but we’re still working out the details of it all. Our followers continue to grow on Twitter (67) and Tumblr (77).

In other words, life is good. I’m going to challenge myself to write a thousand words a day this upcoming week as well. I also need to finish Range of Ghosts and ready Awakening. Wish me luck!

Continue reading »]]> When Mary Beth went to the U.K. a few years ago, she returned with a number of marvels, including a delightful cookbook. One of my favorite recipes in that book is the scones. This recipe will make 10 to 12 scones, depending on the size of your biscuit cutter. Just serve them with fresh whipped cream and jam, and you’ll have a delicious summer breakfast or dessert.

As a friendly reminder to not be like me, be gentle with the dough and handle it as little as possible. Otherwise your light and fluffy scones will be neither light nor fluffy.

2 oz. butter, diced and very cold
1 lb. flour
½ tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. sugar (caster/baking if you have it)
9 fl. oz. milk
Sparkling sugar (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 425° F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder together.
3. Cut in butter until mixture has the consistency of fine breadcrumbs. Mix in sugar.
4. Add milk and mix to form a soft dough.
5. Roll dough out to ½” thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut scones with biscuit cutter and place on baking sheet.
6. Brush scones with milk and sprinkle with sparkling sugar, if desired. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden.
7. Let cool. Cut scones in half and serve with clotted/whipped cream and jam or fresh fruit.

Continue reading »]]> In honor of the warming weather, I made almond chicken croissants. When I was younger, a cold mixture of meat, fruit, and mayonnaise was the last thing I would’ve eaten, but now that I am older I can appreciate just how delightful it really is. These sandwiches would be perfect for a bridal/baby shower—or whenever you want something filling and spring-ish.

This recipe is from The Gathering of Friends, Volume 3, by Michelle Huxtable and Abby Jane Green. I have had the privilege to go to Michelle Huxtable’s home and eat her food a couple times over the last few years, and it has always been amazing. You really should check out her cookbooks. I have two of them, and all the recipes I’ve tried have turned out amazing.

3 chicken breasts, cooked and cubed as desired
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
¾ c mayonnaise
2 tsp. mustard
1 ½-2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
2 stalks celery, diced
1 ½ c. grapes, halved
½ c toasted slivered almonds
croissants

1. Mix Worcestershire sauce, mayo, mustard, salt, and pepper.
2. Fold in remaining ingredients.
3. Cut croissants in half. Fill with as much filling as desired.

Continue reading »]]> Thanks to two astounding writing days, last week’s word count topped out at 2,702. It’s the first time since March that I’ve written over 2,000 words in a week, so I’m rather pleased by the numbers. April netted me a total of 6,987 words, and my goal for May is to surpass that by hitting 7,000 words at least.

Rich in Color continues to grow. We’ve officially topped 50 followers on both Tumblr and Twitter, and my co-bloggers and I have hit all of our posting deadlines. Last week my contribution was a short essay called “It’s the Pattern that’s the Problem.” I’m thrilled at how well we’re doing, and we’re continuing to brainstorm ways we can get better like a site redesign.

This weekend I need to read The Summer Prince for our first group discussion and Shadows Cast by Stars for a review. In the meantime, I’m going to watch another episode of You’re Beautiful, AKA the kdrama in which an apprentice nun cross-dresses as her twin brother in order to take his place in a kpop group and shenanigans occur. So many shenanigans.

Continue reading »]]> While this week’s word count isn’t spectacular—just 1,287 words—I have officially completed the initial plot hook and moved on to part two of the book. This would be way more exciting for me if I had actually figured out what needed to happen in the mountains with all the wandering ghosts and the final member of the trio, but I wanted to try writing this book without everything mapped out beforehand.

Unfortunately, all that leaves me to go on is confusion and second-guessing at the start of a new chapter. I really ought to tattoo it’s okay if the first draft sucks in inspirational font on the back of my hands. Barring that, the best strategy I have to deal with new and uncertain things is to tackle them with a sledgehammer. My rather ambitious goal is to write 1,000 words each on Saturday and Sunday. Maybe by the end of that I will have figured out what on earth should happen in this next segment.

I spent Monday evening hanging out with Gwynne, who was in town for family stuff. It was a blast to catch up with her face-to-face, especially since we staked out a table at Café Zupas for three hours and did not budge except to refill drinks. Instead of boring you with all the details of our conversation, I’ll sum it up in a single sentence: there are few things as delightful as talking to somebody who understands your drive to create worlds with words.

Tonight was a lot of fun as well. I met up with Mandy, Trever, and Beto for dinner, and afterwards we rendezvoused with Steven; his sister, Rachel; and his mom, my Aunt Maria. I’ve never been to a mission call opening before, and it was exciting—especially when he got called to the mission my family is in! Now Steven will have to learn to conjugate his Spanish verbs. Best of luck to him on that.

Continue reading »]]> Between my family coming to town, getting Rich in Color all ready for our two new co-bloggers and one new contributor, and hunting for a job, I have had a very busy fourteen days. I also read two books (one for Rich in Color, the other for recharge time while family was in town), finished watching Arang and the Magistrate with Mary Beth and Beth (delightfully angsty with a satisfying ending), and cleaned the kitchen about eighty billion times (because that’s what happens when both you and your roommate are amazing cooks).

Consequently, my word count is a bit on the thin side—just 1,867 words. That’s okay. Next week will be more productive, both for novel writing and for blogging. I have been feeling the urge to try to cook something new (or a favorite I haven’t done in a while) and then blog about it, like I did for the biscotti earlier this year. We shall see.

Continue reading »]]> Last Thursday my mother and my brother Brandon came into town. In this case came means they got dropped off in Burley, Idaho, and I had to drive three hours (each way) to fetch them. I’ve driven that stretch of road several times since June of 2008, when I bought my car. Once you leave the Wasatch Front, it’s basically a big stretch of nothing, occasionally interrupted by tiny towns, truck stops, and ranch exits.

[Every time I make that drive, I can’t help but look at those miniscule towns like Snowville (population 167 in 2010) and think Brigham Young told your ancestors to settle there—you don’t have to stay! Until I left home for college, the largest town I remember living in had only 3,000 people in it, but it was only 15 minutes from a city with close to 150,000 people in it. Sorry, folks, but I like my sushi and speedy access to hospitals too much to live out there.]

The reason my mom and Brandon were in town was to see Cassie perform with her a cappella group, Noteworthy. They had two performances: one solo at the Covey Center on Friday night and one (with Voiceline and Vocal Point) at The Wall on Saturday night. Noteworthy is a great group, and you don’t have to take my word for it:

Cassie had solos on Friday night (but not on Saturday, woes!) when the group sang “I Won’t Say (I’m in Love)” from Hercules and “Some Nights” by fun. (Yes, they did skip the verse with the f-bomb in it.) I’m definitely biased, but I thought Cassie did an amazing job at both of them.

The joint concert on Saturday was a lot of fun, despite the lack of seats. We (my mom, Brandon, my sister Mandy, her husband Trever, and cousin Steven) staked out spots at the very front, which meant we had some alarmingly close encounters with the Vocal Point boys when they decided to start leaping off the stage during certain songs. If you haven’t heard of them, just search for them on YouTube so you can be amazed. Voiceline (the a cappella group from UVU) did a great job, too—especially since they’d only been together since January.

When we weren’t attending Noteworthy performances, we spent a lot of time hanging out. Mandy and Trever were gracious enough to let me and Mom stay overnight (while Brandon stayed with Steven the first night), so we didn’t waste time on traveling back and forth. We went to In-N-Out Burger (Brandon’s request) and Café Zupas (Mom’s request), watched The Walking Dead and Treasure Planet, met by brother Beto’s current girlfriend, and helped Mandy and Trever move their first few boxes into the new home they bought.

It was a very busy, but very fun weekend. I’m glad I was able to see half of my immediate family, and I’m looking forward to this summer, when I get to see everyone.

Continue reading »]]> I’m not going to advise you on prologue strengths/weaknesses. Instead, I want to dissect one of my favorite prologues in any type of media—the first five minutes of The Princess’s Man—and talk about why it works. The Princess’s Man is a 24-episode Korean historical drama (sageuk) that aired in 2011, and you can watch it legally, for free, with subtitles on DramaFever.

I’m going to limit my discussion to elements that can be replicated in prose, so I won’t talk about the music, actors, acting, lighting, etc. I’ll be focusing on the events, characters, and stakes—all of which you can do in your writing. (And which you should establish quickly, whether or not you have a prologue.) Go watch the prologue first—I’ll be waiting for you when you’re done if you can stop there.

…you ready? Let’s break the prologue down to its key components:

The prologue begins with Gim Seung Yu on a mad horseback ride in the dark. He is clearly injured—and he is being pursued, though he does not seem to know it. Elsewhere, other people are getting slaughtered.

The title cards reveal that this is 1453, when Grand Prince Su Yang framed Gim Jong Seo and his faction for treason and killed many of them.

Shin Myun reports to the Grand Prince and his cronies. The Grand Prince mentions that Seung Yu still thinks Shin Myun is a friend, so they can use that connection to track down Seung Yu’s father, Jong Seo.

Seung Yu reaches the safe house and rushes inside to see his injured father. Before they can leave the house, the Grand Prince’s cronies arrive. Seung Yu takes up a sword to defend his father, but his previous injuries mean he is quickly defeated. Jong Seo is struck down and then dies while reaching for Seung Yu.

Something happens off-screen and Seung Yu ends up on his back. As he falls unconscious, he flashes back to previous events. His father, the Grand Prince, Shin Myun, and a young woman we haven’t seen before feature prominently. The title card announces that the story has jumped back an entire year—and the story begins with the young woman, Lee Se Ryeong.

The main reason this prologue works so well is that it leaves you with a lot of specific questions about the events, characters, and stakes:

• How did Seung Yu and Jong Seo get hurt? Were they injured in separate incidents? If they weren’t, how did they get separated from one another? Where was Seung Yu coming from?
• Why was one of the Grand Prince’s cronies spattered with blood? How many other people have been killed in this purge? Are there any survivors?
• When did Shin Myun become loyal to the Grand Prince? How long and to what extent has he been betraying his friend Seung Yu?
• Who is the young woman Seung Yu remembers as he falls unconscious?

Whatever the answers to these questions are, the stakes are clearly a matter of life and death for the characters involved. If you can dredge up a little sympathy for people framed for treason and murdered in the night, a betrayed friend, or a son who saw his father cut down in front of him, you want to know what happened.

But there’s another layer going on here, if you know your Korean history like the target audience did. The Princess’s Man centers on the rise to power of Grand Prince Su Yang/King Sejo, who—despite killing a lot of people (including his nephew) in order to take the throne—is remembered as one of Korea’s great kings. In other words, the bad guy will end up winning.

Even if you don’t know the history of these events, the importance of this massacre still comes through thanks to Seung Yu being the POV character. The viewers know that, no matter what plans he makes or victories he experiences over the year prior to this night, Seung Yu is going to end up helpless and bleeding on the ground. Despite this, the how, when, and why of it all is practically irresistible.

But the one thing that truly cemented my love for this prologue is that it subverted my expectations. Most prologues in this style end up sampling from the climax of the work, so you end up waiting for the climax for far too long. By the time you get there, chances are the prologue has been sapped of its strength or people have already figured out what the fallout will be, so reaching that scene is neither as exciting nor as dramatic as it was the first time around.

When I first watched this prologue, I assumed that this was how the show was going to end. What could possibly top this terrible massacre and Seung Yu’s defeat?

The purge started in episode 7 and ended in episode 8. I was floored. What I had assumed would be the climax of the story was instead the close of Act 1 and the start of Act 2. By subverting my expectations of how the prologue related to the rest of the story, The Princess’s Man surprised and delighted me. I thought I knew the very worst the show could throw at me—and I was wrong.

What other books/tv shows/movies/etc. have had good prologues? Why did those prologues work for you?

Continue reading »]]> YouTube is like Wikipedia: you go in for one specific thing, and you come out hours later with eighty tabs open, trying to figure out how you got from babies eating limes to a simulation of the Mars rover landing to explanations on why the U.S. penny needs to die.

On one such foray, I discovered spoken word poetry—specifically the work of Sarah Kay. If you haven’t encountered spoken word poetry before, take a couple minutes and experience it. This first video is from Kay’s TEDTalk, where she performs two poems and explains why spoken word poetry is a fascinating and powerful art form. The second video is a single poem by Kay, and the third video is a collaboration between her and Phil Kaye:

From “If I Should Have a Daughter…”

And she’s gonna learn that this life will hit you hard in the face—
wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach.
But getting the wind knocked out of you
is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.

From “Hiroshima”

My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage.
My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons,
mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.
But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away,
leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page.
So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying,
hoping that one day I’ll write a poem I can be proud
to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed.

From “Postcards”

Still now I send letters into space, hoping that some mailman somewhere
will track you down and recognize you from the descriptions in my poems,
that he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you,
“There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn’t know how not to.”

From “When Love Arrives”

Love arrives exactly when love is supposed to,
and love leaves exactly when love must.
When love arrives, say “Welcome! Make yourself comfortable.”
If love leaves, ask her to leave the door open behind her,
turn off the music, listen to the quiet whisper,
“Thank you for stopping by.”

Continue reading »]]> I spent a lot of time in March doing things other than writing, like launching Rich in Color, watching Shining Inheritance, and reading. Once you add in my birthday and other life disruptions, I only managed to write 4,818 words last month. This week went much better—I wrote 1,622 words and finished chapter five.

This weekend Crystal and I will be sifting through the co-blogger applications for Rich in Color and extending offers to two people. I’ve been very impressed with the quality of the applicants and think that the people we end up choosing will be wonderful assets to the site.

My creative goals for this week include making headway on chapter six, reviewing a book for Rich in Color, and devising a posting schedule for the site. It will be fun to coordinate and collaborate with two new people.