Within the last two days I have become party to two rather exciting but personal secrets. Both people have requested that I keep their news on the "DL" which I am more than happy to do. Unfortunately, I had unwittingly shared one secret before I knew it was meant to be a secret. Now, I didn't go spreading it around like the town gossip and I doubt it actually made any lasting impression on those I shared it with but it brought the question to mind: how do you keep a secret? And how do you decide which ones to keep?
My mother would always reprimand us for a lack of tact and/or discretion when it came to certain topics. Some of the time I didn't understand what the big deal was about sharing some information with other people. I do have my lines when it comes to sharing secrets, I guess my lines may just be situation-coded.
So, debates about my trustworthiness aside, how do you keep a secret? How good are you at keeping secrets? Do you have different levels of secret keeping or would you keep any secret anyone ever told you, no matter what? What about your MC? Are they on the straight and narrow or do they bend, or break some of those rules of trust? Do they have lines? What are they? How willing would they be to break bonds of trust if they thought it might be in the best interest of the other party?
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
can you bake a pie? no? neither can I.
Okay, well, actually I can bake pies, but that's not the point. This past week my husband was ill and so, being at home as he was for long stretches of time for recuperation purposes, he happened upon some Netflix viewing, Cake Boss in particular. He became terribly interested in cake baking and decorating, having had limited prior experience with it. So this weekend he took it upon himself to bake a cake from scratch and try his hand at making and using fondant.
[warning, this post may contain excessive use of sarcastic humor]
I've never made fondant personally and I've never been a terribly great fan of the way it tastes but apparently it tastes nasty because bakers use almond extract in it which tastes like road-kill and is actually optional. Turns out you can use whatever extract you like instead as it's just for flavoring. So why on earth do bakers use eau de death when they could use something awesome like vanilla or even root beer extract? Who knows. Maybe it's that final "in your face" moment when you realize you just paid $1,700 for cake.
Anyway, it never got down to deciding between vanilla or root beer for us because to make legit fondant you need glycerin which is obviously only available at specialty bakery stores which for some reason don't exist in Provo. We're in Utah. Mormon-ville central. Perhaps the crafty capitol of the United States. How are there no specialty bakery stores here?! Someone should look into that. So, stuffing my husband's partially crushed dreams under a rug as delicately as possible, we took up Plan 2 which was making fondant the slightly less legit way, using marshmallows. Do you want to know the ingredients in marshmallow fondant? Marshmallow, a teeny tiny bit of water, and powdered sugar. Our recipe called for about 3 cups. Say hello to my lil' friend: we call him diabetes.
It should also be noted that, having decided to color the fondant red, we quickly discovered that our food coloring is not manly enough to actually make the color red [I call false advertising!]. So, despite using approximately 21 drops of food coloring, we ended up with an absolutely lovely shade of pink which reminds us fondly of Tim's niece Catherine who has a penchant for Disney princesses and all things pink. Don't worry though, there is so much sugar in this fondant that even with the addition of an excessive amount of food color which is second in taste only to almond extract, it still tastes exactly like marshmallows. Ah, silver linings.
The cake, stacked, frosted, and fondanted [it's a word, okay?] is now taking up room in our fridge, awaiting it's final decorating touches [yes, more sugar]. We're both pretty excited to see how it turns out and already ridiculously proud of ourselves for the accomplishment [which is almost entirely Tim's. I just sat around taking pictures of him and generally getting in the way]. I'll make sure to include a picture of the final project next time.
But hey! What on earth does this crazy story have to do with writing?
One of the most interesting things about this cake-baking experience for me was watching my generally easy-going, chill husband becoming an intimidating tower of frustration nigh on wrath. Tim can be a perfectionist at times and never have I seen that more evidenced than when he bakes [I love you, honey!]. I grew up baking with my mom so, while set backs can be annoying for me, I'm generally pretty un-phased by mistakes or imprecision - I've had so much experience with both. Tim has baked before but not extensively so when certain things surprised him in a bad way his mind started traveling the "to heck with this business! who needs it? let's just throw the whole thing away, why don't we?" path.
Thankfully, as things pan out, he is fundamentally more level-headed than to follow through on that idea but it was fascinating for me to watch and I got to thinking: how would my characters react if, figuratively [or literally, as the case may be], if asked, or if they set their mind to do something that they aren't totally familiar with? Would they persevere Shut down? Throw a child-like temper-tantrum? Laugh it off? Become manic depressive?
As writers, I once heard it said that our job is to chase our characters up trees and then throw rocks at them. Essentially, there is no story if there is no conflict, if our characters live forever within their comfort zone. No one likes reading books like that and I doubt writing them can be considered very enjoyable. So what does it look like when your character has to bake a cake?
In closing, here's an adorable video because I believe everyone needs more of these in their life and this here kitty is a darned good example of encountering an uncomfortable situation and coping with it [okay, maybe not the best example, but it is a funny one :)]
[warning, this post may contain excessive use of sarcastic humor]
I've never made fondant personally and I've never been a terribly great fan of the way it tastes but apparently it tastes nasty because bakers use almond extract in it which tastes like road-kill and is actually optional. Turns out you can use whatever extract you like instead as it's just for flavoring. So why on earth do bakers use eau de death when they could use something awesome like vanilla or even root beer extract? Who knows. Maybe it's that final "in your face" moment when you realize you just paid $1,700 for cake.
Anyway, it never got down to deciding between vanilla or root beer for us because to make legit fondant you need glycerin which is obviously only available at specialty bakery stores which for some reason don't exist in Provo. We're in Utah. Mormon-ville central. Perhaps the crafty capitol of the United States. How are there no specialty bakery stores here?! Someone should look into that. So, stuffing my husband's partially crushed dreams under a rug as delicately as possible, we took up Plan 2 which was making fondant the slightly less legit way, using marshmallows. Do you want to know the ingredients in marshmallow fondant? Marshmallow, a teeny tiny bit of water, and powdered sugar. Our recipe called for about 3 cups. Say hello to my lil' friend: we call him diabetes.
It should also be noted that, having decided to color the fondant red, we quickly discovered that our food coloring is not manly enough to actually make the color red [I call false advertising!]. So, despite using approximately 21 drops of food coloring, we ended up with an absolutely lovely shade of pink which reminds us fondly of Tim's niece Catherine who has a penchant for Disney princesses and all things pink. Don't worry though, there is so much sugar in this fondant that even with the addition of an excessive amount of food color which is second in taste only to almond extract, it still tastes exactly like marshmallows. Ah, silver linings.
The cake, stacked, frosted, and fondanted [it's a word, okay?] is now taking up room in our fridge, awaiting it's final decorating touches [yes, more sugar]. We're both pretty excited to see how it turns out and already ridiculously proud of ourselves for the accomplishment [which is almost entirely Tim's. I just sat around taking pictures of him and generally getting in the way]. I'll make sure to include a picture of the final project next time.
But hey! What on earth does this crazy story have to do with writing?
One of the most interesting things about this cake-baking experience for me was watching my generally easy-going, chill husband becoming an intimidating tower of frustration nigh on wrath. Tim can be a perfectionist at times and never have I seen that more evidenced than when he bakes [I love you, honey!]. I grew up baking with my mom so, while set backs can be annoying for me, I'm generally pretty un-phased by mistakes or imprecision - I've had so much experience with both. Tim has baked before but not extensively so when certain things surprised him in a bad way his mind started traveling the "to heck with this business! who needs it? let's just throw the whole thing away, why don't we?" path.
Thankfully, as things pan out, he is fundamentally more level-headed than to follow through on that idea but it was fascinating for me to watch and I got to thinking: how would my characters react if, figuratively [or literally, as the case may be], if asked, or if they set their mind to do something that they aren't totally familiar with? Would they persevere Shut down? Throw a child-like temper-tantrum? Laugh it off? Become manic depressive?
As writers, I once heard it said that our job is to chase our characters up trees and then throw rocks at them. Essentially, there is no story if there is no conflict, if our characters live forever within their comfort zone. No one likes reading books like that and I doubt writing them can be considered very enjoyable. So what does it look like when your character has to bake a cake?
In closing, here's an adorable video because I believe everyone needs more of these in their life and this here kitty is a darned good example of encountering an uncomfortable situation and coping with it [okay, maybe not the best example, but it is a funny one :)]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)