Tag: novel

Baba’s Pepper Cookies

~ Meg ~ 47 Comments

In my current work in progress, Breaking Bread, my main character, Maya Kaminsky bakes a batch of her grandmother’s (Baba’s) pepper cookies. I thought it would be fun to share the recipe for them, since they are one of my favorite cookie varieties. This is a Russian, Eastern European cookie, so-named for the pepper and spices in the mix. It may sound like a strange combination, but trust me, these are amazing!

Pepper Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups sugar
3/4 cup butter, melted
3 eggs
4 cups flour
1 cup milk
1 cup cocoa
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
12 ounces chocolate chips

 

Melt butter in milk in small sauce pan.
Combine dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, beat eggs together with oil.
Make a ‘well’ in the center of the blended ingredients and add beaten eggs and oil, melted butter and milk and mix to form dough.
Knead in the chocolate chips.
Form dough into small balls, (golf ball sized or smaller) and bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.
Cool completely before icing.

Icing:

16 ounces confectioner’s sugar
milk (amount varies according to desired consistency of the icing)

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Add milk to confectioner’s sugar a little at a time, to form icing. Icing consistency should be the similar to ketchup – pourable but not watery. You want it to coat the cookie and not run off but also not be creamy like cake icing.

Dip the tops of the cookies into the icing and let rest on cooling rack until icing sets completely. Enjoy!

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November Diary

~ Meg ~ 52 Comments

National Novel Writing Month… I wonder if you’re as sick of it as I am. I did not “win” NaNo Nonsense. “Win” – what is that all about? You don’t really win anything. You haven’t beaten other competitors to the finish line or written the best manuscript. It’s totally meaningless. Oh, I sound bitter!

So it wasn’t all bad. I undertook this challenge as a way to get this novel going again. I had started working on it –plotting, writing character bios, collecting bits of dialogue– back in February and hadn’t touched it since. My feeling is that a series can only go so long between installments before the readers lose interest. And though I’ve swerved far from the original writing path I embarked upon, I feel the need to take this series and these characters to the finish line. After this, I have plans for a final Bucks County novel, for a total of six – a double trilogy- that will conclude the stories of all the main characters.

Anyway, back to NaNo Nonsense…

My final word count tallied at 48,679. So close … 1,321 words to go. The funny thing is that I had plenty of time to write during the day, the 1,321 should have been a piece of cake. I finished writing last evening around 9:45 having written about 250 words all day – one paragraph. I found myself feeling defiant. Screw you NaNoWriMo – you can’t tell me what to do, how fast to write, not to edit as I go, just to put it all down and fix it later. Now I really sound bitter…

That was the hardest thing for me -not editing as I go. I don’t like revisiting the story to fix problems I created back in chapter two when I’m on chapter twenty-four. My habit is to re-read the preceding chapter before going on to the next. I follow my timeline spreadsheet to keep track of events and correct any minor errors along the way. Writing at the pace of nearly 1700 words a day in a continuous story doesn’t allow much time for that.

**A side note** Writing 1700 words a day is not that difficult. IF its a piece of short fiction or a non-fiction blog post. But when you have to keep track of what you’d written previously -who said what to whom, what happened when, did I reveal this plot point yet- 1700 words is massive.

Ah, anyway it’s done. I will keep plugging away at the story now that I’m in the zone. As many of you have been reading along, I’ve decided to keep publishing the story until the novel is complete. I’ll pull the excerpts from the blog when the book is ready to publish. And hope that you’ll kindly review the book when it goes up on Amazon. More on that when the time comes.

Welcome December and a respite from my labor.

Header Image: The Grey Tree; Piet Mondrian

 

Hitting the wall at 30,000 words…

~ Meg ~ 58 Comments

Two full days. That’s what a weekend should give a writer participating in National Novel Writing Month. (Still hating the acronym). Going into this challenge, I knew I would be losing the first weekend to my excursion to New York City, (Hamilton was off the chart good. All that hype? Absolutely true!) but after that I figured on using the weekends to make up for any writing time I lost during the week due to my practice and my other responsibilities. The weekends ended up being the least productive days that I had… And this particular weekend, I spent three agonizing hours trying to work out a single scene to bring a plot point to conclusion. Three hours = 287 words. Horrendous. And for what? Only to find that I’ve hit a wall… I’m not sure how to write myself to my next point of interest. I may need a break…..