bogwitch

How about some editing? I thought I could try starting on Spikeid IX this evening, but what I actually did was read through VII, alter two words, read through half of VIII, fall asleep, snooze to Patti Smith, wake up, read through VIII again, get irritated with my pacing, tear apart a connecting passage and rebuild it and add in an extra line every time things were moving too quickly and fakely. Must have done at least a couple of hundred words, though I couldn't tell you the exact number. Feel a lot better, though! (Probably going to bed soon. <- Have come back to uni; drove the coming leg. Apparently 1.5 hours driving + unpacking + doing washing tires me out. Bodes well for life, doesn't it?)

Not really, you'll have to toughen up.

That 141 (and today's 3) is the result of editing. I read through chapter 34 and added bits where it needed more so now the chapter is 1535 words. I won't let it go until it's 2500 at least (and finished to my satisfaction obviously).

I sat down over Christmas to read the whole thing and managed two paragraphs before giving up.

Sigh. I was saying this morning that I really need a home economics course to teach me how I'm supposed to work out the way to backwards-construct a week's worth of meals into a shop of food. (Currently I buy enough of one thing's bits to last me, eat that, then decide next time whether I'm bored of it yet...)

Keep plugging away! At least you've got half a chapter - it's the blank page that's the worst bit, I always think...

:( I do find I have to be in the mood to read my own writing, especially if I can't entirely remember what I wrote. You could give yourself a daily target on that as well, just to get you going?

Why don't you plan what you're having each night then just buy what you need to make it? I did this once about five years ago and it worked very well. My method these days is to cook for three and then freeze the two extras portions, thereby cooking more efficiently and avoiding the need to do extra washing up (in the dishwasher...)

Sitting down and starting is my problem. I am very easily distracted. Look I even created a post to distract me and while I was waiting for your reply, I found this:



A girl after my own heart.

I can read most of my writing quite happily, just not Working. That's partly the heavy first chapter(s) and partly knowing i'ts so long.

Because I can't work out what to make!! I never have any ideas, especially not ones that might tessellate together so as not to waste vegetables. I might try and summon the energy at some point.

What on earth did you search to find that??? Still, tis amusingly extreme. Though she should have done what I did for the Christmas dinner I went to and made her eyebrows blue with eyeliner. (It was Nutcracker themed; seemed like a good idea at the time.)

That's partly the heavy first chapter(s) and partly knowing i'ts so long.

Hence target! I used to do it with the Odyssey. Might have to try again with Ulysses...

How about seven dishes you like? Or my method, one dish and seven portions?

If I told you what I searched for then it could give vital details away.

Does blue eyebrows equal the sugarplum fairy? I can't imagine that as your choice somehow. Or were they just blue as a nod to the theme?

Reading Whitley Strieber's Communion was a bit like that. It took me years.

I shall try. But I only have a frying pan and a weird saucepan thing curiouswombat could identify, but which I've forgotten the name of - and few tubs. I can't work out whether, if I buy more, it'll just be a waste... Hmm, though, I wonder if I could construct a cheapskate's version of coq au vin.

Well, it was all a result of half-forgetting the theme, then wanting to wear my pink velour skater dress (bought because it is charmingly yet hideously ugly, and in the sale) with my burgundy velvet leggings, worrying it would be slightly OTT, then deciding I was the sugarplum fairy. But the dress and the leggings, instead of clashing wonderfully, ended up going together quite tastefully, so I wanted something to make it clear that, dare I say it, I was being ironic with my velvet-velour-fuzzy-confection of an outfit. And blue-green eyebrows it was. Though people didn't really comment on them. :(

Why do people write books that are so long?

I only use a wok, that's enough. And tupperware is never a waste, even if you end up just storing buttons in them (every girl should have a button collection. I have mine, just like my mother and both my grand-mothers. I think it must be a law). Doesn't coq au vin require slow cooking in the oven ::is baffled by anything that isn't cooked in a wok::

A pink velour skater dress? That you own such a thing boggles me, but then having met you, it doesn't. :D

Why can't they stick to fag ends, eh?

But you have to lug Tupperware around with you when you're not really in permanent accommodation! I do have a button stash, though - it's, erm, somewhere... I think you can at least fake coq au vin on a hob, I mean, you need the chicken to cook (I was thinking of using sausages instead), but the sauce is pretty much wine, onions, mushrooms and bacon.

It goes very well with the yellow shoes! :D

I know! Or no more than 100,000 words, unless they have something really, really interesting to say.

But you can get the stuff that stacks together. Better still old plastic boxes from the take-away so you can just chuck them. Sauage au vin doesn't have the same ring to it.

I can imagine.

Like the Lord of the Rings.

Better still old plastic boxes from the take-away so you can just chuck them.

Ah! I have a couple of these - I use them as lunchboxes...

They freeze nicely.

Hmm - I rather like the idea of a life-role as a saucepan identifier...

You really should have a wok. Everyone should have a wok. It doesn't even have to be a full sized one - you can get small ones - that way you just chop the sausages, or the chicken, and/or any odd vegetables left from earlier in the week and throw them in - and a quick jar of wine sauce to make it au vin, or the remains of a bottle of wine if feeling decadent!

Well, once you really came to the rescue! Because it is sort of halfway between a wok and a saucepan... I tend to make frying pan curry in my frying pan (believe it or not) and some rice in the saucepan-wok thing, so I'm thinking the same process could be adapted. Though what is this wine sauce?? Must see if they have some in Sainsbury's. (I'm probably not imagining it right...)

As long as it tastes nice it doesn't matter what you invent. When I wert lass, it was all rice, chicken, oxo and mushroom experiments. Nothing much has changed really, except the wok.

Packet sauces! That's what you need. Then you can pick one to suit your mood.

Packet sauces does sound like a very good idea!! I shall have to check them out when I do some proper food shopping, and off the stop-gap ready meals...

I was thinking either the jars of cook-in sauces (why yes! curries in our house do often have sauce out of a jar when made after work!) - someone must do a wine version, I'm sure - or even the packet mixes made by Schwartz or Colemans or whoever - those were a real stalwart even when I was a student and would work like a frying pan curry. (Throw chicken/turkey pieces into frying pan and brown a bit, add any veg you have, mainly ignoring the instructions, add some water and the relevant packet... whilst cooking rice or pasta in the saucepan - I tend not to use them now as I have a whole kitchen, and lots of spices and so on - but they really do make the stuff taste more interesting.)

I've been cooking with curry paste, and it makes such a difference when compared to (essentially) plain tomatoey-vegetabley sauce, so I think the packets might make some sense. The actual sauces in a jar tend to feel a bit expensive for what you get, I find - but then I've never added up all their constituent parts compared to how much they cost.

Ooh - a chart - that's a really good way to put off writing - I haven't tried that one yet...

And for there to be a chart there need to be a spreadsheet!

Oh, yes! Of course. And every 7 days you could do a one week pie chart...

Ooh. Awesome idea. I'm off to Excel!

Seriously though, though I've been a bit lazx in maintaining them, I do have spreadsheets for numbers of comments and wordcounts by work...

No mocking from me. You're doing a hell of a lot better than I am.

We finally have punk month on sb_fag_ends and I have no ideas at all. :(

There's still lots of time left.