Cookbook Goes Public

Printed copies have arrived! Just Add Shoyu is filled with Japanese-Canadian recipes, foodie stories and gorgeous photos.

This hardbound cookbook is a community project, and for us, a family one. Vince shot many of the images including the pour shot at your right, and I co-edited the recipes and especially the stories.

Inspired by our fresh copy, I cooked up okonomiyaki pancakes yesterday, made with a sweet potato and cabbage batter. I'm a sucker for shredded and fried vegetables, and these pancakes went down real nice. Editing a cookbook can make a person extremely hungry, so this week I'm cooking all-Just Add Shoyu recipes all the time. Next up? The kids' favourite: gyoza (pork dumplings).

Copies of Just Add Shoyu are quickly disappearing from the Japanese Cultural Centre (www.jccc.on.ca) on Garamond Court in Toronto.

Thinking Inside the Box

What's up with this "thinking outside the box" business?

I like boxes. Boundaries. Edges. Challenges within limits.

Kids are back in school. Ask any teacher how much they'll get out of their students when they suggest working without limits. A few students will run free with their brilliant minds. The rest will stare blankly. Sigh and scratch their noses.

At the Toronto Ex recently, a performer folded herself into a box. Just look at her thumbs-up happiness. She likes boxes. The crowd went wild. They liked the limits too.

My current box is time. I'm combing through the final edits of Signs of Martha, due to my editor ridiculously soon. Like, this week. Soon I'll see a cover design. An image in a box. I'm nervously waiting.

Harvest Updates

I always thought zucchinis were long and green. Ha! Check out this bounty of pear shapes and flying saucers ("patty pans"). I think the green orbs are called "eight balls". As you can imagine, I'm searching for ways to cook up these guys. They've snuck into cake, pizza, lasagne and stir fries.

The purple hanging things are peas--a prettier colour off-screen. I don't find them as sweet as green peas, but they're easier to find. Once again, thanks to the Young Urban Farmers for growing cool veggies in our back yard. Did you hear Chris on CBC radio on Friday, spreading the word about city growing?

As the harvest comes in, I wait for results from the macro edit of my novel. The latest draft is with my editor at Great Plains Publications. Unless I have major work to do, we'll move on to the fussier micro edit soon. Growing a vegetable garden is a year-long project. The novel has taken five!

Harnessing the Power of Literary Heroines

I'm in the throes of editing my novel now, to be launched in the spring of 2011 with Great Plains Publications in their teen fiction series.

To help me edit, I stitched up Anne of Green Gables. She's been whispering all sorts of wise and encouraging thoughts in my ear as I work through the chapters.

Ann-with-an-e has a rather Mona Lisa-esque, enigmatic smile, don't you think?

2nd Runner-up for Fave Book About Writing

I picked up On Writing by Stephen King book for next-to-nothing in the lower level of Union Station in Toronto. I almost died of happiness. Almost missed my train, too.

This book traces the journey (challenging, but not at all frightening) though a writer's process. Don't get me wrong. I can't watch more than five minutes of a Stephen King movie without running from the room and singing "Oh Susannah" with my fingers stuck in my ears. But I was gratefully absorbed by Mr. King's frank discussion of how he writes, lets his draft percolate, and edits.

Even if you can't swing a deal in Union Station, I'd recommend this book for anyone who loves to write and is curious about how a prolific scribbler works through a novel.

First runner-up coming soon.

How to Operate a Writers Group

My son: (not looking up from his ds game) Where ya going? Book group?
Me: (slinging on shoulder bag) No, no. Writers group. Writers group is different. We work.
Son: Are there cookies?
Me: Of course.

The tea and cookies at my writers group are deceivingly genteel. The women are grisly mean. Monster-attackers of words. I love them. People often ask me how a writers group works. Here are operating instructions for mine.

1) Assemble a group of like-minded writer-types, the meaner the better. We have a group of 5.

2) A week or so ahead of your meeting, write the chapter of a book.

3) Suspend your finger over the computer's send-to-all key and then pause.

4) Realize you didn't proofread enough. Do so. Discover a plot hole bigger than the North West Territories and feverishly rewrite, all the while noting the diminishing afternoon. Your children will soon be waiting at school for pick-up and depending on the day, will either feel dejected or angry.

5) Give up, send to all, and make a run for the schoolyard.

6) Over the next few days, print the chapters your group members sent you.

7) Carve out delicious, sneaky moments to edit their work with a sharp pencil. My favourite is during prep time while supply teaching for high school English. I look just like a real teacher marking papers except I'm having more fun.

8) Meet at the designated home and enter via your group's secret handshake. Not really, but enjoy idle chatter and laughter. Soon it will end.

9) Crit your group members' works aloud and in earnest. Note similarities in reactions. Interrupt. Get annoyed about interruptions. Listen to the others debate your chapter. Get out of the way. If there's blood, so be it.

10) Watch the fog lift off your chapter. The work you were so close to has suddenly taken shape as an entity in the world. See its annoying faults. Celebrate its quirkiness. There may be a faint chorus of angels. That's not your writing group--they're eating cookies. It's the crystal-clear choir of perspective ringing in your ears.

11) Return home with your stack of edited chapter versions and sprint to your laptop for revisions.

12) Repeat as necessary.