Book Review of Thanksgiving: How to Cook it Well

This book review of Thanksgiving: How to Cook it Well was posted several years ago, but it’s such an enjoyable book that I decided to repost it for the holiday. If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, may the food be as good as the company!

Have your ever read a cookbook just for the stories in it? Until I married, cookbooks were merely collections of recipes. But then I began buying cookbooks for my mother-in-law, a fabulous cook, as gifts, and my husband told me she liked to read ones that had a lot of descriptions or opinions or stories in them.

That’s how I stumbled across Thanksgiving: How to Cook It Well by Sam Sifton. In his introduction, Mr. Sifton explains:

“For a couple years I spent Thanksgiving Day at The New York Times, where I once was restaurant critic and now work as national editor, answering panicked questions from readers. I was a one-man Thanksgiving help line.”

With a wealth of stories, expertise, and very strong opinions, this book is a collection of what he had learned.

I love Mr. Sifton’s style of writing, and his insistence that there is a right way to cook Thanksgiving — no marshmallows on the sweet potatoes, please — and anyone can do it if you plan ahead and work at it. He doesn’t believe in shortcuts. In an age when most people are trying to find hacks for shortening almost any task, it’s refreshing to find someone who refuses to take that route. Yes, Thanksgiving is a lot of work, and that is what’s makes it special. If we keep coming up with ways to make it easier, eventually, we won’t bother celebrating it at all.

I haven’t tried the recipes in the book, but they cover everything from how to tackle the turkey to dessert with additional advice on place settings and clean up. What I can recommend are the stories, such as the first Thanksgiving the author “took a significant part in cooking … when I was 20″, and his first attempt at frying a turkey.

Do you have a favorite cookbook because of the stories as well as the recipes?

November 28, 2024 0

Write a Thanksgiving Acrostic Poem

In honor the upcoming holiday, I’m leaving my themes of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to provide you with a holiday-inspired prompt to write a Thanksgiving Acrostic Poem. I enjoy writing acrostics because they provide as easy to follow structure and don’t have to rhyme or stick to a meter. Here’s one I wrote several years ago.

T onight

U ndercover of darkness

R endezvous at the old well.

K eep out of sight.

E verything going as planned.

Y ou must destroy this. Farmer

S uspicious.

November 25, 2024 2

Taking a Break During NaNoWriMo

What? Taking a break during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? What kind of advice is this? I can’t take a break. I have to get 50,000 words written in thirty days. This is madness.

Not really. There are times, even when a deadline is looming, that a writer has to take a break. When my creative juices have run dry, applying more pressure to squeeze out nothing isn’t productive. But the deadline is still there. Taking a two week vacation from writing is not an option. So how do you take a break and meet the deadline? Try my suggestions below.

Your Break Depends on Your Problem

What kind of problem are you experiencing in your writing? Before I sit down to write, I will outline the basic point of each scene, the reason this scene has to be in the story. Then I try to write the scene. If I flounder, it’s often because I can’t figure out how to start the scene. I’m hung up on details, such as I need Mrs. Thompson to reveal that her grandson was in the Army but don’t know how to create a conversation so that bit of information comes out naturally.

For those type of problems, I’ve found staring at a blank page or screen a hindrance, not a help. I have to step away and do something like laundry. But my mind is still working on the problem. I’ll let it wander while I work, and it almost always comes up with a solution. Sometimes, I only need to take a five minute break before my mind bores a hole through my writer’s block.

But maybe your problem is mental fatigue. You’ve overtaxed your imagination, and now it’s coming up empty. I find this requires a longer break, usually for the rest of the day. A solid night’s sleep is the most help. But if you can’t afford to take off part of a day, do something during your break that has nothing to do with writing and don’t let your mind wander to the story. Baking is something I like to do that is totally separate from writing. While your mind and attention are focused on this activity, your creative juices have time refill.

Look Forward to Thanksgiving

I imagine a lot of Americans tackling NaNoWriMo dread Thanksgiving because you either can’t write that day or you have to make drastic alterations to your writing schedule to get your word count in like getting up at 4 a.m.

If you’ve found yourself fighting through your manuscript, use Thanksgiving as your break. Don’t allow yourself to think about your novel during the day. You will probably be surprised at how productive you are on Friday.

Writers, what do you do when you need to take a break?

For other posts on NaNoWriMo, click here.

November 21, 2024 1

Tips for Success during NaNoWriMo

As I said last week, I did my own version of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMO) in March of 2022 and only achieved fifty percent of my goal. So I wanted to hear from other writers. What are your tips for success during NaNoWriMo?

November 18, 2024 0

How to Overcome Obstacles During NaNoWriMo

Many outside incidents can interfere with your plans for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and you may have limited or no control over them. But what about problems within your manuscript? How do you keep writing? Check out my tips below on how to overcome obstacles during NaNoWriMo.

Don’t linger.

In my first drafts, my writing is usually dialogue heavy. That’s because dialogue is the main way my amateur detective Rae Riley discovers clues. The dialogue is the point of the scene, and I want to get that down first. But as I write down the most important aspect of the scene, I know I need to put in dialogue tags, action tags, and descriptions. That’s where I can bog down.

I’ll write a very effective two-person conversation, and then move Rae out of that scene into another. In the new scene, I have to describe the setting and my flow comes to a grinding halt as I decide what I must describe, the mood I’m trying to set, and many other details. I’ve learned that if I want to keep going, I just need to jot down a few notes that I will attend to when I edit.

If Rae moves from the library where she works to the Main Street of her small town, I’ll write in all caps and highlight (DESCRIBE WEATHER) and then dive into the meat of the next scene. If I stop writing because I can’t think of a good action tag to go with the dialogue, I just use “he said” and “she said” and know I’ll replace them later.

Sometimes, I realize I need to do some research in an area. For example, in A Shadow on the Snow, I knew a character would pawn a stolen item and the police had to find it. It was a small point, so I could just make a note that I needed to research that one fact and go on to the next scene.

You should only stop writing if you realize your obstacle is so big that it must be dealt with before you can continue because the whole story will change if you don’t. Let’s say your main character’s uncle is a cop. His profession is a key plot point in your story, but you know nothing about law enforcement. This is when you stop writing and do some research. You may do the research and realize that you will have to change your story completely to fit with reality. Or you may find you only have to make a few tweaks. But once you’ve decided you have to stop writing, work as quickly as you can to get back to the manuscript.

What advice do you have on how to overcome obstacles during NaNoWriMo?

For more tips on NaNoWriMo, click here.

November 14, 2024 1

Month: November 2024