Curdled milk and words
22 July 2020 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe last pint or so of my bargain six pints turned in the fridge overnight (not at all to my surprise, given that it was date-expired when I got it several days ago), despite my having made spiced chicken in milk, pork in milk, and two pints of yoghurt, plus a mug of hot 'milk with spices' inspired by reading "Maskerade" at that point!
So I used it as a substitute for sour cream in a leek pie -- which turned into a leek, cheese and swede pie, since I also had a soggy swede as well as an elderly leek to dispose of! It would have been a leek and potato bake if the milk had survived... Still, with an egg stirred in and some flour and butter to thicken the liquid back from separated curds (it wasn't quite the texture expected from sour cream...) the result was delicious.
Rather more so than the chicken cooked in milk, which was much less successful than the last time I used that recipe. I have a nasty suspicion it was battery chicken, which Does Not Pay. Oh, it was edible enough, but not nearly so well-flavoured as it should have been.
"The Writing on the Wall" is sort-of-very-nearly ready to type up at circa 6500 words, though I'm not all that happy with it. (And looking at the final pages of Arctic Raoul in the same notebook, I'm not all that happy with those either; I wasn't enamoured of that section immediately after finishing, but sometimes it looks better when you've been away from it for a bit. Not in this case, unfortunately.)
I've reached the intended end of "The Writing on the Wall", which was the idea that the superstition suddenly crosses Raoul's mind that perhaps by wanting a thing so much he has somehow caused it to happen. I'm not sure it comes across, or that it was such a good idea as it seemed before I started. I need to avoid undermining Christine's achievement (because of course it is she who has really caused the seeming 'miracle')... and to avoid casting the spectre of Philippe's death across the scene (which was the problem, for me, with Conversation).
I've been through and altered all the references to Erik's unmasked face, having decided that continuity demanded it -- the sentence about the ship's surgeon is an overall improvement in any case, I think. The original didn't work as well as I'd hoped when I saw it typed up. Doubtless there will be other sections that need tweaking for print.
I also noticed that I'd managed to describe Erik as "hunched and strangely diminished" twice within the space of a few hundred words; my subconscious was obviously very much enamoured of that phrase when it came to trying to justify Raoul's reactions, and forgot -- over the course of the several days spent writing the two pages in question -- that it had already used the same wording verbatim! Fixable, with effort...
And I had what seemed to be a good idea for a summary (the title, for once, being already in place!), but by the time I got home and wrote it down, it no longer seemed so satisfactory :-(
There is no obvious connection between the two sentences, whereas I had believed I was implying all sorts of things.
And I did more gratuitous rewriting of other people's work. The author was complaining about what a strain it was to write in this style 'where the writing and vivid descriptions really sell it' -- I can well imagine that it's a strain, but don't think the result will be what's hoped for :-(
Unsolicited edit:
Doubtless the audience of tired witches and wizards, exhausted after a long day, would be eager to hear the latest report from the wireless television -- a relative novelty, thanks to the tenacious hold of wireless radio on the wizarding world after the second wizarding war -- only to switch off the telly and close their minds to rising suspicion, shutting away what they had just heard in favour of the rejuvenation of sleep.
So I used it as a substitute for sour cream in a leek pie -- which turned into a leek, cheese and swede pie, since I also had a soggy swede as well as an elderly leek to dispose of! It would have been a leek and potato bake if the milk had survived... Still, with an egg stirred in and some flour and butter to thicken the liquid back from separated curds (it wasn't quite the texture expected from sour cream...) the result was delicious.
Rather more so than the chicken cooked in milk, which was much less successful than the last time I used that recipe. I have a nasty suspicion it was battery chicken, which Does Not Pay. Oh, it was edible enough, but not nearly so well-flavoured as it should have been.
"The Writing on the Wall" is sort-of-very-nearly ready to type up at circa 6500 words, though I'm not all that happy with it. (And looking at the final pages of Arctic Raoul in the same notebook, I'm not all that happy with those either; I wasn't enamoured of that section immediately after finishing, but sometimes it looks better when you've been away from it for a bit. Not in this case, unfortunately.)
I've reached the intended end of "The Writing on the Wall", which was the idea that the superstition suddenly crosses Raoul's mind that perhaps by wanting a thing so much he has somehow caused it to happen. I'm not sure it comes across, or that it was such a good idea as it seemed before I started. I need to avoid undermining Christine's achievement (because of course it is she who has really caused the seeming 'miracle')... and to avoid casting the spectre of Philippe's death across the scene (which was the problem, for me, with Conversation).
I've been through and altered all the references to Erik's unmasked face, having decided that continuity demanded it -- the sentence about the ship's surgeon is an overall improvement in any case, I think. The original didn't work as well as I'd hoped when I saw it typed up. Doubtless there will be other sections that need tweaking for print.
I also noticed that I'd managed to describe Erik as "hunched and strangely diminished" twice within the space of a few hundred words; my subconscious was obviously very much enamoured of that phrase when it came to trying to justify Raoul's reactions, and forgot -- over the course of the several days spent writing the two pages in question -- that it had already used the same wording verbatim! Fixable, with effort...
And I had what seemed to be a good idea for a summary (the title, for once, being already in place!), but by the time I got home and wrote it down, it no longer seemed so satisfactory :-(
In the lanes of Perros-Guirec, lovers carve their names on trees. Alone in the cells of the Communards, Raoul faces the coming dark.
There is no obvious connection between the two sentences, whereas I had believed I was implying all sorts of things.
And I did more gratuitous rewriting of other people's work. The author was complaining about what a strain it was to write in this style 'where the writing and vivid descriptions really sell it' -- I can well imagine that it's a strain, but don't think the result will be what's hoped for :-(
The tired, bumbling, craving nothing but the sweet lullaby of sleep witches and wizards would be no doubt eager to hear the latest report on what had happened from the still fairly recently invented wireless television; inspired by the tenacious hold the wireless radio had on the wizarding world after the second wizarding war, and then switch of the telly with closed minds and closed answers to their rising suspicion for now; seeking the rejuvenation of sleep to recharge.
Unsolicited edit:
Doubtless the audience of tired witches and wizards, exhausted after a long day, would be eager to hear the latest report from the wireless television -- a relative novelty, thanks to the tenacious hold of wireless radio on the wizarding world after the second wizarding war -- only to switch off the telly and close their minds to rising suspicion, shutting away what they had just heard in favour of the rejuvenation of sleep.