Leftover Trauma

“For all of us there will be those irreconcilable injuries and humiliations that persist and infiltrate into adult existence. They may become the seeds for those monotonous repetitions of hurting others and getting hurt ourselves,...Or the leftover traumas can be incentives for innovation and change,...the opportunity to rewrite the scripts, introduce a few new characters, get rid of one or two, perhaps even change the ending, and free the lover and jester inside us all.”

Louise J. Kaplan

This quote is actually on parenting, but it applies equally well to writing.

The one constant draw of compelling fiction is always going to be the character. We as a reader have to connect with the main character emotionally. A character that we can relate to, even if we won’t make the same choices, differentiates a pedestrian story from a satisfying story we will read over and over again, so that we can triumph right along with the character.

The challenge of writers is to make our characters as interesting as possible. We do that by creating a fictional trauma, sometimes a childhood trauma like the death of a parent or sibling, or an early adult trauma, like a difficult breakup, a parent’s divorce, a shocking crime, to torture them. To give them a reason for the way they behave in the present. By doing so we explain why people (and our characters) do what they do. We motivate them.

Because, in reality, no one acts in a vacuum. Each experience we have, the choices we make while dealing with the experience and the final result based on those choices influence how we will behave the next time. And we still may not make the same choices.

Then factor in the character backstory, the leftover trauma. Every person is going to react to the same experience differently. And then, hopefully, even the same character response to a situation will change throughout the book as they grow. Because each time we have an experience, we are different.

As Louise Kaplan points out, leftover trauma can be an incentive. Sometimes authors make the mistake of having the character continue with the same destructive behavior, which experiencing as a reader is very unsatisfying. But if the character deals with their trauma, overcomes that injury or humiliation, they can free themselves to enjoy a happier outcome, a happier life.

As readers we long for that fictional resolution, that tidy seed of change in the character’s life, because change within ourselves doesn’t always neatly occur within a set of parameters like four hundred pages. Although some days it would be nice if life imitated fiction, wouldn’t it?


Lisa

Garbage Casserole

--Adrienne Miller


There’s an old Miller family recipe--well not that old, we did come up with it when I was a kid--called Garbage Casserole. While the name isn’t all that appealing, I gotta admit the dish is one of my favorites, and the recipe is ridiculously simple. 

Take last night’s taco dinner leftovers and layer them in a gratin dish. Pile on the cheese. Heat and eat.

I can make Garbage Casseroles out of almost anything. Leftovers from roasts and poultry can become quickie pot pies. Extra hamburger can become cottage pie. And I have no idea why anyone on god’s green earth would even think of throwing away bacon. I would crumble that stuff on anything. 

Maybe it was my solidly blue-collar upbringing--or, let’s be honest, present--that gave me my mind set on leftovers. Waste not, want not. Hell, it’s more than a dish, it’s a philosophy.

I’ll admit, it’s a way of thinking that can get out of hand. My grandmother was hoarder. Not as extreme as some you see on tv, but still, pretty bad. Whole rooms were filled with old clothes and drawers stocked with those little soaps you get in hotels. The shed was packed with crumbling tools that were decades past their usefulness. 

I sympathized with her obsession with keeping things. She came from a poor I have a hard time understanding. A rural Upper Michigan during the depression kind of poor. Think Charles Dickens, only less populated.

It makes me sad to think that once she finally go to the point in her life where she did have stuff, she was so plagued by the fear of losing it. On the other hand, it kind of makes me sad to think of those who live in such abundance that they never know how precious those things that they thoughtlessly toss out are.

Maybe that’s why I like the idea of Garbage Casserole so much. You use it all up, but you don’t waste. Yeah, that’s a thought I like a lot.

Drown your Leftovers in Mole

--by Juliet

First: We have a winner of Rochelle Staab's debut novel, Who Do, Voodoo? Linda Jay, you're the winner! You'll be receiving your book and pen soon!
Now, on to leftovers...

They say all the stories have been told, and that our task as writers is to come up with fresh ways of telling them. I see leftovers in that light.

Unlike some other Pens I could mention, I was raised to use leftovers for something fun and exciting the next day. My mother was from a Cajun family, and boy could she turn just about anything into croquettes: fish, chicken, broccoli...she was gifted. And my father was the soup king -- everything went into the pot. And I mean, everything.

This was how I was taught to cook: not by finding a recipe and buying the ingredients -- that was cheating. No, we were trained to poke around the cupboard and the fridge and "come up with something." The challenge was to make the leftovers so interesting and tasty that no one recognized them.

So I have an idea for all those tedious post-Thanksgiving leftovers out there: Mole. Keep a jar or two on the shelf; it's as easy as, well, mole from a jar.

Mole (pronounced mole-AY) comes from mulli in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Though the Aztecs were devastated by the arrival of the Spaniards (and European diseases), they did not disappear. Their descendants, the Nahua Indians, survived, as did their language and much of their culture, especially culinary traditions.Mole simply means “sauce”--which is why it’s fun to see it referred to on menus as “mole sauce”. Guacamole, for example, literally means avocado sauce.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of different moles in Mexico. Like curries from India, In Mexico many a region or inventive cook (or family matriarch) maintains their own secret recipe, a complex combination of spices and ingredients.

The version most commonly known in the US is the poblano or “chocolate” mole, which includes unsweetened cocoa as one of its many ingredients. But there are also black, red, yellow, colorado, green, almendrado, and pipián (pumpkin seed) moles, just to name a few.

Moles might include walnuts, peanuts, pine nuts, sesame seeds, pumpkin or other squash seeds, bread crumbs, sugar, orange juice, cilantro, fruit, plantains, garlic, onion, cinnamon, chocolate, and a variety of other spices. Most include several chili peppers, especially ancho, pasilla, mulato and chipotle.

Moles do what tasty, spicy, flavorful sauces all over the world are meant to do: they enhance -- or disguise-- whatever it is you’re eating. Bored with Thanksgiving turkey with stuffing and gravy? Shred or chop your turkey, mix it with mole, wrap it in a tortilla and it’s a whole new taste treat.

And once you've eaten your full, get back to writing that story: add some new spices, give it a little kick, and tell it in your own unique way.
Because guajolote en mole might start out with Thanksgiving leftovers, but it ends up being so much more.

El Sobrante

When I was young (very young, the kind of young that remembers looking up at the phone hung on the wall), we lived in El Sobrante, California. I remember practicing it: Ell So-BRAWN-tay. It was Spanish, my parents told me, for the Leftover. The land was the leftover bit of a ranch, parceled off after Mexico gained independence from Spain.

This fascinated me. Unless it was twice-baked spaghetti with a golden cheese crust, I could spot a meal on its second time around from twenty paces. No one liked leftovers. No one could.

So why then was my pretty little town called the leftover? Didn't they know about our library with the tall dark stacks full of books I would someday read? Didn't they know that our house had the best climbing tree ever? And that our school had the crunchiest tater tots I'd ever had in my whole life?

We didn't live in El Sobrante for long, not more than three or four years, I think, but it stuck in my mind as firmly as the phone number we had there, the very first number I ever memorized. And I wasn't the only one affected. When we moved overseas to Saipan when I was a teenager, my father decided to build a boat. Now, he's a talented man, a good builder. But no matter what, building a boat is…tricky. And he was doing it on the cheap with parts gleaned from wherever he could beg, borrow or steal them. So when the boat was finally put together in a form that looked like it might repel water, he christened it the El Sobrante (redundant article and all). He loved it, and the family spent many happy hours on the lagoon bailing water using old milk jugs.

And when SuperTyphoon Kim smashed the island and left slivers of his boat literally hanging from the trees on the Garapan beach, my mother put screwdrivers into my and my sisters' hands, sending us to rummage under palm fronds. "Watch out for scorpions," she said. "Bring back the metal. The bolts and screws, anything you can find."

That Christmas, Dad unwrapped his present from us. In a plain white envelope, he found the hardware of his boat. The label said, "Seeds of the El Sobrante II."

Leftovers. They can surprise you.