I admit to being a sucker for the Ticky Box. Which is to say, I am perhaps excessively motivated by having Lists and Ticking Things Off Them. I like setting goals for myself, and I’m good at breaking those goals down into smaller steps, rewarding myself for them, all that sort of self-management stuff. I’m keen to write, to write more, to write better; so I use my goals to manage all those things. And as far as it goes (and for as long as it works), that’s great.

The trouble is that sometimes all those lists and goals instead get me stuck in fear: fear of not meeting the goals, fear of not improving “˜enough’, fear of not writing the book of my glorious imaginings. (Spoiler: I am never going to write “˜the book of my glorious imaginings’, because my glorious imaginings are a cloud of inchoate vibes, not a collection of real actual words, and a book is a collection of real actual words, not a cloud of inchoate vibes. The best I can do is to approximate it.)

Fear is not good for creativity.

Play, and freedom: those are good for creativity.

So I’ve been working, lately, on freeing myself (somewhat) from the tyranny of the Ticky List and the goals and all of that, and to find ways to engage in writing as play. For me, this still has to go along with a certain amount of structure ““ “˜pissing around on the interwebs for the morning’ is also bad news at least for my creativity (I know people who get inspiration that way, which is awesome; I just get my brain jammed up with everyone else’s thoughts). But it’s structure of the “˜put the internet down’ variety, not structure of the “˜achieve this, that, and the next thing’ variety.

So, here’s some of the things I’ve been trying lately to get my brain playing instead of freaking out. I can’t imagine they’ll all work for everyone, or every time, but hopefully they’ll spark further ideas to go along with them.

Alright, the first one is a bit of a cheat as it isn’t exactly “˜play’, but for me, morning pages or something along those lines (a stream of consciousness onto the page for 5 minutes or 15 minutes or 3 pages or whatever is feasible for you) does a great job of freeing up my brain before I start anything.

Multi-coloured pens! I have a lot of fountain pens with a lot of different inks (not to mention a pack of glitter pens); writing a line in each different colour is ridiculous and time-consuming; and looks REALLY PRETTY and makes me laugh. Win.

Try spending a few minutes before you pick up pen or keyboard on something creative that isn’t writing: drawing, colouring-in, knitting or crochet, whatever. Bonus points for being really bad at it. (Drawing, I can confirm, is most certainly not my strong point.) Embrace being bad at it, and lower the stakes for your creative brain.

I recently received the Story Engine deck, and I’ve been loosening up by pulling a set of cards as a prompt, then writing a paragraph story outline (taking no more than five minutes, and without stressing about how well it works) for each one. The idea isn’t to come up with Your Next Story, the idea is to let the idea-muscles have a bit of unweighted fun.

Try five minute writing challenges: challenge yourself to describe the scene outside (or the passer-by, or the coffee shop) with only concrete nouns (or abstract, which is trickier); or describe a colour without using any colour words; or describe your current situation as if you were in an epic fantasy or a hard SF story; or anything else that feels entertaining. I find that especially with that last one, it pays to remind myself that no one will ever read this, and throw myself into it as thoroughly and dramatically as possible.

Get one of your characters (or someone else’s, if you don’t have an active project or am super stuck on the active project) going on a good dramatic internal monologue. Personally I do rather love a good internal monologue, but often at the edit stage have to administer some cuts. This, however, isn’t the edit stage. This is a time to hang out in a character’s head and be really OTT and self-indulgent. A bit like morning pages, but for someone else’s consciousness.

Make a list of your favourite tropes and do five minutes of your characters (or, again, someone else’s) using each of them. This can be super sketchy / outline-y; I usually start off with bullet points, then get some dialogue popping up, then a bit of description, and sometimes it turns into a “˜real scene’ as I go. But it doesn’t matter if that happens or not; the point is to let yourself go on something purely enjoyable.

Write fanfic, of your own stuff or of someone else’s, as you prefer. (Writing fanfic of your own stuff can be surprisingly enjoyable.) Again, this is about being wildly self-indulgent. Lean hard into your favourite tropes, AU settings, vibes, anything like that. Keep it brief and sketchy; or get stuck into masses of dialogue and detailed description; do whatever feels like fun in the moment. This really is just for you.

In a similar line, you can dive into writing only the bits of your current project that really call to your id, without worrying about creating a Proper Scene or whether it needs any connective tissue. If you do need connective tissue, you can sort that out later. Maybe you won’t need it!

If you’ve got any further ideas for writing as play, share them in the comments! This whole thing is, after all, supposed to be fun. At least some of the time. Embrace the play.

BIO: Juliet Kemp (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, writer. They live in London by the river, with their partners, kid, and dog. Their most recent book, The City Revealed, the final book in the Marek Series, is out now; and their short fiction has appeared in venues including Analog, Uncanny, and Cast of Wonders. When not writing or
child-wrangling, Juliet knits, indulges their fountain pen habit, and tries to fit an ever-increasing number of plants into a microscopic back garden. They can be found at https://julietkemp.com, on Twitter as @julietk, or on Mastodon as @juliet@zirk.us

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

Cooking with Cat:
Steamed Pork Buns are the Food of the Gods
by Travis Heermann

Back when I was living in Japan, about 2003-2006, one of the foods that I fell in love with was nikuman 肉まん, steamed pork buns. They could be found in any convenience store, and they made a great meal for someone who didn’t feel like cooking.

They come with various fillings: pork, beef, chicken, shrimp, veggie, even sweet custard. They are particularly comforting when the weather turns chilly and they’re all steamy and warm.

I was planning a vacation to Japan with the family in March 2020. We’d been planning it for years, and it would have been the first time I’d been back since returning to the States. I was excited to show my family, whom I didn’t have then, all the sights.

A secondary reason for going to Japan was professional, as I was in the midst of writing Tokyo Blood Magic, the first volume of my Shinjuku Shadows trilogy. I wanted to visit some important Tokyo locales, refresh my memory, gather some inspiration, but it was not to be.

As you might guess, COVID-19 derailed that, four days before wheels up for Tokyo. I was crushed, and nine months of isolation has not done much to help that state of mind.

Nevertheless, writing the book did assuage some of my disappointment, as I spent a lot of time in Google Street View, walking virtually around the streets of Tokyo. Writing the book was a fun way to reminisce, and also learn about places I didn’t get to visit while I was living there, such as Shizuoka, Ginza, and Roppongi.

There’s a scene in Tokyo Blood Magic where our hero, Django Wong, a ninja warlock, has his bacon saved from a very dangerous monster by a wisecracking alley cat, known only as Cat. Cat, however, is far from normal, and it’s not clear exactly what he is until Book 2, Tokyo Monster Mash.

Amid snarky repartee, Django and Cat venture into a convenience store for some post-fracas grub, where nikuman becomes a big part of their bonding. Cat becomes Django’s supernatural sidekick.

So in this Year of a Thousand Cuts, I wanted some comfort food for the Virtual Book Launch Party, which my wife and I put together over Zoom a couple of weeks after Tokyo Blood Magic was released. So I made some nikuman, and this video tells the tale so much better than text.

This recipe is adapted from Japanese measurements. Credit for the original goes to Namiko Chen.

Nikuman, Steamed Pork Buns

Video: Cooking With Cat – Nikuman

INGREDIENTS

DOUGH

• 2 1/3 cups all-purpose white flour, plus more for dusting
• 2 scant Tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp instant yeast
• 1 Tbsp neutral-flavored oil (vegetable, canola, etc.)
• 2/3 to 3/4 cup water

FILLING

• 2 shiitake mushrooms (without the stems), finely chopped
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 green onion/scallion, finely chopped
• 4 leaves cabbage, finely chopped
• 1 tsp kosher/sea salt
• 3/4 lb. ground pork
• About 1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp sake
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp toasted sesame oil
• 1 Tbsp potato starch/cornstarch
• freshly ground black pepper

INSTRUCTIONS

1. First, we make the dough. Put all dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, yeast). Add oil and mix. Once the oil is thoroughly mixed in, slowly add the water while mixing. Mix until incorporated.
2. Flour your hands and knead the dough into a ball. If the dough is too dry, add a tablespoon or two of water.
3. Sprinkle a smooth surface with flour, move the dough onto the surface, and knead for 10-15 minutes. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle it with a little flour. After 10-15 minutes, dough should be smooth and silky.
4. Form the dough into a ball. Grease the bottom of the bowl with neutral flavored oil and put the dough in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and put it in a warm place to rise for about an hour, until the dough doubles in size.
5. Meanwhile, it’s time to make the filling. Remove the thick stem parts of the cabbage leaves, then chop them finely. Sprinkle 1 tsp of salt onto the chopped cabbage. Massage the salt into the cabbage. This will begin to draw out cabbage’s moisture. After about ten minutes, squeeze the excess moisture out of the cabbage.
6. Add pork, mushrooms, and scallions to another bowl.
7. Squeeze the excess moisture from the chopped cabbage, then add it to the pork mixture.
8. Add ginger, sugar, sake, soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, and starch. Sprinkle on some fresh black pepper to taste. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate until dough is ready.
9. When dough has finished rising, divide the ball in half. Roll each half into a log shape, then cut each log into five pieces. Then cut each piece in half.

Note: If you like big buns, and you cannot lie, you can cut your dough into larger sizes and use more filling for each one.

10. Lightly dust the balls with flour, cover them loosely with a damp cloth, and let them rest for ten minutes. (In the video, I missed this step!)
11. Roll each ball into a flat circle about five inches in diameter.
12. Cut twenty squares of parchment paper, about 3″ x 3″.
13. Take a circle of dough and place 1 1/2 Tbsp of filling in the center.
14. Fold the dough into a pouch around the filling. It works well to hold the pouch closed with thumb and forefinger while folding up the next bit of dough. First, it will resemble a taco, then a crab rangoon. As you fold in the corners of the “crab rangoon, ,” you’ll end up with a little pouch. Then pinch these corners together and give them a twist to seal the bun. Put each bun on a piece of parchment paper.
15. Cover the finished buns with plastic wrap and let them rest for 20 minutes. (In the video, I missed this step, too.)
16. Prepare a steamer with boiling water. Put buns in steamer, about 2″ apart. They will swell during steaming process. Steam for 10-15 minutes, (10 for small buns, 15 for large ones).
17. Enjoy!

The result: they were delicious.

The texture of the bun was a little bit off, maybe because I missed a couple of steps with letting the dough rest. Another reason might be because I live in the Denver area, and altitude can certainly affect cooking and baking in unexpected ways, which I didn’t account for in my procedure.

Cooking is much like magic and writing. A little here, a little there, bits and pieces of accumulated experience and creative wisdom.

I hope you’ll give this recipe a try for yourself. If you do, let me know how it goes. Going into the Winter of COVID, maybe we’ll all need a little more comfort food.

Bio: Freelance writer, novelist, editor, and screenwriter, Travis Heermann is the author of nine novels, including Tokyo Blood Magic, The Hammer Falls, The Ronin Trilogy, and others, plus short fiction in Apex Magazine, Cemetery Dance, and many more. His freelance work includes contributions to the Firefly Roleplaying Game, Battletech, Legend of Five Rings, and EVE Online.

Find out more at travisheermann.com or follow him on Twitter @TravisHeermann.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!