Hello from lovely, green, summery NYC. To be honest, I’m currently putting in many, many hours at my little desk trying to finish up a project I’m really excited about, so most of the loveliness and greenness and summeriness is just what I can see out of our apartment windows, but that still counts, right?
Earlier this week, we had a dinner party and it was so fun—the perfect antidote to all my desk hours. What that means is that during the day, in between drafts, I’d wander to the kitchen to set out the platters or slice the fennel and tear the mint. That’s one of my favorite ways of working—wandering from the desk to the kitchen and back. It’s also, incidentally, why I love working from home and not at a co-working space or coffee shop…because I’d have to walk all the way home for my little kitchen-y brain breaks.
My favorite part of the menu was a summery vegetarian lasagna. I know lasagna isn’t necessarily a go-to summer menu item, but this one is so good and so full of summer flavors. When it’s winter and I’m making a huge pan of traditional lasagna, it’s all sausage and garlic and oregano and fennel seeds. For this this summer version, though, it’s zucchini and red peppers and tomatoes and the only herbs or spices are fresh mint and basil scattered over the top after cooking—I want the flavors to be so clean and summery and almost a little bit sweet.
Gluten-Free Summer Lasagna Recipe-ish
First, roast the zucchini and make the sauce. Cut the zucchini into 1/4 inch slabs and line them up on a sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and salt, and roast at 400 for ten minutes. Flip them over and roast for five more.
While the zucchini are roasting, chop up a jar of roasted red peppers and add them to a big can of tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes roasted in olive oil). Blitz it all till smooth with an immersion blender. Add a little salt.
In a baking pan, start with a couple spoonfuls of sauce to coat the bottom, then add a layer of zucchini. Then add a few spoonfuls of ricotta and a small handful each of shredded parmesan and mozzarella, then a layer of no-boil lasagna noodles (I’ve been using Barilla’s gluten-free no-boil, and they are excellent.)
Keep layering, finishing with your last couple dollops of ricotta and some little squares of fresh mozzarella on top.
Bake at 425 for about 50 minutes, checking halfway through and covering it loosely with foil if the cheese is getting too brown. After it comes out of the oven, scatter with lots of fresh mint and basil. Let cool for at least 20 minutes before serving.
Our guests had seconds and Henry loved it, too, and I’m already thinking about when I’ll make it again.
Okay, yes, back to writing advice—and it’s just occurring to me now that I’m writing this piece just like I worked the other day, from writing to cooking and back. I like that—that feels right.
Here are my first three pieces of writing advice:
My #1 Piece of Writing Advice: Get it all down, especially the sense details.
My #2 Piece of Writing Advice: Let it marinate
My #3 Piece of Writing Advice: Share your work
And the 4th: READ VORACIOUSLY
As a rule, I try to be a very live-and-let-live kind of person. HOWEVER. There is a line and here’s exactly where I draw it: when I encounter a writer who tells me they don’t have time to read. EXCUSE ME. NO SIR. NOPE.
Not every person needs to be a reader, of course. I have lots of people in my life who I absolutely adore, and reading is just not their thing, for all sorts of reasons. That’s so okay! You know what’s not my thing? Tons of things! Cardio! Blow-drying my hair! White chocolate! Autumn! Radiohead!
You don’t have to be a reader…unless you’re a writer, and then I’m here to tell you that reading is part of your job. Being a writer means reading voraciously.
Here are a few specifics about that reading:
Read outside your genre
We need to read within our genres, of course—you have to know what your peers and colleagues are writing, you have to know what’s connecting with your readers, you have to keep track of the themes and trends emerging in your general sphere, of course.
But it’s also really important to read outside our genres—read mysteries and cookbooks and history, travel guides and quantum physics and poetry. All those diverse worlds and ideas and stories become like a really good soup, nourishing you and bringing depth and interest to your writing. They make your writing richer and more flavorful.
Read high quality writing
Whatever you’re reading will come out in your writing, so make sure that what you’re reading is of the quality level that you want your writing to be. Read things that challenge you, that make you work a little bit, that make you sit up a little straighter in your chair because you’ve been stunned by a good sentence or a beautiful phrase. A diet of poorly-written writing will show up in your own writing, and so will a diet of great phrasing and dialogue, so choose carefully.
Read things that have stood the test of time
One of the truly finest writers I know asks me the same question every time I talk with her: what are you reading right now that’s more than 100 years old? I don’t consider it a coincidence that one of the best writers I know is always reading something old and encouraging me to do the same.
There are all sorts of compelling reasons for reading old books—first, because they help us zoom us out of this particular moment and remind us of more universal realities. They remind us that every generation faces pain, falls in love, struggles and stumbles and worries about the future. Those old stories remind us that our current moment isn’t all there is.
Second, they use language in a way that’s not changing and bending a mile a minute based on internet trends. This will definitely make me sound like a very old lady, but unless your goal is to write solely on social media, you must be reading things other than social media, because it shows. I can tell when a writer spends a gazillion hours online and also when a writer has been reading old books—it always shows through in your own writing.
Side note: someone asked me recently if I think audio books “count” and I definitely do. I think they’re great. If listening is a better way for you to engage in a story, go for it, but still be sure to choose quality and classics and lots of different genres.
One book recommendation: Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose. I love this one so much. The author draws your attention to exactly what different writers are doing in their writing and why—this is why Fitzgerald writes his sentences this way! Look at what Woolf is doing structurally and how it makes you feel as you read it! It’s so smart, and it really does make you read differently. You start to realize how great writers use things like punctuation and paragraph length and pacing and word choice, and then you realize that you get to do that, too, in your own writing.
As ever, happy reading! (And happy lasagna-making, too!)