Picture by Andrea Nolan
A cook uses a whisk to blend ingredients, working out lumps to make something smooth. By the same token, a whisk is also used to incorporate air into ingredients like eggs or cream, puffing those ingredients bigger, more full of air and life.
A writer uses words in much the same way: we smooth out ideas into tangible forms, working out the dizzying mess of thoughts and images. By the same token, words are infused with life, air, inspiration, art.
Essentially, both cooking and writing involve the process of making something out of nothing, using only a few tools and raw materials. That’s what this blog is about.
When I was in high school, I wanted to be a pastry chef. I thought nothing would make me happier than to stand in a kitchen all day and play with chocolate. (Incidentally, that thought actually still makes me pretty happy.) But after doing a trial run for a culinary school scholarship competition – wherein I attempted making strawberry cream cheese-filled crepes, paying attention to mise en place as well as actually cooking the blasted things, all in under three hours – I discovered something important: I don’t cook well under pressure. More importantly, I don’t like cooking under pressure. That was the first step in ending my culinary career.
I became a writer instead. I felt much more adept at sitting in my room, computer in my lap, making up stories, writing literary analyses, reading books and staring out windows.
I used to joke during graduate school that I cooked the most when I was up against a story deadline. Those were the times when I needed to make pasta, banana bread, cookies, chicken soup. I found that cooking was part of my writing process. In the kitchen, my hands become mechanical, my actions are memorized, and my mind can be free. I can breathe, and ideas can grow. For me, writing and cooking are linked. And that’s what this blog is about: a writer who cooks, a girl who, either with flour, sugar, and eggs, or with setting, character, and plot, is determined to make something out of nothing.
It’s interesting to read how you don’t cook well under pressure, yet when you’re under writing pressure, you cook. I do much better when not under pressure, so I think I would be the same way. It wouldn’t be pressure to cook if I didn’t HAVE to cook, but HAD to write. I do handle some things well under pressure, but writing isn’t one of them. I had to finish papers like 1 day early in college or else I’d get psyched out and spend all night on something that should have taken like 2 hours.
Wow, you sort of just blew my mind with that psycho-analysis. Writing pressure somehow feels different than cooking pressure. There is likely deeper meaning to this, but I’m not sure what it is.
I know what you mean about the papers though. I need time to sit with it before submitting.
I couldn’t agree more with this post! You put it all so eloquently
Happy to have found you and your blog through Yeahwrite! Happy NaPoBloMo!!
Very sweet! I have been writing my whole life but I’ve very slowly taken an interest in cooking in the past few years. I attribute it most to Rachel Ray and Top Chef so you have an idea of what you are dealing with here.