If I’ve learned one thing while writing consistently for the last couple years it is that books are a lot like beans. I’m not referring to your standard canned beans, baked or seasoned otherwise. Beans that are hard, dry, and inedible are the sorts of beans I’m referring to. There is a process to making them edible and something more than pebbles to chip a tooth on (Though watch out sometimes pebbles do get mixed in with dried beans). You need to soak them, salt them, cook them, flavor them, and then you can enjoy a well seasoned creamy soft bean. As a side note I may have picked this topic today because I’m hungry.
Dedication, patience, and prioritization are things both cooking and writing have in common.
Beans and other foods that take time and patience to cook have taught me a lot about writing. Not much in the way of the actual craft of it but more in the practice of it. Dedication, patience, and prioritization are things both cooking and writing have in common. I’ve also learned to a cook a good few interesting things along the way.
Your creation may not be done today or tomorrow but with time, dedication and patience you can make something great out of the effort you put in on the regular. Yogurt an amazing food that most people love, it is also something that anyone can make. All you need is milk and a little bit of starter. Get a slow cooker, denature the milk, cool it down, and add your starter culture, a few simple steps to create yogurt is all that is needed. Simple ingredient to make something greater than the sum of its parts. The same could be said about the elements of telling a story.
All that you need to be do is find an approach that sounds good to you and go forward with that.
A more recent addition to cooking that I’ve picked up is smoked BBQ. In my mind there isn’t a better food that compares to writing as BBQ does. There are so many different ways to go about it, the tools you can use to get the job done are innumerable. You can be going for a savory, sweet, or spicy flavor, and tons of other variations in between. Different woods and cuts of meat can be used to achieve different types of cooks. In my area of California we like to cook a regional cut, tri-tip. All that you need to do is find an approach that sounds good to you and go forward with that.
If you look at your BBQ too much before it is done then it is going to take longer and there is a chance that you upset the careful balance of temperature inside of your grill. In my opinion one of the most underrated skills in life that no one teaches and maybe because it isn’t something that can be taught is patience. Without it nothing long term would ever be completed. Tasks that seem insurmountable would forever seem that way.
Great things take time, no matter what they are.
Great things take time, no matter what they are. This is a note to myself that this is a proven truth. Throughout history this always has been true. It’s true of cooking as well it is true of writing. Creating a fictional world, sculpting interesting characters out of rough ideas, drafting a fleshed out story, and equally putting the finer embellishments on it take time.
Now if you’ll excuse me I think I need to BBQ something or write something I mean.
A Few Things After Words 