This chapter is definitely confusing yet oddly very informative. The first most important thing that I learned is that "cooking is interacting." And so often we fail to understand the importance of interaction. In order to generate ideas and words we need to interact. Interaction between two different ideas is an excellent way to brainstorm especially when you are having difficulty writing about something.
I am not sure I quite understood the cooking as interaction between metaphors. Honestly, I was never really good with metaphors so "making" metaphors seem very unattractive to me.
Then he talks about non-cooking. Like elbow, I am intrigued by the second form of non cooking: being caught in between contrasting ideas but not being able to cook it which eventually leads to frustration. And this happens to me all the time, because my stream of thoughts move so fast. So I am definitely going to focus on trying to take each idea singly and whole heartedly before I move onto the next idea.
Desperation writing is the undoubtedly the most interesting topic in this chapter for me. That is me! A desperate writer! And here is the weirdest part I used to always be in denial rather than accepting the fact that I am not being able to write anything and that would make things so much worse I would waste time after time over nothing. So I completely agree with Elbow when he says the first thing one should do is to admit to his or her condition.
In his conclusion I found some interesting points. One is talking to yourself in your writing, because that is exactly what I do. When I talk to myself and write something changes in the way I write, I feel more free like my inner voice has more strength.
And the final point where he tells you to not push it if you just cannot write. If I am suffering with writing and for some reason it is so bad that I just cannot write, I leave the room and run errands and get my mind off the whole debacle that occurred in that room. Eventually, I do end up writing something better because I take time off to figure out why is it that my mind is refusing to write.
Overall, this chapter is definitely more helpful for me personally, because it is in sync with so many things that I believe you need to overcome your writing barriers.
1 comment:
Creative cooking can produce a fine meal; however it can also lead to an unsavory one with unwanted leftovers, or be so unpalatable it forces you to start all over again from scratch. Elbow's cooking methods are calling to me in these pages, but I have always been so preoccupied with cleaning as I go. I don't like to make big messes or to have to sort through them before settling down to partake. This is unsettling to me, but I am convinced that using “lots of paper” is better than using too little. Compared to not cooking at all or cooking too little, I’d rather make the mess (68). At least then I have a place to begin to merge ideas, instead of staring at a nearly perfect blank page. That is certainly more unsettling than trying to clean-up thoughts and ideas from the pile of words on paper. What I like most about this practice is that it is active. I think great thoughts as I drive long commutes each way to and from school, but until I put those thoughts to the page, they are nothing. I seem never again to be able to conjure those same “brilliant” thoughts I had on the road. This frustrates me further. I believe practicing the cooking method is one way to work through those tiresome episodes of waiting for the thoughts to magically re-appear. I will just have to get better at ignoring the mess behind the restaurant's swinging kitchen doors and look forward to the enjoyable meal ahead.
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