The way Peter decribes cooking in the third chapter is somewhat confusing. I agree with his idea of desperation writing, where sometimes thoughts must be put on paper. It's also confusing about the way he explains internal and external cooking, but low and high gear on a bicycle analogy may explain what he is trying to say. Why he uses cooking to describe writing and then other examples to describe cooking seems like a bit of a stretch to me. My guess is that as a writer he chose to use many examples in hopes that one point would come across. Using this second analogy with bicycle gears seems somewhat disconnected from the overall topic of writing.

His tips for a teacherless writing class look good for those who can and would like to commit to writing. Everything from the people to the way members interact and the meeting proceeds can lead to more successful writing.

His ending analysis of the doubting and believing game concludes Writing Without Teachers very well. Particularly for college students who are taught to be critical most of the time, the flip side is often hard to see or understand. The starting assumptions and how one proves or disproves something makes all the difference. Having personally dealt with the critical doubting game a lot, I sometimes think this leads to a negative worldview. Finally, I'd like to say it sounds like a bit of a long truism, but it's easy to see why both are necessary and important to know.

Kitchen Stadium

BAM! Hello, Midnight's children. It is 11:11pm - while driving home from professor Veder's (oh, how I wish it was pronounced with a long A sound instead of a long E…) class it occurred to me that I had not yet posted my blog! Ye gods! Unfortunately this means that I am frantically racing the clock while I try to dredge up some semblance of meaning from the fragments of memory on the reading. Question: If I am too tired to cook, should I just settle for take-out?

Yes. Food is on the mind. For this reading, we traded George Lucas's archetypal world for Iron Chef Bobby Flay. Brilliant. Or at least it could have been brilliant if the metaphor worked – which for me it did not. Like some others had also mention, I too am a passionate home wannabe chef. For me cooking is about spontaneity, improvisation, and love. When cooking, I don't bounce ideas off of other people. Cooking is a very personal and private process. That is not to say I disagree with Elbow, on the contrary. I am merely making the argument that the metaphor does not work – though I applaud Elbow for heeding his own advice: "Make as many metaphors as you can" (53). When I am cooking omelets, I don't break open as many eggs as I can. I break open as many as I think will be needed.

On page 54, Elbow puts a foot in the waters of interesting tangent, but then ultimately finds the water too cold for a midnight swim. The tangent was on the topic of the pervasive and underlying nature of metaphor and language. I would have enjoyed more dialogue from Elbow on this topic.

Perhaps the cooking metaphor would have worked better if non-cooking was referred to as take-out. But then Elbow loses us again when he stretches the metaphor beyond the breaking point when discussing the difference between cooking and internal cooking.

Look. There is quite a bit I agree with in this section (particularly the part warning us not to get too attached to the words we write p70). Unfortunately, I think his argument loss some of its poignancy in trying to keep a dying metaphor alive much longer than needed.

COOKIN

It seems as though a lot of people are having an issue with Elbow's method... I am not whatsoever. The most helpful portion of this chapter I found to be "Goodness and Badness". Elbow reaffirms what he preached in his first chapter. One needs to put the words down on the paper no matter what. Don't stop to think or breathe, just write! Don't look back at the last words you wrote, and don't sit and have a mental battle to decide whether or not what you're writing is worth a hoot.

Elbow argues that after all that can be written in a sitting is written, one can go back. 90% of what one just wrote may be garbage and not worth anything, but it is the 10% that is the good writing that one can extract from the mess and put to good use. I believe in this principle with great reverence. I have found myself suck in what many refer to as "writers block" many times over, but its because I couldn't decide what to write. I had an idea of a story, but my mind would circle around what would be good words to put down on paper. Eventually I just decided to let the chips fall where they may and let the pen do the talking. While there was a lot of garbage on my paper, there was at least something on paper and some of it was pretty good... And I had established a bit of a direction; opened some new ideas.

One of the most interesting points Elbow makes as well is the idea of encouraging conflicts and contradictions to inhibit good writing. I had never thought of this idea before but after Elbow discusses it throughout the chapter it makes clear sense to me. Why not go into different directions just to see where you'll end up. It's like taking a road trip across the country with no map, and taking every wrong turn, then ending up somewhere amazing you never expected. How can one come up with new thoughts if they only concentrate on thoughts they already have and how amazing they are? It makes perfect sense.
Elbow, you are a genius.

blog 2

I had trouble with this reading. I think it was because I didn't like the cooking metaphor. I suppose I felt that it didn't quite fit, or that he was trying to force a square peg in a round hole. It just didn't seem right. But I did agree with his theory overall. The idea of using energy, mixing ideas, seeing what works and what doesn't...I see where he's coming from.

His section on brainstorming stuck out to me because I've always been a very private writer, but lately, I've been trying to share my writing with people other than my professors. I've been trying to talk out my ideas and get other people's opinion...and it's working! I'm seeing new perspectives and views that otherwise would have escaped me. Now that my peers actually have something useful to say (other than just correcting my couple misspelled words and saying, "I like it"), I really don't mind peer reviews/workshops. They give me the chance to see what's unclear, awkward, or what just doesn't work. Or maybe I'm totally on point.

I also like the "Goodness and Badness" section on page 69. Sometimes, while writing, I think all my whole paper is crap. At that point, I get up, walk away, eat a snack, run an errand, whatever, and eventually come back. What I come back to is a not-so-bad paper. Some of it's downright good. So, overall, I'm glad for the struggle and the crap I've produced because without it, I wouldn't have written the great stuff.

blog two

In this chapter, Elbow’s most important idea seems to be that cooking is the product of conflicting material interacting with each other. Contrary to my beliefs before exploring the “cooking” chapter, conflicting arguments about a single subject is a positive phenomenon which inspires creativity—instead of a disaster which hinders it. In my personal experience, after I begin writing about X, and undergoing most of the writing process I may notice that Y is probably a better option to explore, I do my best to push Y out of the picture. If I change my opinion to Y, after all, my work to that point will turn to garbage.

According to Elbow, however, it is best to have a mental conversation between opposing arguments on one particular subject. This is “cooking.” Also, the interaction between thinking in terms of words and thinking in terms of ideas will “cook” writing. While reading this portion of the chapter, I thought about a classroom full of students who have just been prompted to think about a particular aspect in the plot of a book—let’s say Portrait of a Lady. Some students seem to volunteer prematurely because, when their professor calls on them, they spit out a few incoherent words and then, “nevermind…come back to me later.” These students haven’t necessarily failed to grasp the ideas prompted by their teacher; they simply haven’t translated their thoughts into words. This happens to me all the time, and I find the technique of writing in terms of both thoughts and structured sentences—with the goal of allowing them to interact—is very interesting, and I would love to try it.

The problem is that I don’t really have the time for this. My only conflict with all of Elbow’s techniques is that I simply have no time for them—especially when he describes the 3x5 card method toward the end of the chapter. He closes, though, by stating that he is simply offering an alternative to “desperation writing,” one which is more energy, time and stress-efficient. I’m still skeptical of Elbow, but I’m willing to give it a try.

Cooking

Creative cooking can produce a fine meal; however it can also lead to an unsavory one with unwanted leftovers, or it can 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 or tasting 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. At least then I have a place to begin to merge ideas, instead of staring at a nearly perfect blank page or empty refrigerator. 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.

Blog 2

Theoretically speaking, I like Elbow’s cooking and growing ideas. At first they did not make much sense to me, but after I began to read further into his passages I could understand him more fully. I do not think I could go to such extremes as he suggests in his book, though (such as writing several pages to find just a few main points or including completely unrelated thoughts). They seem like a waste of time. Unless one is stuck, and I mean truly stuck, writing about what the people out the window are doing is not going to do you any favors. I think jotting down thoughts is a great idea, but I think it wastes energy to get completely off task. I make notes for myself all the time. Actually, beneath this paragraph are the lines, “Don’t write until you’re ready to write – could never be ready to write. but there are due dates. Not practical.” These are just notes for me to come back to later, but they’re on topic, they’re things I want to say, and they do not include anything about the neighbor’s dog, dinner tonight, or plans for the weekend. While I do think that it’s beneficial to get a good flow going and keep it spilling onto the page, I think it is important to stay close to the topic at hand. More than that just seems wasteful.

However, I do like his thoughts on mixing related ideas together physically before writing. I do not think I would take it as far as actually cutting my writing apart in order to piece it back together again in a different order, but, in a similar way, I find myself color-coding my notes in a Word document so I can see at a glance which quotes or topic ideas go together. This method does not place my notes side by side, but it organizes my thoughts enough for me to see what I want to say in a given section, and at the same time it allows me enough room to work with order and contextual support.

Note cards work too, but like his writing-then-pruning methods, they are simply too time consuming. It’s wonderfully convenient to see piles of carefully arranged note cards, but writing the information on the cards, labeling and ordering them accordingly, then rewriting the information into something presentable just seems like a waste, especially when the same result can be achieved without such arduous tasks.

And finally, as I alluded to above, I do not agree with his idea that you should not write until you are ready to write. There are many times when I’m not ready to write, but I do it anyway because if I wait until I’m ready, it might never get done. Due dates are a reality and I do not think there are many professors out there who would accept, “I don’t have my paper finished because I’m just not ready to write it yet. But don’t worry, I’m sure inspiration will come along one of these days,” as an excuse for why you did not have the assigned essay completed on time.

But hey, if he found something that works, good for him. Just because it does not sound appealing to me does not mean others won’t get use from it, and it certainly is an interesting perspective.

Cooking!

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.

blog #2

I had a lot of trouble blogging about this week's reading. I kept trying to relate Elbow's cooking to actual cooking, because I like to actually cook a lot. But it just kept sounding really silly. Unfortunately, I could not relate my homemade zucchini bread to Elbow's writing process. The cooking Elbow is refering to, of course, is thinking. When he talks about writing down everything on papers, he's talking about putting our thoughts onto the page, and then putting more of our thoughts onto a page until we get some concrete ideas. My metaphor for actual cooking compared to Elbow's cooking wasn't working at first, because I was trying to explain how my cooking was like my writing process. It's really not since the oven does most of the work. I start with the ingredients. There's a recipe I use, or even a picture of what the final product is supposed to look like. Writing is not this way.
By desperation writing, if I must keep going back to an actual cooking metaphor, Elbow is refering to when the oven is broken and all of your recipe books have suddenly combusted. First, you take stock of everything you have and you put it all on the counter. Second, you separate the good ingredients from the bad ones. Then, you try combining them. You invite your friends over and have them try out your new concoctions. Eventually, you come up with a masterpiece, or at least something edible.
If the food in my kitchen is like the thoughts in my head, Elbow's suggestions almost sounds like a really fancy way of describing the need to constantly organize. Without this, its time to bring in the ladies from the television show "Hoarders", showcase all of the muck, and start pitching until the house shines again.

Elbow 48-75

Elbow’s theories about cooking and non-cooking were rather confusing. It wasn’t until I got closer to the end of the chapter that I began to see his reasoning a little more clearly. Elbow encourages chaos and disorder while writing so as to come up with fully developed ideas. He rejects the middle ground. I feel as though my thoughts are already chaotic and should be less chaotic. Coming up with 20 pages of writing only to come away with 20 one liners on note cards “crab apples” is daunting. I agree with Elbows ideas and feels as though they will work but it is difficult to justify that much writing. On the other hand, if that much writing can allow a person to free their thoughts up enough to form coherent words which then shape into a great paper, book, poem or other mode then his ideas are truly worth the time and effort that his method requires.

I don’t know if it is too late to change something that has been pounded into my head in school. I feel as if I’m diving headfirst into dangerous waters just by reading Elbow. It is exciting and scary to think that my chaotic thoughts that I have to muddle through to get any semblance of an idea of how I want my paper to go is a good thing and not a bad thing. I am a disorganized person by nature and I struggle to create order. Now I am reading a book that discourages order and encourages randomness. While that should be a comfort to me, I still find myself questioning his methods for myself. I feel that if I let chaos reign and let go over the control that I grappeled to gain that I will be sliding backward not gaining ground. I have yet to try his freewriting although I am experimenting a little with it while writing this blog. I want to go back and take out the ideas that seem out of place or that don’t make any sense but I’m forcing myself to leave them in there.
Somehow every semester I seem to come up with a paper for whatever assignment that I’m given that receives an A. I always start the paper out feeling as though I have nothing important to say and that this will be the paper that I will fall face first in the mud with. I somehow seem to pull off something that frankly amazes me that I had those words and thoughts and was able to put them on paper and get a great response back. I have the same fears for this class but I feel a little better knowing that I am not alone in this fear.

Elbow pgs. 48 -75 Blog 2

I am finding it difficult to write this blog entry because I found 90% of the reading completely worthless. It seems that Elbow and I just don’t see eye-to-eye on the writing process. Throughout the reading I was extremely frustrated with Elbow’s methods (and even his writing style: “till” is not a word and sentence fragments annoy me.) But perhaps my biggest problem with this week’s reading is this: I hate cooking. Whether it be with actual food, or in the writing model Elbow suggests, it is equally useless to me.

I’ve often thought about actual food cooking as “what is the point when I can stick a meal in the microwave or get take-out? You save all of that time and end up with something just as good.” I think this applies to writing cooking just as readily. Elbow even admits that for some people, “internal cooking” might be the key answer. What is the point of “trying to turn […] ten or twenty pages of wandering mush into twenty or thirty hard little crab apples.” (62) What even is the likeliness of that happening? When you are “Allow[ing] your writing to fall into poetry and then back into prose; from informal to formal; form personal to impersonal; first person to third person; fiction, nonfiction; empirical, a priori,” how is it likely that you will end up with anything useful at all? (54) It seems to me all this would produce is a garbled, frustrating mess that you then have to look over—possibly again and again and again—to gain any insight from at all. How frustrating! What a waste of time and energy! “First you are writing about a dog you had; then you are writing about sadness; then you are writing about personalities of dogs; then about the effect of the past; then a poem about names; then a autobiographical self-analysis; then a story about your family,” (55) and then what!? You realize you were supposed to be writing a thought-provoking essay on a completely different topic and just wasted two hours and came up with a worthless 10 page mess? I understand that each way of writing CAN bring out a different aspect of the material (55), but that is a best-case scenario. It seems to me that Elbow ignores the possibilities of the downsides of his method. Wasted time, energy, and effort will only make writers more frustrated.

At least Elbow and I can slightly agree on one point: Internal cooking. I think I am very much an “internal cooker.” Throughout the reading, I kept wondering what Elbow would think of my model of writing. That is, think about what you are going to write while going about your daily life (especially when showering—all of my best ideas come to me when I’m showering) and then, when you are ready and have them all sorted out, sit down and write. I think this is what Elbow is referring to when he says on page 68 “You are writing and it is coming out well. Or you are not writing—sitting or walking around—but you can feel it bubbling inside. Things are going well. You can fell it’s not waster energy even if you are not writing.” (68)