How Do You Cook Your Books?
By Jael McHenry | February 6, 2017 |
I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation with dinner guests at my house. If they like something I serve, they’ll ask for a recipe. My answer is the same about 97 percent of the time: “Well, there’s not really a recipe, exactly….”
When I cook, I never follow instructions. I meld and blend, pulling a technique from one recipe and ingredient list from another, plus a half a handful of something else I want to use up before it goes bad, and a last-minute substitution of something I actually have for something I thought I had, but didn’t. I made a Chinese cumin lamb stir-fry for dinner tonight, except I used beef instead of lamb, swapped the crispy coating for a marinade of soy sauce and sesame oil and ginger, cut the cumin in half, added shiitake mushrooms, deglazed the pan partway through with some rice wine vinegar, and half-decided/half-forgot to put in the hot dried peppers. Was it still delicious? Yes. Was it what the recipe writers at the New York Times had in mind? Not even remotely.
I write the same way. I have tried many times to use an outline. My outlines seem logical and perfectly well thought-out, and I use them to start writing, but the only variation is whether I jump ship midway through the first draft or whether I have to write the whole thing to see how wrong it is. I add and subtract characters. I recognize the beginnings of subplots and themes I didn’t actually put in on purpose, and rewrite to make them stronger. No matter how much thinking and planning I do beforehand, I change my plans while I’m putting the words down on the page for real. Writing helps me discover my own intent.
You, too, might be an improviser, in the kitchen and at the keyboard. But even improvisers benefit from recipes for a number of reasons: for inspiration, for technique, or just to see how other people do it. It benefits all of us to try it someone else’s way at least once.
And of course there are those who follow recipes most of the time, tweaking here or there to put their own stamp on something, but staying the course most of the way. The writer equivalent is the person who really does establish their plotting in advance, who puts down a synopsis and then produces a finished book that actually matches the summary they started with. Would the planners benefit from a little more improvisation here and there? It’s possible.
Because there is also the baker type. Baking is different from cooking — it’s a scientific process, one that requires exact alchemy. You can’t just increase, decrease, or approximate the amount of yeast to put into your bread willy-nilly. You might get a swollen loaf that overflows your oven, or a leaden brick that never rises in the first place. Improvisers don’t bake well. I know a writer who writes 50-page outlines and follow them — she lays the groundwork for success in that first stage. The improvisation method is far riskier.
And that, I think, is the reason you might want to think about how you cook your books. Because all three of these personality types can produce amazing, beautiful, compelling work. The challenges come when you try to force-fit a baker’s personality into an improviser’s style, or vice versa. Knowing who you are and how you work best is ultimately the best thing for your craft and your career.
Q: Are you an improviser, a recipe-follower, or a baker? (And does your cooking style mirror your writing style or not?)
Jael McHenry is the debut author of The Kitchen Daughter (Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books, April 12, 2011). Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. You can read more about Jael and her book at jaelmchenry.com or follow her on Twitter at @jaelmchenry.
Welp, in my usual weirdness – when I cook (which is rarely) I just toss stuff in a pan – even if it doesn’t seem to fit. Blackberries and raspberries in with the onions and bellpeppers and whatever else I’ve tossed in there, why not? They’ll go bad if I don’t eat them soon. It’s sometimes a “kitchen sink” meal. It’s willy nilly and chaotic and fast. It’s sort of a metaphor for how I write – just throwing stuff in there and seeing how it turns out.
However, I also love to bake – love the exactness of it, the measurement of it, the calm that comes from following the “formula” but I CANNOT write this way, and I have tried and tried. Oh sigh! Oh heavy heavy sigh!
Great post!
My wife trained as a chef. In our house, flavor experiments are the norm. We bake together on Monday nights, and while there are ratios to follow of flour to fat to liquids, we aren’t afraid once in a while to bake a brick.
That is how I write, too. After 21 books, today, for me, it is about stretching. Trying something new. I’ve been a body-count outliner. I have written a novel with no plan at all but only intentions. Every project is an exploration. I set challenges.
You could make an analogy to the Food Network elimination show, “Chopped”. I give myself a basket of surprise ingredients and then say, “Appetizer! Go!” I don’t try to perfect a method but each time find a new way to cook.
Which is also, I think, what cooking truly means. It’s not just a recipe. It’s skills, ingredients, experience and improvisation. Sounds like your kitchen is just right, Jael. Thanks for cooking up this post.
“It’s not just a recipe. It’s skills, ingredients, experience and improvisation.”
This.
Sounds like our kitchen too. And my writing. Thank you Jael.
Great questions! Definitely made me think.
I cook intuitively, and I don’t bake. So I guess I write like I cook – BUT – I’d *like* to write more like a baker. So that’s what I’ve been working on: studying structure and many popular writing methodologies, and putting lots of time into planning and framing my WIP before actually writing it.
Of course, there’s a decent chance that all my studying and pre-work might just be a form of procrastination. (Wait – did I say that out loud?)
Aha, you’ve been in my kitchen! With one exception. My husband tells guests, “Don’t say you like it. You’ll never see it again.”
I write the same way. I improvise. I can’t stick to an outline. I’ve tried. My problem is that once I make an outline my brain tells me I’ve already written the story and I lose interest.
I too take similar approaches to cooking and writing: I start with a recipe, but I make adjustments as I go along. Even in baking, no recipe ever turns out exactly as intended every time, because every day the humidity/temperature/human variable is a little bit different.
For example, I’ve been using the same sandwich bread recipe for years. Yet when I make it, I still have to watch the dough carefully and add more flour or water as needed. I check the loaf in the oven and leave it in longer or take it out sooner than expected.
In writing, I always outline, but not the way it’s taught in school. In middle school my English teachers made me turn in outlines, and then I was supposed to follow the outlines point by point in my finished papers. That doesn’t work. Like recipes, outlines aren’t supposed to be followed to the letter.
To me an outline is a project plan–I use it to brainstorm and map my story before writing, but the plan will never work out perfectly. I always find that some of my original ideas don’t work, and I come up with better ones. So I make changes to the story and note them in my outline as I go.
Q: Are you an improviser, a recipe-follower, or a baker? (And does your cooking style mirror your writing style or not?)
Oh, Jael, I’m not the right person to answer these questions. Well, let’s just say that there are two perfectly good pots in my kitchen sink right now that are burned to a crisp. One is from last night’s Boil-In-Bag white rice. Yes. I burned it. When I smelled smoke and heard the familiar popping of a burning pan, I ran into the kitchen to resurrect something of dinner. My only excuse is that I was watching the movie Babe with my granddaughter who is 3. I actually caught the stove on fire once when my children were little. I was reading. At the kitchen table. With my back to the stove.
So what does this say about my writing? I’m not sure. I plot, I outline, I improvise, I despair, I’m hopeful. I finish and start again. Scrub the pots with a brillo pad and hope for the best.
Thanks for the post and can I eat at your house sometime????
Definitely an improviser in most cooking (my family will LOVE something I make and then I can almost never duplicate it), most painting, most home improvement, and most writing. Though I’d say I’m a recipe follower (with tweaks) when I sew clothes. When I quilt, it runs the gamut. Some designs require the exactitude of a baker. Others tolerate tweaking. And I’ve also made completely freewheeling quilt designs I’ve loved. When I crochet, I try and try to be a baker but usually I end up with a mess on my hands.
Fun stuff, Jael. I’m a cook but not a baker. I use the palm of my hand to measure dry herbs and spices, and count the glugs for liquid. In fact, my wife recently had to tell me we had a set of teaspoons and tablespoons, then had to point out where they were kept. When I’m trying something new, I read a recipe or three before I start, then rarely look at it (them) again.
And now that you point it out, this is very similar to my writing process. I do quite a bit of prewriting and some outlining, but once I’m in the process of drafting, I rarely look back at them.
For me, the improvisation you mention is all about digging for nuance, finding ways to enhance the flavors, and adjusting the textures and color. And the final polishing is often about finding just the right garnish. Wonderful metaphor, Jael. Aaaand now I’m hungry. Thanks for piquing my writerly appetite!
Betcha anything that none of the outliners here go so far as to follow this prescription:
I.
A.
i.
a.
and so on. I do not lament that aspect of those school days.
(Addendum: I indented the subordinate items the way I was taught, but the program lined them all up flush left. Clearly the program went to an inferior school.)
I’m 100% pantzer – and yes, I bake too. The thing is, know the rules, in writing and in baking, and then you know where you can ‘fudge’ (pun intended) and where you best follow the recipe
ps, my cinnamon bread is my specialty – and it’s a secret recipe that follows the basics ;-)
I do both: follow a recipe and improvise, both in cooking and writing. It really comes down to what the story and/or meal requires.
Fun post, Jael!
Living alone, these days most of my “cooking” consists of sandwiches, canned soups, microwave meals, salads in a bag, and fruit, nuts, cheese, and crackers for snacking. When it comes to cooking and baking, for me it’s now a ‘been there, done that’, and I just don’t want to spend the time prepping, preparing, and cleaning up.
Instead, beginning four years ago, that time is now used for writing–or more precisely, learning and practicing this craft/skill/art, while managing slow but steady progress on my WIPs. Looking back, I’ve found that it is true that you do learn a lot about yourself from this process. Eg. I grew up hearing my family, especially my mother, say “she has the patience of Job” when describing me. Wrong. I’ve learned that about half the time it’s not patience at all, but stubbornness–like when I’m determined to make something I’ve written work in a story just because I like it, when in fact it doesn’t work at all.
I’ve also learned that while I don’t work well with a detailed outline (once written I feel so committed to it, I find it impossible to deviate, leading me to scrap it and start over), but I do need to know where I’m going in order to stay focused. To continue with your analogy, I need to know whether I want to end up with spaghetti or pancakes–I need to know the point of what I’m writing. So, I guess I’m becoming more of a cook than a baker: for now, knowing what I’m making and a general idea of the steps (ingredients) I need to get it made, seems to work best.
Hi, Jael:
Great analogy for the writing process.
My method is pretty much the same as yours, (as I understand it). I start out with an “outline” that’s actually more of a step sheet — a list of scenes. I then begin to think deeply about the causal links that lead from one scene to another. I ask “why” a lot. The answers to “why” almost always oblige a deeper understanding of my characters, setting, and moral premise. That deeper understanding leads to creation of more scenes, which again I need to justify causally: why are they necessary? Why does one create the other, not just follow in time? What is the best — most logical AND most dramatic — way to order them?
Give recent postings by Donald Maass, I’ve begun to think more carefully about the emotional texture and terrain of the novel: what emotions do I want the readers to feel? When? Why? How do I go about that? How does that sequence of emotions lead to the climactic catharsis?
Once I’ve done all that I begin to write. What I often discover is that scenes in my “outline” disappear because what seemed necessary in the abstract gets addressed in other scenes during the actual writing. (One thing we all learn in writing: Much of overwriting is failure to realize how much we over-determine and thus needlessly repeat things.) The various plot threads and themes and subtext all begin to weave together more economically and effectively since, given all my background work, I see and feel them intuitively, not just intellectually. I also gain a sense of pacing that makes me realize: No, that has to happen NOW.
In short, I not only allow myself the freedom to defy my “outline,” I realize that moving beyond that “outline” is a fundamental aspect of the writing. Because I learn so much more as I move through the story word by word, scene by scene.
But, if I may, I’d like to offer this alternative metaphor, from “cooking” to something more, shall we say, “spicy” (courtesy of Flaubert):
“It seems to me, alas, that if you can so thoroughly dissect your children who are still to be born, you don’t get horny enough to actually father them.”
Enjoyed this post very much. I’m not exactly an improvisor–but I’m not a measurer, either. I like playing with profiles of flavor, juggling the textures, making substitutions, but I do like starting with something of a recipe. I taste a lot, and adjust, and the texture of a thing matters a lot. I’m cooking for mood and the moment as much for anything else.
I’m not a huge baker ordinarily, though I am baking now for my in training athlete, but I do love baking bread. But I bake bread the same way–it’s a forgiving form, and feel matters a lot, the slickness or give of the dough, the scent of the mixing yeast and flours, the other additives. I bake bread by touch and smell, and it works just like most cooking.
One can fail at any of it, of course. For me, it’s good to remember that failed story is the same as a failed loaf of bread or a dish with too much ginger–not some tragic thing. Just a creative experiment that went awry.
I’m an improvisor both in the kitchen and at my keyboard. I love making up recipes and combining flavors in unexpected ways. The thing is, I already know the flavors those separate ingredients will contribute, but not what the combined effect will be. So far, so good.
In writing, it’s much the same. A lot of time spent in “prep,” imagining scenes, brief character notes, thinking of things that need to happen–the ingredients. Then I write without an outline, but with a strong “feel” for my ingredients and the flavor I’m aiming for. Terrific analogy, Jael. Thanks.