Writing is like cooking

Writing is like cooking.

No, not the master chef in a professional kitchen type of cooking, but the granny-style cooking by feel sort of home cooking.

You can cook by learning the fundamental techniques first, in some chef’s instruction manual perhaps - how to slice, dice, simmer, boil, fry, grill; how to handle meat, vegetables, grain, etc etc. That’s probably how one trains as a chef in culinary school. This is the chef’s approach – skill-focused, craftsmanship as the anchor.

Or you can just cook using recipes from one of those popular Jamie Oliver cookbooks with delicious pictures on lovely-to-touch matt paper – first by drooling at the final product, the taste and texture of things to come, and seeing the recipe to know the possibility of what you can achieve from a few humble and simple ingredients. Or you can learn all that by just watching grandma, cooking by guesstimation, and tasting the delicious outcome she produced, and wanting to make it yourself because you want more. This is the home cook’s approach – interested only in the final product and the joy it gives to the recipient, and less about the skill, process and craft.

I confess: I’m the sort who writes like the home cook.

All the talk about writing skill, structure and style that I read about on Twitter and Medium are great and all, but that often feels more like a chef than a home cook.

Because going through fundamentals, taking cohort-based writing classes, practising best practices, copywriting like a SEO pro – yeah they will likely bring results, but it’s hard to stay interested (for me). I like to just jump in, write and let my ideas emerge. I might not have the most grammatically correct writing, or follow the proper rules (like starting my sentences with “And”), but the writing flows out of my finger tips with more ease and joy.

I like to toss the ingredients into a pot not being totally sure what I’m doing, let the stew simmer, then sample a taste, then throw in a pinch of salt or a dash of wine, than to follow methodical steps like a chemistry experiment. Same for writing – I write an idea in my notes, let it simmer in my peripheral vision, and then when it comes down to the actual writing, I let it flow. Even though I only have a half-baked sense of what I’ll write. I’ll figure it out along the way. The idea is emergent from the writing, not a pre-requisite before writing.

Writing is like cooking. And I’m your home cook.