Stepping into the creative kitchen

A reflection on using the ingredients of commitment, discipline, and devotion in your creative practice.

Good morning, love.

This week, we’re revisiting our June conversation about creative commitment. Scroll down to hear Steph and Maia dish on how it went for them.

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The Dish on Creative Commitment

Around this time every month, the team at How to Write a Novel (A.K.A Steph and Maia/Thelma and Louise) gather in the metaphorical kitchen to share a pot of coffee and dish about how this month’s creative challenge went.

To our surprise, our updates were not about writing at all but were instead about cooking.

To note: Maia is an experienced cook. Steph, on the other hand, just learned how to boil an egg.

What we discovered was that while we had both been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, we were using that time differently on a creative level. As we served up ah-ha’s to one another, we discovered a few ingredients that felt like must-shares.

Let’s start with Maia:

For this month’s creative challenge, my commitment was to get back into my manuscript and work through some of the road-blocks that had me stymied. But my daily life took an unexpected turn. Between obstructions and heartaches, I found myself craving something familiar— for me, that’s the comfort of the kitchen.

When I’m in the midst of writing, my breaks are often spent baking. It’s structured. It’s brainless. It lets my mind relax. Plus, there are cookies, brownies, and scones to munch on when I go back to the page.

The creative realm is, for me, an amorphous place. Adding a bit of baking lends structure; it is something fixed when I am in creativity’s swirling energy.

This month, I swapped baking for cooking and began working through the backlog in my NYTimes Cooking recipe box. Amidst the sale of both my house and business, my days have been necessarily shapeless so I can be responsive to other people’s needs. The manuscript I am working on is in its early stages, and at this point, also feels formless. Mid-life wisdom (as well as my time in the kitchen) has taught me that I needed a balancing ingredient. Working my way through recipes this month gave me a structured container. Plus, all I had to do was take someone else’s directions… and it meant we weren’t eating takeout for the twelfth night in a row.

I really thought I was going to be able to use this in-between time in my life to write. What I’ve learned is that my writing time is my nebulous time, and it can only exist if there is a counterbalance of structure.

Next up is Steph:

One of my commitments within this month’s creative challenge was to go on vacation and really be there. Said vacation took place at a friend’s house in New Mexico where I surprised her (like really surprised her) by offering to cook dinner one night. See comment above about me being yesterday years old when I learned how to boil an egg. One of my goals in my post-divorce era was to learn to cook (bless my ex-husband, who cooked 95 percent of our meals), and I was excited to show my friend what I’ve learned. What was appealing to me about learning to cook was:

1. Being able to feed myself;

2. Going to potlucks and actually being able to contribute;

3. Stepping into a deeper, sense-based connection with life (I’ve been writing about that on my personal Substack - A Little Pleasure).

What I didn’t expect was the rich creative connection I’ve found between cooking and my life as a creative. As I’ve been shopping, chopping, stirring, and whipping I’ve been reminded of how enjoyable it is to take seemingly disparate ingredients and watch them come together, melding into something that didn’t exist ten minutes ago. This is exactly what I do when I’m writing.

The second thing I’m realizing is that my energy is required, that I am one of the ingredients. Without my wrist, the egg doesn’t beat. Without the thought of the mouth the cookie will go into, my love and excitement isn’t always there. This has been me confirming to the Universe that I am a creative conduit. And what can happen in the kitchen is directly transferable to what can happen on the page— I take a smattering of ingredients, add my energy, and make something new.

Deepest encouragement to take the above and turn it into a concoction in your own creative kitchen. Can’t wait to see you next week when we’ll be back with a video update and a new creative challenge.

Yes, chef!