In Which Writing Is Not Entirely Unlike Baking
Baking
Let us assume, if we may, that there are two people.
- Dennis, who loves to bake. As a matter of fact, Dennis loves to bake so much that he’s invested a lot of time and money into cookbooks, training, materials, and equipment. He prefers to bake desserts, and he is particularly fond of muffins.
- Tanya, who also loves to bake. She loves the smell and delightfully messy alchemy of it all, but really only bakes once a year, at Christmastime. She has her family recipe for blueberry muffins and brings them to the family get-togethers every year.
Wrongs
It would be WRONG if Dennis told Tanya that she should stop baking if she’s not going to take it seriously. (see my previous post for more on this)
It would be WRONG of Tanya to compare her muffins to Dennis’s muffins and decide to stop baking blueberry muffins.
It would be WRONG of Dennis to bring blueberry muffins to the same family get-together in the hopes of showing her up and stealing some of her thunder.
It would be WRONG of Dennis to NOT bake blueberry muffins, simply because Tanya might be hurt if his turned out better. He loves baking muffins.
It would be WRONG for Tanya to decide she wanted to learn how to bake better, and therefore Dennis needed to teach her everything, and give her all of his tools to use, and be available at her beck and call.
It would be WRONG for Tanya to give Dennis some of each batch of her baking, expecting that he would eat and comment and critique her methods for all of them.
Not Wrongs
It would NOT be wrong for Dennis to tell Tanya she needed to learn on her own, with her own journey. Any assistance he gives her would be awfully nice, though.
It would NOT be wrong for Tanya to happily continue to make and enjoy her family recipe for blueberry muffins once a year. She’s still a baker, even if she doesn’t know how to frost a wedding cake.
Quick Note
Quick note — nothing that has happened recently has prompted this series of posts. They came out of a random discussion with a friend and should not be taken as a passive-aggressive jab at anyone.
They’re merely reminders to be conscious of your actions … both to yourself, and to your friends and resources.
Smart People
You’re all very smart people. I’ll bet you can draw your own parallels between the simple baking-related examples above to writing.
I have deliberately left out several WRONGS from the above list (and I didn’t add any RIGHTS because they tend to stem from the WRONGS). What would be some WRONGS that you would add to the baking example? Or maybe some RIGHTS or additional NOT WRONGS?
11 Comments
I’ll add one that has bedeviled me.
It is WRONG for Tanya to insist that Dennis’ work and study don’t matter, that what they do is exactly the same.
The word ‘writer’ has a mystique in our culture. Writers are special people, intellectual superstars of a sort. We think of them as inspired, creative, gifted, etc. So a lot of people want to call themselves ‘writers.’ A lot of people build their self-image off that term, make it integral to who they think they are.
Problem is, there are two parts to being a professional writer (the kind of writers who give the term its savor). One part is the fun part: writing. The other part sucks. It’s editing. Being critiqued. Submitting your writing to strangers. Being rejected. Being told you suck. And, despite it all, not giving up.
One of my most humbling insights was realizing that I wanted people to think of me as a ‘writer’ — without doing the real work of a professional author. Deep inside, I felt that calling myself a ‘writer’ made me special.
I’ve met a lot of people like me. A lot of Tanyas who wax poetic about what a fantastic gourmet restaurant they could run… IF they wanted to. The bottom line is, a restaurant takes a lot more than just a good muffin (though having a killer muffin DOES help!)
Needless to say, I was not happy with my insight. Because of it, I’ve chosen not to call myself a writer until I actually publish. I don’t think my definition is definitive, and I’ve got no bones with unpaid writers who embrace that term. I just don’t trust myself. I know that when I say ‘writer’, my heart means people like Dennis.
One of the things I do is use verbs instead of nouns. When people ask me what I do, I say, “I write — and I’m working on getting published.” Somehow a verb doesn’t evoke the same treacherously seductive feelings as ‘writer’. At least not for me.
Oooh, awesome. I love the verb instead of noun.
For me, “writer” encompasses the unpublished, but “author” is for those who have gone through the traditional publishing process. I am a writer, but I’m not yet an author. =]
^
I am feeling paasive-aggressively jabbed here. Is this yet another comment on my cooking???
The only title I assign to myself is mother, which really is not self-assigned, but let’s skip over that. Because I am not the point here.
Bob loves to do art work. All sorts of art. Drawing, painting, sculpting, designing. But he refuses to call himself an artist. He does not like how others preceive that term. So he rarely mentions or talks about his art, unless there is a specific reason. But further to that point, Bob has no interest in getting paid for his art. Ever. And if you say artist, people will ask if he can paint them something for a friend. So he avoids all the issues in saying artist by just never saying artist.
So there is a level of comfort that you should have with the way you identify yourself versus the way people respond to that identification.
Mother usually gets just one interpretation. And you rarely get, “Oh! Your a mother? Would you raise my kids for me??” Or “A mother? Now how many children have you raised into successful adults, because you cannot claim being a mother until you have at least two good citizen adults.”
WOO HOO! I chose the easy path!!
Oh man, that would be awesome/weird. “You’re a mother? Would you raise my kids for me?” I am now filled with the desire to write this society in a fantasy setting, where being a “mother” is a coveted and respected societal position.
That sounds so awesome. I would read that.
Stuff like this reaffirms my belief that everyone should just read some Judith Martin. When I run public education, we shall have a class on etiquette and 19th century formal dance, dammit. Your kids will be so weird and well behaved. (The bad ones will disappear into the Milford academy.)
Depending on how well Dennis and Tanya know each other, some of those wrongs aren’t necessarily wrongs. For instance, it wouldn’t be wrong for BFF Tanya to ask Dennis for help (it would still be wrong to *demand* it, though she may think her chances high), but it would be completely irrational for “Annie Wilkes” Tanya to do it (though he better, if he knows what’s good for him).
It would be wrong of Dennis to condescend to Tanya about his training and experience.
“Your kids will be so weird and well behaved” I love it!
It is about manners.
Wait…Brad-O is going to run public education? Um, will that be a dictator-type school board? Would you consider some contributing ideas? Can I continue to volunteer?
Many of your wrongs are just bad manners. Rudeness. Thoughtlessness. In that case, it does not matter if you are a baker, writer, artist, or football player. The rude people will be rude and thoughtless. Unless Brad-O does an excellent job inculcating etiquette on young minds.
On a different topic, because your blog jumped ship early for the Mayan Calendar Death Day and it is now all water-logged and squishy, I heard this morning Cheap Tricks’ “I Want You for Christmas.” That is also a fun little Christmas song.
It is amazing to me how often people set aside simple manners when they get excited about something. I’m guilty of it, myself, so it’s not a finger-pointing situation.
You would be, in fact, obligated by your Great Leader to do so. I would rule with an iron .. ruler? apple? pencil? LAMINATING MACHINE! (My mom was a kindergarten teacher, so about most of what we did to help involved that godforsaken machine and a pair of safety scissors — because we could never seem to find the “real” ones.)