I would like to write as easily as I take an onion from the fridge and start to chop.  No plan for what comes next, but confident that something will emerge. 

Why is it so much easier to string together a meal and expect it to be eaten than it is to lay out words and expect them to be read?  Why is it so much more painful for someone to spit out your words than your meatloaf?  Of course it hurts when the kids say the potatoes are disgusting, or if no one at the party eats your chili, or when your husband says lightly that apple pie (your apple pie) was never his favorite.  But how could the menu for Christmas dinner ever reveal the inner you like an adolescent sonnet?  How could making an eleventh birthday cake be important enough to plan for weeks? 

After all, it’s only food.

Cooking seems easier because it’s daily, matter-of-fact. Spaghetti and meatballs need to be edible, not elegant or profound.  I am under no obligation to be inspired to make dinner, I just do.  If it’s not so good today, there’s another chance tomorrow. Words are more persistent, it’s harder to scrape them into the garbage and start again. So why do I revere them, cherish them – take them so goddamn seriously?  I did not shop for those words, spend money on those words, lug them home, wash them, chop them, blanch, boil, bake or fry them.  Words can be poured out with the flick of a pen, a touch of the keys.  I can cut and paste them, throw them all away in a fit of rage and bring them all back again in a surge of panic.  I can create a flood, an avalanche; I could write all day without stopping and the only expense would be the time it takes to scratch them down.  Each one should be worthless, but like a miser, I caress and count them.  They’re ephemeral, infinite, reproducible, yet we treat them like they’re etched in stone.

Writing, of course, is serious.  It’s WRITING, not just making toast.  A half-baked chapter is a cause for anguish. If the muffins are dry, it’s not a reason to call your shrink.  Not being able to find the right words means that I can’t write.  Not finding the right spices means a trip to the store. When cooking I am gleeful when it works but only puzzled when it doesn’t. When writing, an overdone metaphor or insipid turn of phrase is a failure pure and simple.  The flat-as-a-pancake pound cake calls for a new recipe, another try, not hand wringing and self-doubt. 

I do have cooking dry spells when I can’t imagine what to make, or when the ordinary pleasure of slicing, stirring and tasting just goes stale.  But it’s nothing like writing where doing it or not doing it rubs at the back of your brain until the irritation bubbles up when it’s time to sleep or just on waking.

My confidence in cooking may simply be misplaced because the diners at my early meals were eager and undiscerning.  My friends were a mix of serious students and gauzy artists who read a lot of books but didn’t cook a lot of dinners, so they were more than accepting of an amateur chef.  Pasta, roast chicken, brownies, baba ganoush with too much garlic, guacamole with too much cilantro, all were enthusiastically praised and consumed right down to the crumbs on the tablecloth. 

I was pleasantly surprised to be able to cook; but I expected to be able to write.  I had written all my life:  plays I forced my sibs to act in, stories of my dolls as wandering gypsies, and poems of indeterminate meter and muddy sentiment. 

At university, I studied philosophy which taught me how to think, but not really how to write.  I learned to think about writing from a professor of art history.  Tall and thin, utterly academic with an up-swept bun of greying hair and bulky, tailored suits. She paced and smoked while lecturing, sweeping through the haze that floated in front of the slides to point out the brush strokes in a painting or the patina on a vase.  She pounced on the weaknesses in my writing with a directness that got my attention.  “What in the world could this possibly mean?” she inquired of a breezy opening line.  Looking at the spineless creature, I had to admit it meant nothing.  She encouraged me to focus intently and think carefully before describing what I saw or felt:  the surface of a sculpture seemed soft, warm.  What made it so? The texture of the stone diffused the light making it look like skin. 

After university, I studied science and learned to write in highly structured way, always struggling for precision and clarity.  Poor scientific writing is notoriously unpalatable:  an overcooked stew of statistics, jargon and prevarication.  What in the world could it mean to say, “Major external stressors require individuals to immediately mobilize a response and tax the community-wide social-support resources that individuals typically turn to in times of stress.” How about, “In times of stress, people turn to family and friends.” In trying to teach myself and my students how to write better, I impress on them that words are not just conveyors of facts but vehicles for meaning, and if you want people to listen to what you have to say, that meaning had better be clear.

Now I want to learn to write again.  Not to explain or convince, but to describe, reflect and savor.  Many cooks want to write and no one seems to find it easy.  Julia Child was never confident about her style (let alone her grammar, her husband Paul corrected everything).  MFK Fisher never wanted to reread anything for fear that she would hate it.  Anthony Bourdain wanted to be a writer even more than he wanted to be a chef.  He wrote two failed detective novels before finding his groove with Kitchen Confidential.  His prose is propelled by a hungry feasting on words and an even greater hunger to be loved – a desperation that any aspiring writer can easily recognize.  If you’re cooking, love is easy to come by.  People line up to be fed:  you’re doing your job, feeding your family.  But writing?  Who needs more words?  No one runs home after school to ask, “What kind of a poem are you making tonight?  Can we have that one about the brain again, pleeease?”

Writing, even more than cooking, craves an audience. Whatever I produce, I always have a ready eater, even if it’s just myself.  You can read your own writing, if you have a steady stomach, but most often it leaves you wanting something different, something better.  A bad review from a table of one is not so hard to swallow.  Did you like the soup I made last night?  Not bad, a little bland. Next time add more salt. With writing this is harder.  How was my new story?  Okay, but I saw the ending coming. It needs a little twist.  Soon enough we need another reader, no matter if we quail before their taste. 

But that reader – how we love and fear them! To write is to place your soul on a platter and hope that others will want to eat it. You’re begging them to slice it up and fork it down, fearing all the while that the ravenous horde will move on to something sweeter or spicier, leaving the unpicked carcass behind – a pile of scraps you’ll never want to see again. The thought of it can leave you sick, not wanting to start not daring to stop.

Although, on second thought, those bones could make a lovely soup. And feasting on the bones of life is what a writer does, of course.