I can’t claim to know what drives the creative process in others.  And I won’t pretend to any special insights into how the great writers of the world shape their craft.  But one thing that I do know, is that when it comes to writing something well, there’s nothing wrong with a good, long mull.

A slow approach to the writing process
While not personally a member of the Slow Food organization (who has the time?), I have been fascinated with the group and its approach to life for some years.  I love to cook and it’s one of the few elements of my daily life that never (almost never) gets put on the back burner.  I can always invest an extra hour to prepare something truly special, whereas an hour spent cleaning, ironing, on home maintenance or some other necessary task is much more likely to be put off.
 
When it comes to writing and to food, I understand the value of investing time.  And just as a delicate sauce needs time to slowly reduce and absorb all the flavours of its ingredients, so too, a good piece of writing needs time to simmer, to become something more substantial.
 
Recipe for success
Do you remember the 5 Paragraph Essay?  As burgeoning adolescents, my classmates and I groaned whenever we were assigned one of these, only we groaned for different reasons.  On the surface, the muttering may have seemed the same, but if you listened closely to mine, you’d hear a very different kind of complaint.  Unlike my peers, it wasn’t the assignment that I dreaded – it was the imposed structure.

A recipe is like a 5 Paragraph Essay.  It’s a guide; a place to start; a concept of what can be accomplished.  And today, like many people who love to cook, I never use a recipe.  That’s not to say that I don’t read them (we have scores of fantastic books on cooking), just that once I digest the concept that drives them, I head into the kitchen without fussing about measurements, temperatures and times.
 
When my early essays began to run into the ten and fifteen paragraph ranges, I felt free.  My groaning stopped (for a while) and I enjoyed the act of writing so much more, even if it was on topics that didn’t excite me.

Just so, some months after leaving the culinary shelter of my parents’ house, I stopped focusing on the recipes my mother had lovingly (and worriedly) given me and started to focus on the food.  It was only when I was confident enough to move away from the structure that I began to create interesting, flavourful things.

Seconds, anyone?
If we treat writing like cooking, we have to look at tight structures, like the 5 Paragraph Essay, as a basic recipe; a place for the novice to start.  In both activities, experience will soon take over.  How can I bring out those aromas?  Those concepts? How can I compel my audience to consume more? We all develop our own style and ways of spicing things up.  We’ll answer those questions in our own, unique ways.

And once we are practised and proficient, we’ll realize that we need more than the time it takes to physically prepare our work to make them good.  Inspiration can strike at any moment, it’s true, but there’s nothing to say that the first inspired piece, that first stab at a new culinary creation, will be the best. 

It never hurts to mull the ideas over; to steep them in our imaginations and let them develop to their fullest.  It might not always be essential to creating something enjoyable, but it can’t hurt.

My wife and I aren’t great when it comes to using up our leftovers – we like to cook too much and never want seconds so soon after the firsts – but I will admit that some soups and sauces are much better the next day, when they’ve had time to incorporate all of their flavours.  Writing is just the same. 

If we slow down the writing process and allow our imaginations to absorb all of our thoughts and concepts, the end result will be a rich and supremely digestible piece of writing.  And those never get thrown away.