Boiling it down

I guess the fact that many of you got hung up on Elbow's cooking metaphor is a good sign that what he's talking about is complex - just as writing is. Writing (the verb, not the noun) is messy, complicated, difficult, time consuming, experimental, trial and error, sometimes a chore, sometimes a disaster, needs clean-up, requires good ingredients, and hardly ever comes out the way we expect to. But as long as no-one is judging it, and provided we don't need to adhere to a strict recipe, it can be a lot of fun. Teachers often seem to have their own favored recipes, though. Many of us learned to cook without any teachers and some of us are still learning. And many of us learned to write despite teachers. Unfortunately, we can't microwave writing, even though some people might want to try that approach. And "canned" writing is given that term for a reason. So for me, anyway, cooking works well as a metaphor for writing without teachers. It's the "without teachers" part that seems most important, though, and something to keep in mind as we continue with other readings for the class.