if you can't take the heat, stop reading elbow

My buddy elbow is back, and this time he’s cooking! I thought about it and I tried to figure out what kind of cook Elbow would be. I don’t see him in fine dining. That’s too refined. Poor elbow would stick out like a sore…elbow. Nope, save the ceviche and foie gras for the next guy. I see Elbow as the owner of his own diner. Let’s call the place “Eggs over Elbow.” Like other diners, Elbow’s place has a feast like breakfast special including all the works. But this one isn’t called “The Lumberjack Special.” It’s called “The Funny Bone.” (Tagline: Amuse us with your attempts to finish this meal. Eat ‘til it stings!) Elbow is not only the owner, but also the head cook. I think he would find his rhythm as a short order cook. Short order cooks are scrappy and have an attitude. They don’t mess around because they constantly have to keep cooking in a demanding environment for dozens of people at a time. Their goal is to just keep cooking! I can hear Elbow now as he calls out the orders to the other cooks on the grill line…

“I need a poached with dry rye and a Short Stack with sausage.” “Patties or links?” “Links!”

“Gimme three orders of scrambled. One with well done homefries, one with light homefries, one with tomatoes instead of homefries. Two wheat and one burnt white. And I mean BURNT! Or else this guy is going to send the whole plate back!” “Not this jerk...” “Get to work!!!”

Elbow is a toughie. But he gets the job done.

Alright, enough with having fun. I found Elbow’s chapter on cooking to be easier to read than his first chapter. Is it just me or is he getting edgier? I especially found his theories on cooking as an interaction between the writer and something else to be profound. Writers need confrontation and conflict. In this sense, I think Elbow is right on the dot when he expresses that for writing to taste good it needs interaction between the writer and other people/ideas/words/etc. I think that his exercise about cooking as interaction between metaphors would be something interesting to try in a middle or high school classroom. It could be a good way to introduce literary terms and techniques. For the more advanced writers, it could just be a good exercise, similar to free writing, to get the juices flowing. Having too much creativity and material within a piece of writing is always better than having too little.

I hate when the first kind of non cooking happens during a discussion in a classroom setting. It creates a boring and half-baked learning environment. Personally, within my own experience as a student, I tend to be drawn to the more confrontational and opinionated students. Usually these are the kinds of students that teach me something. Subconsciously, these are also probably the students that add some heat to my cooking. Oh man the cooking metaphors are endless! I agree with Elbow, however, and feel that people in a discussion who constantly interrupt others and who never really listen to what others are saying is just plain terrible. This leaves room for nothing productive. It is non cooking. It is just boiling water.

I think the quote that struck me the most within this week’s reading was this one: “It is crucial to learn to write words and not believe them or feel hypnotized at all. It can even be good practice to write as badly or as foolishly as you can. If you can’t write anything at all, it is probably because you are too squeamish to let yourself write badly.” BURN! Elbow called us out on the table. I will be the first to admit that I am afraid to write badly. I have so much pride in my writing that I am afraid to write badly, even in front of myself. I make excuses for trying new writing techniques, such as Elbow’s. I say I’m just too busy and don’t have time to mess around with Elbow’s stupid theories. I say that I’m perfectly happy with my way of writing. But I’m not perfectly happy with it. If you claim to be perfectly happy with your writing, than you are not a writer who is willing to grow. You are just stubborn and lazy, like me. I’m not saying that Elbow has all the answers. I am actually still pretty skeptical of what he has to say. I do not believe that there is one set way to write. I believe that some pretty incredible ideas come out of pressure writing. I think that some of Elbow’s exercises sound exhausting. I don’t think that writing should be like baking; there should not be a list of ingredients that everyone has to follow in a specific order to write an essay. Cooking is a much better term for the development of writing. Everyone cooks differently. Some people like it spicy. Some like it sweet. Everyone orders their eggs differently.