Write Lightning is a blog from writer Deb Thompson.
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Everyone is welcome here.
(Some links or topics may not be completely kid-appropriate.)
Mon, Feb 09 2009
Writers eat for more than comfort, but comfort matters
Monday mornings always seem to thwart a writer's resolve to get to work early and accomplish plenty of word crafting. Correspondence, business and personal calls and other tasks chew up the morning until words stop flowing freely and become choppy little false starts at communication. The rhythm of sentences becomes stunted. Writing becomes motion without action. It's like a dry, hacking cough that interrupts everything you try to say.
On those days, between bouts of what feels more like a word puzzle marathon than a true day of writing, I find myself craving food. And I don't crave celery sticks and watercress. I crave comfort food, full of sensory appeal and practical benefit. I've been known to revamp an entire short story after a good go at baking and sampling chocolate chip cookies. The steam from a bowl of hot soup has brought forth exotic imagery while it opened my nostrils. The cheese stringing off a pan pizza can pull a poem from the very center of my heart. And when it's cold outside, nothing makes words sharper and more vivid than comfort food or a hot beverage.
Though we haven't been experiencing the deep-freeze and snow that a lot of you in the Midwest and East have endured lately, we have had a brisk wind blowing today after moderate weekend rains. I had planned to prepare a stew to simmer in the slow cooker, but work and other tasks waylaid my journey to the kitchen counter. We decided we would have to make do with sandwiches for dinner on this cool, breezy evening. But the idea of sandwiches at room temperature left us both feeling a little lukewarm. So we thought about it for a bit and we ended up rethinking what we would put between the slices of bread. We'll be making fried egg sandwiches with disks of sauteed turkey sausage on the side. It won't be gourmet and it won't be the most healthful meal of the month, but it will be tasty and soothing. There's just something about eating breakfast at the end of the day that makes a person feel as though he or she is getting an early start on the next day's work.
posted at: 16:33 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
Monday mornings always seem to thwart a writer's resolve to get to work early and accomplish plenty of word crafting. Correspondence, business and personal calls and other tasks chew up the morning until words stop flowing freely and become choppy little false starts at communication. The rhythm of sentences becomes stunted. Writing becomes motion without action. It's like a dry, hacking cough that interrupts everything you try to say.
On those days, between bouts of what feels more like a word puzzle marathon than a true day of writing, I find myself craving food. And I don't crave celery sticks and watercress. I crave comfort food, full of sensory appeal and practical benefit. I've been known to revamp an entire short story after a good go at baking and sampling chocolate chip cookies. The steam from a bowl of hot soup has brought forth exotic imagery while it opened my nostrils. The cheese stringing off a pan pizza can pull a poem from the very center of my heart. And when it's cold outside, nothing makes words sharper and more vivid than comfort food or a hot beverage.
Though we haven't been experiencing the deep-freeze and snow that a lot of you in the Midwest and East have endured lately, we have had a brisk wind blowing today after moderate weekend rains. I had planned to prepare a stew to simmer in the slow cooker, but work and other tasks waylaid my journey to the kitchen counter. We decided we would have to make do with sandwiches for dinner on this cool, breezy evening. But the idea of sandwiches at room temperature left us both feeling a little lukewarm. So we thought about it for a bit and we ended up rethinking what we would put between the slices of bread. We'll be making fried egg sandwiches with disks of sauteed turkey sausage on the side. It won't be gourmet and it won't be the most healthful meal of the month, but it will be tasty and soothing. There's just something about eating breakfast at the end of the day that makes a person feel as though he or she is getting an early start on the next day's work.
posted at: 16:33 | category: /Writing Life | link to this entry
