The uses of food
Oct. 10th, 2011 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceOoh look, a glimpse of process (for what little good it might do anyone). [When I started this blog, y'know, it was supposed to be a Serious Authorly Blog, all about writing-related issues. I Am A Resource, I may have thought. Only then the cats got involved, and the foodie stuff snuck its way in; and then I realised that the internet is full of writers who are far more lucid and sussed about the job than I am, even if they haven't been doing it as long; and now and for the foreseeable future it's pretty much become an OMG-I'm-going-to-CA blog, and... Yeah. Never mind, eh?]
Anyway: here I am, seven-eighths of the way through a novel and absolutely desperate to finish it this week, and there I was this morning, down at the Lit & Phil, writing myself into another corner. Put my heroine to bed, and realised I had Absolutely No Notion what came next. I needed one more exciting incident, before the grand climax - but what? No idea. I'll walk home, I thought, and think about it on the way.
Came home via the market, with a chicken and some yoghurt. Realised that I had been thinking all the way about how to cook the chicken with the yoghurt. Whoops. But wait! The conclusions I'd reached involved garlic and chilli and ginger, and I didn't have any. So I had to go out again. I could think about the book as I shopped locally, oh yes...
Except that then I found myself home again and realised that once again I'd been thinking about food rather than fiction. Whoops. So chop-chop-chop, mixety-mix, and there I am up to the elbow in spicy yoghurt, smearing it all over my chicken as a marinade, and my brain goes "Oh glory, I need to figure out that bloody book. She's gone to bed, okay. So she needs to wake up. What wakes her? ... Oh, damn it, the book's called House of Bells. It had better be a bell, then... But there aren't any bells. They've got rid of all the bells, haven't they? ... No, wait, there's still one left... But he's promised not to ring that, so... Oh, wait. Wait...!"
And there in my head is this immaculate image, exactly what I need; and everything that provokes it is already there in the book and the soundtrack to the image is all the thunk - thunk - thunk of dominoes falling over.
So now all I need to do is write the bloody thing, while the chicken marinates. See ya...
Anyway: here I am, seven-eighths of the way through a novel and absolutely desperate to finish it this week, and there I was this morning, down at the Lit & Phil, writing myself into another corner. Put my heroine to bed, and realised I had Absolutely No Notion what came next. I needed one more exciting incident, before the grand climax - but what? No idea. I'll walk home, I thought, and think about it on the way.
Came home via the market, with a chicken and some yoghurt. Realised that I had been thinking all the way about how to cook the chicken with the yoghurt. Whoops. But wait! The conclusions I'd reached involved garlic and chilli and ginger, and I didn't have any. So I had to go out again. I could think about the book as I shopped locally, oh yes...
Except that then I found myself home again and realised that once again I'd been thinking about food rather than fiction. Whoops. So chop-chop-chop, mixety-mix, and there I am up to the elbow in spicy yoghurt, smearing it all over my chicken as a marinade, and my brain goes "Oh glory, I need to figure out that bloody book. She's gone to bed, okay. So she needs to wake up. What wakes her? ... Oh, damn it, the book's called House of Bells. It had better be a bell, then... But there aren't any bells. They've got rid of all the bells, haven't they? ... No, wait, there's still one left... But he's promised not to ring that, so... Oh, wait. Wait...!"
And there in my head is this immaculate image, exactly what I need; and everything that provokes it is already there in the book and the soundtrack to the image is all the thunk - thunk - thunk of dominoes falling over.
So now all I need to do is write the bloody thing, while the chicken marinates. See ya...