Stewing With Ideas

I’m generally not one to brag about my talents, but I’d like to think that I make one hell of a rockin’ venison stew. Now, when I tell my friends this you can imagine that the idea of eating any kind of wild game is met with a certain resistance, mostly in the form of: “That’s gross, Jess.” or “Remind me not to come over to dinner any time soon.”

And while venison stew may not be for everybody,I can say that I find it enjoyable to take a meat that is typically not on the menu at your average restaurant and turn it into something special—like stew. For the culinarily-inclined folks out there (yes, I think I just made up a word?), you know that making any kind of stew is fairly simple: dredge your meat in flour, then cook it in butter, throw in some broth, veggies, potatoes salt and pepper—poof! Stew. But beyond the combination of these simple ingredients, let’s not forget that our most key component to this dish is, in fact, something that has nothing to do with meat or vegetables or seasoning. You need time.

You need time to make stew, “stew." Otherwise, you'd be eating soup. I like that the name of the end product connotes its cooking process; you're eating how you made. It's nice. And satisfying.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Donald M. Murray and Lad Tobin would delight in an analogy which likens the process of cooking a (rockin' venison) stew to the process of writing. It takes time to get to a "satisfying" end product. Tobin's chapter on "Process Pedagogy" is an insightful narrative which reveals his personal teaching history and how he came to understand his craft. It is clear that he values students as writers--"that student essays[are] texts to be interpreted, discussed, marveled at, and that writing students were, amazingly enough, writers" (Tobin 6). But he didn't come to this understanding overnight or within his first year of teaching; this process took time. Like the process of understanding his own craft, a writer develops his or her own written work over time. Tobin tells us that his teaching style "was not to tell the writer where she had gone wrong or right but to help her see what she had accomplished and what the essay might become in its next incarnation" (6). The process, therefore, becomes the most important ingredient next to the (meta)physical components like words or ideas. You could argue that a good essay is most likely a product of time (written, re-written, revised, edited, etc.).
I will, again, go back to my English Composition class in college. Until that point, it had not occurred to me how magical such a thing like an essay draft could be. Unlike high school papers, I had an entire semester to turn-in a cohesive, well-thought written work unlike any I had produced before. I remember being confused. "What? You mean that we're only handing in one final draft?" And Professor Giles would smile at us and say, "Well, you'll be doing some work on it in the mean time." And by "some" he meant "enough to make you experts in your own ideas." I can't say that my high school teachers did not allow for us to have plenty of time to complete final writing pieces, but I recall feeling like I was detached from the whole process. Like Tobin suggests, the goal of my high school writing courses was to produce--to turn out writing assignments like a fast food restaurant slings burgers and fries. Which is precisely the opposite of a slow-cooked stew.


Just as a stew involves a special combination of ingredients to produce a distinctive creation, a writer will "collect warehouses of information...to produce meaning" (Murray 716). Eventually, this "meaning" is transposed like that of a recipe to blend original ideas and concepts into something truly special. Taking from Murray's distinctive style, I will turn to my favorite writer, Margaret Atwood, for inspiration as she says: "A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason." There is a reason why my venison stew is good; it's taken several tries to finally get it "right." I like that Murray warns us not to "write too soon," so that we can feel less guilty when it takes us some time to get our ideas "right." I know what when I read any assignment, I like to wait a few days and spend time thinking. I think while I heat up my Smart Ones on my lunch break. I think while I'm driving to class at night. Don't tell my boss, but sometimes I take a "thinking break" while I'm busy at my computer. There are only so many emails I can write before it becomes annoying. After I think, I talk to myself. As I've stated in class, I prefer to talk out my ideas to myself or with others before I even put pen to paper or finger to key. I have to admit that I've often wondered if I was weird or different because my "process" was not to write, but to do the opposite: to sit and think.
I am glad that I am not the only one who chooses not to write "too soon," and that I'm comfortable making mistakes on first drafts.
As our readings and class discussions have indicated, writing takes risks. Writing takes risks of making mistakes and choosing vocabulary words that are unfamiliar (like "panacea" in Tobin's essay). When I create something--a product of my ideas and offshoots of others (to reference Lynn), I am conscious that I may not get it right on the first try. But I keep trying because I know I will find the the best recipe; it is only a matter of time.