On Bread and Fiction
Writing fiction is like making bread. You need to know when to knead it, and when to just let it rise.
The other day, I took a break from my writing desk and went into the kitchen to make bread. There’s something therapeutic about the process of mixing flour and yeast and water, combining it, then turning it out onto the table to knead it into shape.
When I write, sometimes words and ideas start to slip away from me. Things become intangible. At times like this, it is good to roll up my sleeves, head into the kitchen and chuck a bit of flour around. There’s something about making dough, combining it, turning it out, and kneading it into shape that helps me put my thoughts in order. But it’s not really me putting my thoughts in order. I just concentrate on the bread, and my thoughts order themselves. I knead the bread until smooth. I leave it to rise. I shape it into loaves and put the loaves in the oven. And when I return to my desk (a hunk of warm bread in my hand), the process of shaping something real and physical has somehow shifted things. The stories come more easily now. The knots in the writing have been kneaded away. The dough of my storytelling starts to cohere.
A few years ago, while procrastinating over some piece of writing or other, I lost myself in the brilliant Online…
