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One of my secret ways to get inspired whenever I am in a creative rut is to crack open a cook book. It doesn’t really matter what cook book I crack open, but what does matter is not just finding another recipe to follow.
For instance, the other day, I was stuck trying to write some material for my next book. Normally, I put it on the back burner and write about something else. That way, I let my subconscious mind work at it for me. Then, when I come back to it, my mind is full of interesting ideas that I can then write about. Except this time, it wasn’t working. I was stuck for whatever reason. I decided then to crack open a cook book (in this case, Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat). Her book isn’t just about the recipes, but the science and the methods behind good cooking, which focus on you guessed it, salt, fat, acid and heat.
In the process of coming up with material to write, I landed on some interesting techniques that I never would have thought about and some issues that I encountered with my cooking, that I could not seem to avoid. And I realized, after reading through the cook book, that there were very interesting parallels between cooking, which is both an art and science, and creativity (which is also both an art and a science). To make things a little easier, I’ll draw parallels in cooking and in writing.
