Food Network is one of my favorite channels. It’s fascinating to watch people who are so passionate about their craft – whether amateurs or professionals – go after new horizons in flavor, texture, and presentation.
Perhaps their grittiest competition shows is Chopped. In this series, chefs from around the country compete in three rounds of cooking and baking their hearts out for the title of Chopped Champion. The twist that makes it so unique? The chefs don’t know what ingredients they need to use until they open the “mystery basket”. Inside this mystery basket are ingredients they MUST use and highlight in their dish. These ingredients may include a mix of things like sea beans, tamarind paste, mussels, and fruit cake. One chef gets “chopped” each round until finally they name the champion.
Let’s say you were given the mystery box with the ingredients in the image to the left: marshmallow fluff, broccoli, banana, lutefisk, and instant coffee.
What would you make?
I find writing often feels the same, only the mystery basket isn’t necessarily given to you. It is created from you and you unfolding story.
The writer is passionate about their craft, challenging themselves to be at their best and also knowing they have to win over those who will consume their tasty dish of words and ideas. Let’s not be mistaken, there is competition. Every writer is competing for the eyes, ears, and brainshare of editors, publishers, readers, and critics.
Sometimes that mystery basket feels great – like getting steak, chocolate, parsnips, and egg nog. While at first they may seem like they don’t belong, you can quickly start putting flavor profiles together – like steak with a chocolate and cayenne rub (you can add from what’s in the pantry) basted in butter…and then use the egg nog as a cream to incorporate into whipped parsnips. Some parsley, salt, and pepper, and you’re good to go. Seems logical, anyway.
But…sometimes…you get what I included in the image. What on earth would I do with that?! It feels like a Hail Mary at every turn.
Unlike the TV show, the writer’s mystery basket ingredients come from themselves and from the organic development of their characters and plot as they take shape and breathe from the pages. In my previous post, I wrote about how a writer can’t help but put themselves into their work, which can make creating difficult scenes or characters gut-wrenching because we’re exposing what’s in our heart and minds, and our own experiences.
There are glorious moments where the ingredients of our souls and the ingredients of our creation have a harmonious flavor palette. Those times when the words come rushing out of our fingertips. Dialogue, characterizations, pithy quotes, and memorable scenes seem to flow and come to life on their own.
Then, there are those moments where you get lutefisk, instant coffee, bananas, broccoli, and marshmallow fluff and all you want to do is take the marshmallow fluff and sit in the corner with the spoon. It’s those moments, though, where a writer needs the grit and determination of a Chopped Champion to push through the initial disgust of what they see, consider what’s in their pantry, and just COOK! Do something. Try something. At least one thing you create may have some culinary – or literary – merit. But it won’t if the writer walks away or ignores the ingredients altogether…because if they can tackle those ingredients and make them their own, who knows what the writer could achieve…and teach…through their work.
So…in the somewhat modified words of Ted Allen, the host of Chopped: Writers, are you ready? Open your mystery basket!
What did you find?
a tilting of air 