Well it's not like baking a cake!! Gathering together an assortment of ingredients and following a recipe sounds like a good idea. It works as a metaphor I suppose. I've been told that to write a novel one must have a "recipe" of sorts ... a plan, an outline, sketches of characters, a plot line. I don't recall having any of that when I started, and if I really thought writing a novel was like baking a cake, I would have been fearful of what kind of cake I was mixing up ... grabbing ingredients off the shelf as I went along, concocting new plot devices that came to me in a flash, much as one might toss in odd spices purely on a whim, hoping for something scrumptious to emerge.
I think I've reached my limit on the baking metaphors. The point is –– I had no plan in mind when I began writing my story. I was struck by a photograph I saw on-line and set out to write a paragraph or two about what the picture might have represented. Everything else followed.
NEXT POST: The inspiration
NEXT POST: The inspiration
