Schrijven is als koken, stelt Gina Barreca, hoogleraar Engels en feministische theorie aan de Universiteit van Connecticut. Net als met koken moet je als schrijver je intuïtie volgen, stelt ze vast. Recepten helpen wel een beetje, maar garanderen niet dat je eten echt lekker wordt. Leg je kookboek maar weg, adviseert Barreca aan de aspirant-schrijver, volg liever je eigen verbeelding.
De reactie op deze stelling is interessanter. Ik knip en plak m even:
"I don't think it's intuition, either in cooking or writing.
Recipes are a great analogy. Good cooks almost always started as students with a recipe, whether it's written down or memorized from watching (what education scholars call "modeling").
From years of following recipes, cooks get a sense of where the different flavors come from, how the different ingredients work together, how different stages of preparation affect the complete dish.
How many writers learn this way? How many writers learn anymore by memorizing long passages of great writing or of copying sentences and paragraphs from the masters? How many are then asked to imitate the masters? No, creative writing programs work from the personal expression model of Peter Elbow and others: go forth and create! You are naturally creative! School inhibits your personal expression!
But creativity is all about mastering the tradition so perfectly that one has earned the right to try something new."
