Cooking up a good story

I love to cook. Give me a couple hours free on a Saturday, and I'm quite content in my kitchen. I put on some tunes and dance and sing while (I hope) no one is listening. I might try a new recipe or a familiar favorite for dinner, make a pot of soup for my weekday lunches or a loaf of banana bread to share with a friend. In any case, I lose track of time as I chop and saute and mix until my house smells glorious and my appetite is whet.
There's a great deal of pleasure to be had in both the process and the product when I cook - the process is a creative experience for me, multi-sensory and totally enjoyable. And most times, the end product, a scented home and delicious foods made from scratch, is quite satisfying. Even if I do have to do it all over again the next day.

I love to write.Give me a couple hours free on a Sunday, or any day for that matter, and I'm quite content in front of my computer. I sit in the silence of my basement with the company of my own thoughts. After assembling my ingredients, the ideas I've entered in my voice recorder over the last few day, heaps of research materials, my plot notes, and character sketches, I get started. I chop the scene I'm writing apart, verify some historical details, and mix them with the 'what-if' scenarios my recorder and my imagination hand me. I lose track of time and often re-emerge from the depths well after dark, having forgotten to switch out the wash or eat dinner.
The process of writing is a creative experience, one that completely overtakes me. I find myself lost in my fictional world wondering how my protagonist will ever get out of the mess I've made for her. The end product for the day, a few more finished pages, satisfies me. And it leaves me itching to get up the next day and immerse myself again.

Tell me a story and a Robin Williams moment

Last week, our granddaughters spent a few days with us. Addie who is 'almost four!' and whose language development is off-the-charts is at that wondrous stage of emerging imagination. One of her favorite requests is, "Tell me a story." Stories she knows about characters she loves are easy for re-telling - Nemo, Cinderella, the Three Little Pigs.

One afternoon, we were blowing bubbles outside and Addie stopped in her tracks. "Tell me a story about a magic bubble." She supplied the characters and in less than a minute, I had the rough sketch of a story in my head - beginning, middle, and end, problem and resolution, setting - all of it. Whoa. I told her my story and then dictated it into my voice recorder for safekeeping.

The following day, the same thing happened, this time with a story about 'a tree that's lost in the woods.' Trying to picture how a tree could get lost, I asked about the tree, could it walk and talk, like Tolkien's Ents. She said, "No, silly. Trees don't walk or talk. They're just trees." Ah, well. But again inside a minute, I had a story about a magic tree whose whereabouts had been lost to the ages.

Then I turned it around on her. "Your turn to tell a story," I said. "Who is it about?" I'm proud to say  she was the hero of her own story and she brought along a companion on her imaginary adventure, either her sister or her buddy Cole who lives down the street. I'd supply a detail or two, maybe the setting (a beach) or a problem (they lost their sand toys) and with a few 'and then what happened?' prompts, she'd take it from there. She is a great storyteller-in-the-making.

Ironic that this happened the week we lost one of our generation's great creative minds. When asked about how he came up with imaginative ideas in his classic rapid-fire style, the late Robin Williams once said it came to him as he watched his four-year-old playing with action figures. The child made different voices and personalities for each figure, creating villain-filled problems with hero-filled solutions. One of our generations greatest actors and comics said all he did was try to channel his inner four-year-old.

I'm thankful to have an imaginative four-year-old in my life too.