Lately I’ve been doing more baking than usual, making stuff like Chinese steamed buns and cinnamon rolls. While kneading some dough recently I had an epiphany, thinking to myself: “this is what thoughtwrestling is.” If your ideas are raw materials, thoughtwrestling kneads them into a smooth ball of dough.
Dough is the intermediate stage of creative work
So what happens then? Do you put the dough in the trash?
Of course not; you bake it.
Even if you aren’t hungry, or you don’t need any bread right now, chances are that you will bake it right away, and what happens to the bread afterward will vary from day to day. The bread is the finished product; you may eat it yourself, sell it, give it away to a food bank, freeze it for later.
The point is that the dough is an intermediate stage, and no matter how promising it is, the true test is to put it in the oven and see what comes out.
Creators are like pastry chefs – dough conducts ideas
We have these romantic notions that creative people are all auteurs; self-starting geniuses whose paintings and plays and great American novels spring from their minds. While I have no doubt that those people exist, they are rare- and probably insane.
The truth is that even the so-called auteur, whether he realizes it or not, is like the bread dough: the intermediate stage. He is the conduit between an idea and an audience.
But isn’t the idea his?
Accept your role as a conduit and keep kneading more dough
Probably not. Even Shakespeare based his plays on historical events or older versions of the same stories. What belongs to the creative type is the work; the choice of ingredients (or inspirations), the kneading (or form of expression) and the baking, turning out a finished product for others to consume. Some may like it, some may not; it doesn’t really matter which.
You don’t bake bread to be popular. You bake it because you made the dough, and like everyone else, you’re going to make more tomorrow.
Image by Erica_Marshall
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I think that kneading the dough is a pretty decent analogy to the process of combining thoughts and ideas into a final form. Like molding clay.
But the baking process… would you describe that as a period of waiting and then you check your work later to see how it came out?
I like the analogy too. Maybe we are both the baker (kneading the dough) and the oven (making the bread), the oven being where we take what we’ve kneaded and turn it into something that is tangible.
Don’t forget the final step in the bread-baking/creativity analogy – serving it up! That’s when you get to see the true results: do people gobble it plain and go back for seconds, or feel the need to augment it with heaps of butter and jam, or – heavens forfend – discretely slip your carefully crafted bread under the table to feed to the dog?
… because I think it does matter whether those who consume it like it. If they don’t like it, yes, you just bake more tomorrow, maybe with a different recipe or for a different audience; but without the consumption part, the creative work is like an unclosed loop, an unfulfilled mission. Of course, sometimes the baker is the only one who eats the bread. And that’s fine, too.
This was pretty much my point, thanks.
But always interesting to see what others make of something.
Your analogy of bread baking and dough makes me stop and think, and it creates a vivid image to remember. You basically said what King Solomon said,in effect, that there’s nothing new under the sun. So, it’s just a matter of how you want to put together the ideas you decide to transmit and then, how you want to bake them. Thanks for an interesting article.
I actually like the reminder about “auteurs.” I am very guilty of being too hard on myself for not being one…which is ridiculous! So instead of doing any work, I just beat my head against a wall for not being able to fart out a piece of genius in five minutes.
I love this blog, because it reminds me of how ridiculous my (and other people’s) notions about creativity can be…and it motivates me to work. Thanks!
Great analogy! I really like it!
Recently I started posting interestnig analogies I found on the web on blog.ygolana.com. I thought it could be a good idea to create a place where people can share useful analogies such as yours.