From sous chef to plating
E5: The stages of writing as meal prep
We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving this past weekend. Going around the table, we recognized how grateful we were to the many people who made it possible for us to have access to vaccines, allowing us this privilege to gather and hug. This past year was a reminder to value each other and the simple pleasures around us - clear air, clean water and the abundance in nature.
I am grateful to each of you who is reading this message. Thank you for your continuing support.
Join us to explore trends for the future, and share ideas that position us and our families to thrive. This message has two sections:
🎈 The Karena Arena - jokes, resources and ideas
📖 The longer read: From sous chef to plating shares my quest to write with clarity. If Writing in Community (WIC) was learning the rudimentary skills and Build a Second Braing (BASB), then Write of Passage (WoP) is how to plan and plate so your reader comes back for more.
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Please share freely, and email me the line that spoke to you the loudest.
Until next week!
Karena
🎈 The Karena Arena:
Now is the moment to help influence the way this newsletter looks. Thanks to each of you who sent me an email. The Karena Arena is our shared meeting space to trade any of the following. Keep an eye out for material I can share with the others!
Something fun: A Dad joke / family-friendly humour
Something interesting: Share articles, books, apps, self-development tools in the spirit of Always Be Learning
😅 Something fun:
Sometimes you just need a good ol’ laugh. Watch the guy in the middle:
🧠 Something interesting:
Did you know that most of the world’s religions have evolved a prayer that syncs with slow breathe? Om Mani Padme Hum, the sa ta na ma chant and the Ave Maria in latin all keep with the same 5.5 breaths a minute. Read more from James Nestor, author of Breathe.
📸 Something beautiful:
Gratitude Friday: My Thanksgiving weekend photo of my mother reading my book received a lot of loving on LinkedIn. Isn’t she beautiful?
📖 Read today's essay (and the archive) on my website for credits & links.
Learning how to write effectively is a journey for me. I share how each of three classes impacted my writing.
📖 From sous chef to plating
If Writing in Community is training as a sous chef,
Then Build a Second Brain is figuring out my mise en place,
And Write of Passage is teaching me flavour profiles and plating.
How three courses are helping me improve as a writer.
“What are we grateful for this year?”
We are all gathered around the table to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. It has been a year like few others. One by one, I hear my children give thanks for simple privileges I had previously taken for granted - the health and freedom to gather, to hug and to travel.
“How have we grown?”
“You forgot something. You published a book this year!” Whoa! That’s right. I have grown quite dramatically this year. I have added an identity I had never imagined before. Not never imagined possible, but just never imagined.
Author.
“It was probably the longest dragged-out launch date, but you got it done, Mum!” the kids joke. I see the bold colours of “Contours of Courageous Parenting - Tilting Towards Better Decisions” on the table and I have a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
Publishing a book might have been unintentional. But my writing journey is one of intention. I wanted to get into the habit of publishing regularly. And I want to include the climate conversation in my discussions on the Future of Work. It is the next big futurism topic on my personal agenda and a very sensitive one.
"How do I strike the right tone?
Can I invite collaboration rather than shaming?
How do I hold the space for possibility but also stress the urgency?"
I look at our Thanksgiving table. Writing, for me, is very much like creating a meal that invites others to share. I want to move up from opening cans of soup for a quick meal. Over this past year, I have invested in learning how to write. I want to write meals that also nourish and nurture my family (and readers). I want them coming back for more.
Writing Meals that Nourish
Sous chef
Writing in Community (WIC) launched me on this writing journey in June 2020. Many joined with the intention of publishing a book. I joined for accountability. My aim was to write consistently with the intention that I would get into a steady rhythm of publishing regularly on LinkedIn.
It was like discovering the fundamentals of food prep. A sous chef learns to sharpen their knife, discovers how to dice onions and carrots quickly and efficiently, and how to turn vegetable peels into a robust stock. I learned to deliver something daily, to work on my craft. Many days it was dull. But, occasionally my writing sang.
There were some days when I was just plain exhausted and didn’t want to enter the kitchen. But I have friends waiting in WIC. Some are showing up to peel potatoes, others are asking me to taste-test their latest creation. They give me feedback on my work. "Well, I am on the platform, so I might as well dash off a few lines of my own," I’d say … And before you know it, I am at 482+ days of publishing in public - on LinkedIn, Instagram, or on my website.
Mise en place
As I analyzed my behaviour, I was watching for the points of friction. "What interrupts my rhythm? When does cooking turn into a chore? " As I grew in confidence and learned to quiet my imposter syndrome, I could dash off an Instagram or LinkedIn post with ease. But they were often easy pickings - more like opening the fridge and throwing together a sandwich or a salad for dinner.
For my bigger essays, I was standing at the kitchen counter hungry but without shopping or planning. It would take me time to deliver work that fed the mind. When I did not have all the necessary ingredients in place, I found myself giving up in frustration. It was the equivalent of stepping away from my kitchen and ordering out.
Enter Build a Second Brain (BASB). This knowledge management concept has revolutionized the way I capture information so that I can easily categorize it and retrieve it. It is a mindset rabbit hole! But for me, it was the equivalent of mise en place. As we head into the Future of Work we need to be able to sift through the tsunami of data. Now I have material at my fingertips when I sit down to create an essay. For years I had been collecting interesting data points and storing them. With a BASB mindset, I can now retrieve tendrils of an idea parked in my second brain, distill the information, condense it and connect it for my reader. Suddenly, I am remembering the excitement and joy of being back in the kitchen again.
Flavour profiles and plating
You can eat a left-over turkey sandwich. Or you can eat a turkey sandwich that reminds you of Thanksgiving dinner. When you add a smear of cranberry sauce and a precise dab of the gravy, with a smoosh of stuffing trapped between two wonderful slices of rosemary bread you are instantly transported back to the chatter at the table. H/t Andrew.
I wanted to write like that turkey party in your mouth. I needed to understand how to make my writing pop, how to layer the ingredients so that the palate could savour each separate element, and then bask in the collective flavours of the complete meal. I was going to bring a temperamental topic - climate - into this conversation. Used incorrectly, it could sour a meal. "Can I learn how to balance this ingredient correctly? And how do I plate it so that it stays appealing?"
I am discovering the secrets to making this happen through Write of Passage (WOP). The first version of this essay was an eighteen-course meal! I am now discovering how to re-assemble it as a tasting menu. I am breaking down my writing and learning how to scaffold it. I’m slowly learning how to separate my effusive writing from my critical editing. And how to create the discipline of delivering a more nutritious essay on a regular basis.
Community - the key ingredient that brings it all together
My writing in the past was a solo act, alone at a desk with no sense of when a topic would resonate. I'm discovering Community has the special ingredient that is making the consistency in my writing journey richer this year. Like umami, it brings the components together and leaves me with a feeling of satisfaction and warmth.
Much of the joy of a Thanksgiving Meal happens in the prep. It is planning the menu, inviting the guests, arranging the decorations. It is also the bustle in the kitchen as one person peels carrots, another is tasting your gravy to make sure it tastes right, and others take control of the beets (and beats!) so all the prep stations are humming. And it is the joy of plating, sharing, and savouring the meal. Together.
Through WIC, BASB and WOP, I have gathered a curated community around me. These new relationships - once 2D names on a zoom screen calling in from New Zealand and Seattle, Perth and Mumbai - may have started virtually. But I look forward to meeting many of these wonderfully warm humans in person. Meantime, they reach out, we often gather virtually work in hand. They hold me accountable. They are generous in their feedback. They nourish me with their support but also ask me to nurture them by bringing my better self to the table. They make the creation of new writing possible. And also very enjoyable.
“Let's give thanks”
Abundance. Support. Evolution.
So much to be grateful for.
#MakeTakeTalk
Do you have a pet passion? How will you move it further along? If you are looking to get back in a rhythm, consider telling a friend.
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