Why writing is like Peanut Butter...

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It’s an odd thought, I’ll give you that, but when I was getting breakfast this morning it occurred to me how much good writing is like good peanut butter.

I should explain.

I’ve liked peanut butter ever since I was a kid. We used to buy ‘Sun Pat’ all the time, the smooth not the crunchy kind. Peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches were my favourite, though I did try experimenting with various combinations (peanut butter and sweet pickle should be made illegal…)

There’s a farm shop near where we now live and I’ve discovered they do a great range of ‘artisan’ peanut butters, subtly flavoured with coconut, or chipotle, or salt and pepper. It’s the kind of peanut butter you have to stir though, because all the oil floats to the top and in consequence it can be very solid at the bottom. Sometimes this is a very messy process, and you have to do it each time you open the jar.

As I was stirring the peanut butter this morning (salt and pepper infused, if you must know!) it struck me how much the activity was like writing, perhaps especially the process of editing.

When we open our jar of words it’s often all too easy - and all too tempting! - to make do with what we find on the surface. They’re words, after all, and we know they’ll ‘taste’ about right. But we get the most out of our store of words, the best ‘flavour’ and consistency, if we take the trouble to give them a stir, to consider including everything we have in our word-jar.

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What happens if we don’t? We end up with something bland, lacking substance and interest. What we produce is ‘thin’ writing.

It strikes me that a lots of ‘soundbite poetry’ you see these days on Instagram and the like - and sadly sometimes re-quoted on Substack and liked by dozens of intelligent people who should know better - is nothing more than the slippery oil from the surface of the jar. It’s insubstantial nonsense. (I had just soundbite in quotes above but decided I needed to include poetry too because I don’t think very much of it qualifies as poetry.)

Surely we produce our best work - poetry, prose, plays, non-fiction - when we give our internal dictionary a stir, seek out those words that might be lying at the bottom of the jar.

I’m a firm believer that Editing is Writing. When we draft something we choose words from our internal dictionary, our personal word-store, our ‘jar’ - and we do so more or less subconsciously. They come easily, often from near the surface. When we edit, we’re diving back into that same jar; we’re choosing words again, but this time we’re doing so much more consciously, we’re going deeper into the jar.

It’s like stirring peanut butter - and those who don’t edit (or who don’t edit enough) - are, I would argue, denying themselves the opportunity to produce their best possible work.

So, when you sit down to edit something, think of peanut butter - and be prepared to get your spoon out and your hands messy!

GET NUTS IN YOUR WRITING!