In our house when I was growing up my mother had a dish she called Hotpot, which in winter was eagerly looked for because it always seemed to come out on those days I struggled from school or work in the dark and the rain.
Warmed from the outside by the fire, I was then warmed on the inside by the Hotpot.
Sometimes visitors who joined in the meal asked for the recipe.
To which my mother was rather vague.
So one day when a visitor had gone I asked her why she was so vague.
Well it's this and that plus a pinch of something else.
Then she said it depended on what day it was and what the butcher had available.
Though I watched her make it often enough and knew the sequence she followed I never did get the hang of making it like her.
As a cook I now understand her challenge in being precise.
And as a writer I have a sequence, a process that works for me - a bit like cooking.
If you asked me I would swear that I follow it logically.
Like my mother though there are many things that might influence me on a particular day.
Raw ingredients for your writing For example, if I start off by researching a company I'm writing for or about that sets off certain ideas in my mind.
Then I might look at their competitors and other ideas strike me.
So I go back to my previous research and add in a few different notes.
When I've amassed a bundle of notes, my raw ingredients so to speak, then I start to cook it up.
Of course we all work differently and it may be that the day I do the research I feel the need to let the information settle inside my head.
For my creative juices to digest what I've researched.
A bit like adding a marinade to some fish or meat.
And then to start, knowing everything is in the right state to be cooked.
The best cooks and the best business writers all seem to have that instinctive sense to add that extra ingredient.
Like pulling out that one obscure fact that can create a winning chapter title or that testimonial that proves the whole case.
headline or what it's like when you've written the text, checked it off and for some gut feeling you know you need to add just a pinch of something else.
So although I can lay out my process, and I often do to help other writers, what I can't lay out for them is that instinct to add extra ingredient that binds everything together