The Rare, Well-Done Medium!
There is probably more than one time a steakhouse server has chided a guest for showing confusion when asked how they’d like their steak. (For non-meat-eating readers, this could certainly be a vegan steak). I can imagine numerous exasperated staff spewing off the options for how to cook the steak “rare, medium, or well-done,” and then bringing those clueless customers who still don’t get it a nice big salad.
I don’t know why this image of steak preparation came to me when thinking about this amazing writing platform. Sure, there is the idiom of the texture of steak matching the platform’s name. But aside from that, there are profound things to consider when juxtaposing the meat texture with Medium’s name, content, and mission. Throughout this piece, I will again ask non-meat-eaters to imagine the similar preparation of the amazing vegan steak alternative that also suffices for comparison.
Steak Varieties Are Fixed — Not the Same For Medium
Unlike human emotions or quantum states, steak doneness is one of those things that are fixed and binary. Whether you order at the local steak house or grill on your own patio(again, this would include both meat and non-meat alternatives), you want the final product to be uniform in texture from top to bottom. If you have one half of the steak cooked more thoroughly than the other, it signals that one of the grill’s burners was out or a really clumsy chef was preparing your meal. (Off-topic here, this is how my cooking would likely turn out if I was a steak-house chef).
On this wonderful Medium platform, the varieties of articles, publications, and writing are anything but fixed and binary. So, you can get those “textures” of writing coming together all at once. Ah, such amazing, unbounded complexity, like countless other things out there! You can have a piece that is rare, fresh, and even visceral in its tone and narrative yet thorough and well-done in its composition, and all the while intentionally moderate in some aspects for effect. The same is true for the countless Medium publications. Many accept pieces from both regular, expert contributors and also novice writers with material not yet cooked by readers’ eyes. You’ve got publications like Write to Inspire and Writer’s Blokke that never fail to capture all of these different states of writers’ words. Meanwhile, some publications originating on Medium like The Aperion Blog morph the best of a certain domain into a new sort of sophisticated, academic-level journal. And budding publications like The Shortform aim just to bring in the raw, fresh, prime details, which does take a great deal of sophistication and well-developed talent in its own right.
Concurrence Is Part of Writing Itself
Have I gotten carried away with this analogy yet? Probably, considering it started out on a pun-like whim. But come to think about it, this concurrence of states common to Medium is also inherent to writing itself. Certainly, the great writers from countless genres often have recognized this. Look at masterpiece novels like MiddleMarch by George Eliot, where readers find characters living and breathing on the page with their deeper lives churning. You have the mastery of prose and scene fully developed mainly around the characters. At the same time, plots are woven to the moderate level you would expect in real life, so readers can fully gaze into the movements of the characters’ inner worlds. In the fictional village of MiddleMarch, for instance, there are the noteworthy events of failed marriages, strained ideals, and the tragedies and disappointments life brings. But this is not the sweeping plotline of a James Bond franchise, a Lord of the Rings fantasy realm, or a Harry Potter dynasty. On the other side of the spectrum in these plot-based novels, you may often see a moderated development of character to allow for the full plot playout. Of course, many writers work to craft both plot and character development to the fullest levels(which the three mentioned above do quite well to varying degrees).
Take a look at the writing process itself. I remember a professor describing that it wasn’t really even accurate to label the process as “the writing process,” as each work goes through a different mode of production from initial stages to the final product. The image of meat preparation breaks down here as well. Like other art forms, writing doesn’t begin with a prepared product like raw meat. To get original, authentic writing down, you have to pull ingredients directly from your mind, heart, and deeper self. In fact, the act of getting out fresh ideas, emotions, views, insights, and so forth can be an act of spewing your inner world right out on the page.
Famous writer Anne Lamont describes these primal first drafts as “shitty first drafts” in her 1994 book Bird by Bird. As she describes in the book’s essay, much of the primal draft is the raw, unfettered verbiage with abstract mental streams that others may not even follow. Then you go through the process of cutting out the excess stuff, and then you revise, edit, and rewrite until you have a product that can be prepared to the appropriate level for both the piece’s style and the intended audience and domain. But even the final draft will contain that concurrence of some elements rare and some well done. Writers may find after editing a few drafts to bring the piece to standard, that they have to go back and rediscover some of those primal parts that came directly from their heart in the beginning. And unlike an unevenly cooked meat dish, a final draft with some parts raw, some well done, and some moderately crafted is often a delicate, rich, and complex work certain to leave an immeasurable impact on the reader.
This piece briefly explores the juxtaposition of meat preparation to the immense collection of writings available on this great platform(as well as the pun-like parallel of steak doneness to the platform name itself).
As we have reached a few insights, we have realized the analogy itself is far from flawless. As this piece has found, the ingredients needed for producing a written composition often are not found at the store or in the garden, but from the writer’s innermost self. And given that this moderately developed writer still in many ways in his writing prime could hardly be coined a chef or hold even beginning level culinary knowledge, it is worth noting that many dishes with combined levels of preparation in different aspects may make amazing eats. Certainly, there is a ramen noodle salad that comes to mind where boiled eggs are one ingredient yet uncooked ramen noodles another. But the brief analysis has shed some meaningful insights about countless works found on this great platform as well as the platform itself. If anything, we have shed light on the wonder of writing itself, as well as remember the world of writing’s unbounded mystery, complexity, and beauty.
