The Best Preparation is a Good Foundation

What, you’re going to ask, does writing a novel have to do with running a restaurant? Well, since you did ask… A lot more than you think.

Here at Sheffield’s, we’re located just a long foul ball from Wrigley Field (Okay, a really, really long foul, but I’m a fiction writer). We have a big beer garden that gets packed in the summer, we serve a lot of great beer; those parts aren’t going to change. So when it came time to add a kitchen, we had to start with that. Beer and a beer garden. You get the idea that there’s not going to be white tablecloths and multiple courses of silver involved. Your beer steward is going to be a 20 something aspiring actress in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. We all work with the tools we’re given. What goes with beer and the great outdoors? BBQ, of course. Given the setting, the menu was a natural.

The same goes with writing. You’ve got to consider the tools you’ve come to the table with. Maybe you’re a doctor specializing in viruses, in which case that techno thriller about a super infection that threatens to take over the world is going be written with a voice of authority. If, however, you’re a creative writing MFA with an emphasis on 18th century European novelists, that whole end of the world, apocalyptic plot is going to read a tad hollow. Unless you do a lot of homework. So the first thing to think about is what Hemingway told us a long time ago. Write what you know. Tell the story that you were born to tell. Build the restaurant that you’ve been given. This isn’t to say that you can’t stretch and grow as a writer, or as a restaurateur. But when life hands you a bunch of lemons, don’t try to make an apricot soufflé.

The most important thing about any good writing or business is to know exactly what you’re doing before you hammer the first nail or pen the first line. Look around you at the space you’re working in and let that space tell you what your project should be about. Then listen to what you’re being told and don’t try to force something that shouldn’t be there in the first place. We’ve all walked into that room; an authentic German beer hall on a tropical beach, a Jimmy Buffet themed Key West saloon in a strip mall in Iowa. It’s the same reason that chain restaurants are so stultifying; what works in one place doesn’t necessarily translate to another. You walk away, shaking your head, wondering “what were they thinking?”
Don’t let your novel leave the reader with the same question. Figure out what it is you’re trying to accomplish and then learn everything about it before you begin. The novelist John Irving writes the last sentence to each of his novels first and then works backward. Not bad advice.

Write and rewrite and then let it sit and rewrite it again. The menu at Sheffield’s knew where it had to start, but there have been lots of little adjustments along the way. And, although I think that our food’s pretty darn good, it can be a lot better. It’s the same thing with writing. Tell your story and then look at it and fine tune it. But, of course, there comes the day that you have to show your baby to the public. You can’t tinker with it forever. You have to move from writing to selling, and when you do, you’d better be ready. That’s why it’s vitally important that you start from a strong place. So that when you go back in, moving things around to make it better, restaurant or writing, the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down on your head.

Next Week: Building the menu; identifying your theme

Getting back to blogging after the launch of Sheffield's new restaurant

Last spring I started a blog which was going to document the process of adding a kitchen operation to my long established Chicago tavern, Sheffield’s (www.sheffieldschicago.com). While the blog started with the best of intentions, the demands of actually getting the restaurant up and running, along with the start of the 2007 baseball season and the slam of business that always goes along with that, led to the blog falling by the wayside. Three or four entries and then it just kind of tapered off.

Now I’ve got a new project and this one is going to require a lot of writing just to get the thing done. After a short fourteen years I finally earned my BFA in fiction from Columbia College, Chicago. Since I can now, at long last, turn my attention to my own work, rather than writing reams of papers about what other writers have done, I’m now devoting myself one-hundred percent to the sale and publication of the novel I’ve been working on (along with running my businesses and obtaining my degree – so don’t think I’ve been slacking here) for the last few years. Opening Day is a story about a couple of misplaced Miami wise guys who stumble into a scheme to lift the box office receipts from Chicago’s iconic Wrigley Field. The stumbling block is a local bartender with a Florida past of his own, and his ex-girlfriend, a high-class call girl who has gone over to the dark side but is trying to claw her way back into the light. You can read the first few paragraphs on my website, and, I hope, the entire thing soon, at your favorite INDEPENDENT bookstore.

This new blog will post weekly, and since the kitchen at Sheffield’s is still in the growth and development stage (which is to say I’m still losing my ass) we’re first going to examine the way that starting up and running a restaurant and bar business in Chicago is similar to writing and selling a first novel. The suspense hook is that, like with any real life story, we don’t know the ending. Publishing a novel takes a lot of hard work and luck. But as the man said, luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet. So I’ll get to work, cross my fingers, and wait for the opportunity.

Next Blog Post: Getting the thing started.

Welcome to my Writer's Resources Blog

Hello! Thanks for visiting my writer's resources blog. Today I've posted some of my favorites on several topics. I'll return and write more soon.

Favorite websites

Poet’s and Writers, www.pw.org have pages and pages of informative links, contacts and information for all writers; Jotham Burrelo, an instructor at Columbia College, has got some great informative DVD’s that explain the nuts and bolts of getting yourself published, www.erpmedia.net; Columbia College has one of the nation’s best fiction and film schools www.colum.edu; Writers Boot Camp is an intensive screenwriting course with resources in Los Angels, www.writersbootcamp.com; And, of course, my joints in Chicago - www.sheffieldschicago.com, www.silvercloudchicago.com, stop by and have a beer or a bite.

Books I recommend

The Third Man, Graham Green; The Cider House Rules, John Irving; To Have and Have Not, Hemingway; Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game, William Kennedy, Billy Bathgate, E.L. Doctrow; Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy; The Eighth Day, Thornton Wilder; The Man with the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren; In The Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien

Chicago Bookstores

DO NOT GIVE YOUR MONEY TO CHAINS. NO BARNES AND NOBLE, NO BORDERS. SHOP AND SPEND LOCALLY

Barbara’s Books. One of the great Chicago independents, they’ve lost some stores along the way, but they’ve adapted. Keep them on the map. http://www.barbarasbookstore.com

Unabridged Books. Don’t let the gay and lesbian theme scare you, this is a great bookstore, period. And the staff notes really help. http://www.unabridgedbookstore.com/

Kate the Great’s Book Emporium. http://www.myspace.com/katethegreats A Columbia College Chicago Alum who’s fighting the good fight, give her a hand.

Quimby’s. More of a ‘zine and alternative press shop, but they fill an important niche. http://quimbys.com/

Writer's Tools

Poet’s and Writer’s Magazine. For those of you who don’t know, this is an indispensable tool for every writer, wander around here. http://www.pw.org/

Jotham Burello’s website, two great DVD’s that are PRACTICAL guides to getting your work published: http://www.erpmedia.net/writingdvds.html