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