Restaurants are very hierarchical places. There is the front of the house, which is the domain of the maître d’ and his waiters. The back of house is the kitchen, ruled by the Chef. Roles are very clearly defined.
Your eBook is like a tasty entrée, and you will play three roles in its creation: prep cook, Chef and waiter.
By dinner service, the prep cook will have been chopping up onions and carrots all day, preparing stocks and sauces — assembling everything needed in advance to prepare all of the menu offerings and specials.
The Chef will stand at “the pass” all night — the area between kitchen and dining room — to make sure each dish is up to his high standards and that it is plated just so.
The waiter’s job is sales and presentation. If it’s the special that evening, the waiter has effectively sold the customer, perhaps recommended a wine to accompany it. He’ll add a sprig of parsley, make sure the table is set and that all the necessary silverware is in place.
The problem is, in writing we often take on each of these roles out of order, or all at once.
We worry about parsley when tinkering with the recipe, we don’t think we’ll need onions and then decide right before the dish is supposed to go out that we should have used onions. We’re trying to set the table and make stock at the same time.
The good news is that when it comes to your eBook, you decide when the restaurant is open for dinner.
- Be the prep cook. Gather ingredients: blog posts, brainstorms, audio recordings and miscellaneous notes strewn around your desk. Group similar ideas together as you would ingredients.
- Be the Chef: Then put on your chef’s toque (those funny tall white hats) and whip it into something delicious, adjust seasoning to taste. Cooking brings all of the ingredients together. This is the additional writing and then the editing process of taking out what doesn’t fit.
- Be the waiter. This role is all about presentation: final polishing, design, publicity and sales. Getting your eBook fit to go out into the world and ready for its closeup.
Now get into the kitchen, your hungry public awaits!
Yumm! This post is delish!
You are *hella* good with metaphor. I hope you write a post about that metaphor you came up with when we interviewed you. I’m really impressed with the way you can turn a phrase!
Aw shucks! Wait, I can’t even remember the metaphor I used yesterday! I need a replay.
Love the metaphor! A great way to organize my thinking for the e-books that are in the Creative Queue.
A vivid, yet apt, visual I think of every time they are mentioned.
put on your chef’s toque (those funny tall white hats) = to don the Culinary Con-dom
- Gareth Blackstock, chef extraordinaire, from the BBC Britcom, Chef!