Hell’s Library: How Gordon Ramsay Saved My Novel
by Allyson Armistead
They say reality television is terrible for a writer, but truth be told Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen resurrected my sad little novel. I know, I know. Cooking is cooking, and writing is writing, and television is, well, it’s not writing. However, in the midst of a serious bout of writer’s block, Gordon and his brow-beating Scottish rage were my blessed salvation.
I had been stuck for months on a novel revision. I had a 300-page draft. I had distance. I had drive. The trouble was, I was fuzzy on just what kind of book I was writing even after six months of steady drafting. There were endless directions, approaches, methods, voices—and all of them were waging war in my draft. Going from a first to second draft of the book seemed akin to one of those pick-your-own adventure books: follow A for third person; follow B for first person; follow C for more reality TV and just forget the whole damn thing. At the forefront of mind was always the question: what is the best way to tell this story? What is my story? And, like any diligent writer would do, I flipped to the solace of television.
There was Toddler and Tiaras. Dancing with the Stars. That Fear Factor show I thought was cancelled eons ago. And then among these bright, burning stars was the chef competition show, Hell’s Kitchen. Gordon Ramsay, Michelin-star extraordinaire, was his usual badgering self: beet red, slandering his contestants in a series of censored beeps. In this particular episode, Gordon was screaming at his creatively-stunted chefs that their cordon bleu chicken would never amount to anything. “How can you create bloody cordon bleu chicken if you’ve no idea what bloody cordon bleu chicken is, you bloody monkeys?” and after swinging a few pots and pans around in his typical rugby-gruff manner, Gordon sent his cast to New York City and Chicago, demanding that they either sample every reputable restaurant with cordon bleu on their menu or not bother coming back.
It was an intense experience for these chefs; for one thing, a person can only handle so much chicken, but it was also a period of complete immersion. After 100 restaurants, the chefs returned to Hell’s Kitchen with a newfound center, a quiet confidence, and created—almost magically—some of the most creatively rendered plates of cordon bleu this side of Michelin stardom. There were miniature cordon blue “meatballs.” A cordon bleu salad. A cordon bleu entrée gone Thai cuisine. In every direction, the chefs had embraced the signature dish, but made it their own—sometimes recognizable, sometimes wholly unique, but always fresh and authentic to their various backgrounds. Yes, these chefs already knew thousands of recipes, and yes, they had already invested Malcolm Gladwell’s repudiated 10,000 hours required for artistic mastery, but Gordon’s 100-restaurant challenge unleashed a unique creativity—a kind of reinvention that can only come from this level of intensity.
When the episode went to commercial, I sat with my miserable little novel draft and thought to myself: why not read 100 books? As a writer, I had been—like all writers—a constant reader, devouring somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-40 novels a year. However, I had never before immersed myself in a reading load this intense: 100 books, 1 year, written reviews for each completed work, no mercy. Another form of procrastination? Maybe, but with the block I was facing, I’d try anything.
And so I stormed the library, the used books section on Amazon, free books at yard sales. My goal was to select novels, short story collections, and nonfiction books that in some way pertained to an aspect of my novel. I had already conducted a year’s worth of research for my novel, but this reading project would be focused on better defining my story itself—zooming in on its pulse, so to speak—by reading a constellation of related (however tangentially) literary work. I heeded the advice of acclaimed novelist Tayari Jones, who, in the midst of writing a novel, picks books “to read and try to figure out what [she’s] supposed to learn from them.” In this vein, sometimes my own selections had a direct application to my project—books about 1930s China, genocide, grief, photography, image ethics, heroism. At other times, though, my selections were more obscure and tangential—books with confessional first-person voices, characters following an archetypal Jonah and the whale arc, families struggling with loss, and young female protagonists finding their ground. Such a journey took me to Elise Wiesel’s Night, Anne Enright’s The Gathering, John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Ha Jin’s Waiting, and even Charles Portis’ True Grit (a full log of my reading adventures can be found here).
With each selection, a creative revolution began to happen with my own novel, in much the same way Gordon Ramsay’s humbled chefs found inspiration in their intense exposure to 100 restaurants. I found myself absorbing arcs, storylines, plots, and voices at an electric rate, cataloguing them as though they were blueprints in an architect’s database. I found my own story refining itself—twisting and turning and forging its own path between the established “canon” of my subject material. I felt like the crazed novelist version of Goldilocks: this story’s too cold, this story’s too warm, this story is closer to what I’m trying to accomplish, and yet I began to see how my own story was wholly authentic to me.
The experience of reading 100 books in such a short span of time also had the unforeseen, yet positive effect of lessening the mystique of the novel. Reading at such an intense rate made the art form more tangible and less intimidating, the way I imagine a medical student loses her fear of cadavers one body after another. Meh, there’s a liver. Hey, there’s kidney. So what. Big deal. Moving on. Similarly, I became disenchanted with the tricks and trade of fiction; I was a like a child at a magic show who knew all the sleights of hand—“is that it? is that all? what else you got?”—but that removal of that “mystery” allowed me to forge ahead with my own project unafraid, fierce, and wholly believing in my ability to actually pull this book off.
On December 31, 2011—at the stroke of midnight—I completed my 100th book. In the weeks that followed, I opened my novel draft again and plunged in with direction, focus, and renewed vigor, gaining traction for the first time in months. There is something to be said for thinking of a project in your periphery—letting its elements fall into place without putting too much pressure on them (or yourself). But there’s also something to be said for widening your inspiration base, refining your palette, and allowing your creativity to emerge from complete immersion in your chosen craft. The intensity worked for Gordon Ramsay’s chefs, and I’m pleased to say that it’s worked for me, as I prepare (finally) to hand over a partial, polished manuscript to a prospective agent who’s been waiting for its completion. Reality television, 100 book marathons—methods of procrastination? Maybe. But the age old advice holds true: sometimes your best work comes from doing anything and everything but the work right in front of you.
