Five Stars at IHOP

Let’s get this started off right with today’s eye candy . . .

Life is good, yes?

It’s a near perfect day: dark, rainy, grey skies, and brooding clouds. A day made for curling up with a good book.

Here in nearly perfect Dallas, I’m hard at work on my WIP, and it’s made me think about a few things. I started thinking back to why I wanted to be a writer in the first place.  A long time ago (about when dinosaurs roamed the world) there was a little girl who read stories all the time. And she wanted nothing more than to write her own stories. Every time I sit down to write, that little girl comes out to play and it feels really good.

And that’s got me thinking of the debate that plagues writers all the time: story or craft?

What do we mean when we say ‘craft’? Is it pretty writing like in an old manuscript? Not quite. It’s kind of like cooking. There are short order cooks who cook up those amazing breakfasts at IHOP, and then there are Master Chefs at five-star restaurants I can’t afford. Are they both cooking? Absolutely. Do they both have an equal level of skill (craft)? Ahhhh….that’s the big question.

 

In a writer’s world, the Master Chef would be somebody like Dickens, Tale of Two Cities. The short order cook would be Lee Child, Killing Floor. To some ways of thinking Dickens is a better writer than Child.

 

I’m very torn over this question. I love those IHOP breakfasts: bacon, eggs over easy, fluffy pancakes, warm syrup, hash browns. Would it be better if a Master Chef made it? Maybe, but then it wouldn’t be an IHOP breakfast, right?

The IHOP breakfast is, to paraphrase Stephen King, ‘telling a damn good story’. Dinner at a five-star restaurant is a tale well told. What can I say? I like a well told tale, but I love a damn good story. As a writer, what’s important to me is knowing that someone will put down my book and say to themselves, “Wow! That was some ride!”

For my readers, I want to be the five-star IHOP breakfast. If I can do that, I’m good.

What do you like? IHOP or Five-Star Restaurant? 

Ryssa