Writing a novel about working in a country club while still working in a country club
On my fear of being perceived
If you like the pictures and cover images I add to all my newsletters, I started a Pinterest that features accompanying mood boards with each post. This board’s vibe is golf club aesthetics <3
A few months ago, before we shut down for the winter, I worked a slow Thursday shift before the country club. By the night's end, only four guys were left at a high top, one that was littered with empty their Guinness glasses and balled-up napkins from the Thai shrimp and buffalo chicken tenders they had shared.
“This table is a disaster,” I said with a smile as I grabbed as many glasses as I could.
“You are a disaster,” one of the guys said, the member I can always count on to be sarcastic with me and make me laugh. The one I don’t mind so much for making me wait on him in an empty restaurant when I just want to go home.
The other server I was working with, I’ll call her Molly, and I ran out of things to clean and organize, so we grabbed a tray full of silverware and a package of black cloth napkins. We brought it all to the middle high top, where we were soon, joined by the Chef and sous chef with their after-shift beers. We rolled while we talked.
These days, the hot topic at the club was the vote that had just passed. The board members want a renovation of the entire dining room with a bigger bar, outdoor seating, and an expansion of the kitchen. Because the project was going to cost something like a couple million dollars, member dues and fees would have to go up to accommodate. So there was a vote. After 3 hours of deliberating and presenting final arguments and after five days of votes, the renovation passed—a new club is in the works for 2025.
Molly, the chefs, and I were talking about what this would mean. The Chef would have to hire a much bigger staff as they mainly worked on a skeleton crew anyway because hiring has been so tough. The Chef expressed his excitement about being in charge of redesigning the kitchen but was questioning if we would find enough people to operate it.
I listened along, rolling silverware and sipping on my club soda. When Molly mentioned what it would be like to work behind the new horseshoe bar they keep talking about, I nodded along but then said, “Well, I won’t be here, but I’m sure it will be great.”
“You won’t?” the whole table said. “Why not?”
“I better not be!” I said. “My business better take off, and my novel be in the works to be published by 2025. Please, dear God.”
They hadn’t expected my little outburst and sort of laughed it off and went back to their conversation. I hadn’t meant to be dramatic, but it's all I could think about since the vote passed.
I’m hoping to be out of this industry for good by then.
A little later, Molly asked me what my novel was about. Some of the staff know I’m writing a novel set in a country club. I had been keeping this to myself for a long time, but recently, one of my co-worker friends mentioned it to the Chef. She said it because she is wonderful and excited for me, not knowing that I have not told a single soul who has stepped foot on the country club’s property about my project.
I didn’t know my friend said anything until one day, when I burst through the kitchen doors to greet the staff at the beginning of my shift, as one does, the Chef came flying around the corner and said: “Kailey, you are writing a book?!”
I immediately felt myself shrink.
“It’s about a country club?” he asked.
There was no point in denying it. A little voice inside me —the voice of my mother, I think—told me to be proud of who I was and what I was doing. To not deny what I have been working so diligently on for three years now. So I said, yes, I am.
The kitchen erupted in wow, that’s cool! Am I in it? Is it about me? and I quickly scurried back behind the bar.
So now they all knew and Molly was asking me for more details, details I wasn’t prepared to answer.
“Well, it’s fiction,” I said. “So it's more about the dark side of working in a country club.”
Her face twisted into a frown. “Oh,” she said. She looked so disappointed.
Here is the “problem:” 85% of the country club members are wonderful. They are funny and sweet and genuinely care about us as the staff. They take interest in our lives, they ask about our families and our significant others. We have inside jokes and can be sarcastic and playful. When we come in for our shifts and check the tee sheet — the list of golfers who have been on the course all day—we only groan once or twice. There are members who, when we see their name in the reservation book, we say “Thank God” because we know the night will be easy or fun or just pleasant.
I feel so fortunate to have a job where things run smoothly nine times out of ten. There is barely any waitressing drama. The kitchen staff are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. The Chef doesn’t yell at us. The other servers I work with hustle. We pool tips, and we never feel like someone doesn’t deserve them when we count out the tip jar at the end of the night.
But— and this is what I wanted to explain to Molly, if I wasn’t tired and waiting for the guys at the high top to leave —all of this does not make good fiction.
Who wants to read about a girl who goes to work and pretty much everything goes well?
Who wants to read a book about a country club where all the members are well-behaved?
They don’t. And that is not what I’m writing about.
I’m writing about that 15%. Or better yet, I’m expanding on that 15%.
I’m asking questions like, what if it really went that far? What if that interaction excelled? What if that member didn’t just look at my protagonist a certain way, what if he acted?
One of the topics I’m fascinated by, a topic that my fiction seeks to explore, is what it is like to have a female body, specifically as a server, in a male-dominated space.
With my ten-odd years as a woman working in a restaurant, I have a lot to say on the topic. I’ve had a lot of experiences. These experiences have lived inside me for a long time, and I’m not quite sure what to make of all of them. Writing fiction is my way of unraveling them.
In a workshop I took with T Kira Madden a few years ago, she said something that was probably much smarter than I’m about to make it because I can’t remember her exact quote. But she was talking about writing fiction, and within fiction, you can take anything, any experience, any event, any idea and blow it up. Expand it tenfold.
In my early drafts, my plot was frustrating me. I realize now it was because nothing was happening.
I was thinking about the members.
What if they read this and think I hate them? What if they think I’m pretending to enjoy their company—instead running home to write about their worst qualities, or making up things about them all together?
It wasn’t until I started thinking bigger—expanding my ideas tenfold—that the plot finally began to take shape.
And also most importantly, I reminded myself who I was writing this book for.
Me.
I love dark yet funny books that go deep into the hearts and minds of the characters. I love characters that are messy, complicate things, accuse the wrong person, or don’t handle situations anywhere close to correctly. I love stories about women and their bodies, honest and brutal and beautiful accounts of how they live in the spaces they inhabit.
Once, in a Craft Chat for Write or Die I did with
when someone expressed concern about writing about family in their work, she mentioned that half the time, the people you fear would read your work don’t even buy the book. Or maybe they buy it, but they never read it.I’m hoping that is the case for all the members of the country club. (But if it’s not, if for some reason they find out I published a novel, I pray I won’t be working there anymore.)
Don’t tell the members I’m writing a novel! I have said to my co-workers on multiple occasions. Even though I know they are just proud of me or interested in something about my life. (Because they are all wonderful people to work with!)
A lot of the members know I’m a writer, a few of them know about Write or Die but I think a lot of them don’t care about the details, which is fine by me. Every once in a while, when my writing comes up, I feel my cheeks go pink. Even with my co-workers. I’m not entirely sure why. Writing makes up so much of my life between my actual creative work and my business with Chill Subs x Write or Die. And yet, when I’m in this space, at this part-time job, sometimes it can suddenly feel like a silly thing I do.
I’m working on that, though. I’m working on keeping my shoulders back. I’m reminding myself, no matter who is around me, what my real work truly is. Right now it’s finishing this novel.
P.S. If you want a real-life story about one of those 15 percenters, check out this piece on Tom I wrote a few months ago.
"With my ten-odd years as a woman working in a restaurant, I have a lot to say on the topic. I’ve had a lot of experiences. These experiences have lived inside me for a long time, and I’m not quite sure what to make of all of them. Writing fiction is my way of unraveling them."
This is exactly the point - writing from you own experiences, getting to peace with them.
Love this, also struggling with the fear of perception vs. the desire of visibility with my writing. Your book sounds so interesting!!