Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

Useful Tips, Interviews, and Stories to Inspire Food Writers and Bloggers

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Why This Food Writer Wears Many Hats

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Virginia Willis does a lot of jobs simultaneously to pay the bills, and because she prefers it that way. (Photo by Angie Mosier)

A guest post by Virginia Willis

A few years ago there was a great outcry when Food52’s Amanda Hesser wrote that she wouldn’t advise any one to become a food writer. At the time I disagreed, but now I find that she has a point.

To be successful as a food writer, I wear many hats. Sometimes, I do work outside food writing because I enjoy it. Sometimes that work is more lucrative. Regardless, all these hats create massive scheduling and financial challenges, but also diversity and stimulation. My small business can be feast or famine, but the jobs are tightly intertwined and I cannot imagine it any other way.

The deal is, it’s just not enough to be a food writer, even a successful one. We may not be starving artists, but very few writers are financially successful.

Here’s what I do as a food writer. It’s a lot but it’s not enough:

1. Cookbook author. My two cookbooks have received much acclaim and even some awards. Using the language of Publishers Lunch, my advances have been [Read more…] about Why This Food Writer Wears Many Hats

4 Books of Food Essays for Happy Summer Reading

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Ah, the joys of summer. Aside from gorging on peaches and nectarines, you have some beach, lake or cabin time coming up, right? At the very least, there’ll be a plane ride or a few stolen hours in the sun where you can dig into a book.

Yes, you’ll want to take your trashy novel, but how about an anthology ? Anthologies are simply a collection of short stories. There’s no reason to think they’re academic or stuffy.

Plus, you don’t have to read the book from start to finish, because [Read more…] about 4 Books of Food Essays for Happy Summer Reading

A Struggling Mum Blogs About Food

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Melbourne-based Sandra Reynolds spends $120 per week on food for a family of four, and teaches others how to budget and eat well.

Last year at Eat.Drink.Blog, the Australian food blogger conference, I met Melbourne-based Sandra Reynolds of The $120 Dollar Food Challenge, who held the audience spellbound as she recounted how a dire situation led to food blogging and a cookbook deal. Recently, we spoke further about her career and her struggle to support herself:

Q. In February 2010, you left your job as a public servant and had to figure out how to feed yourself and your two teenage children.

A. I went to the Salvation Army and they gave me two $60 food vouchers designed to last two weeks. And it started from there.

I went on Facebook to complain to my friends that I only had $60 to feed my family. My friends started asking what I could cook. I sent them recipes, and then someone said, ’91You could start a blog.’

Q. How did you know what to do?

A. I’d read a couple. A friend of mine had me write a few posts for [Read more…] about A Struggling Mum Blogs About Food

Announcing Dubai, My Next Stop for a Writing Workshop

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Teaching at a Food Blogger Connect workshop in London last year (Photo courtesy of Sarka Babicka).

You can get a lot done online, but sometimes great opportunities come from face-to-face, particularly at conferences. Here is how my upcoming Dubai workshop in October came about:

Last summer I did a writing workshop at Food Blogger Connect in London (see this year’s conference July 5-6, with keynoter David Lebovitz). I was there because chef Dorcas Berry had invited me to Ireland on Twitter for a workshop, so I could combine trips after the London invitation arrived by email. How’s that for two amazing opportunities that came from online?

Now for the face-to-face. In London last year, some of my workshop students came to the conference from Dubai (including Sally Prosser of My Custard Pie and Samantha Wood of FooDiva). Organizer Bethany Kehdy and I started talking about Dubai. She said she was intrigued and would think about doing a workshop there with me. So this January, Bethany went to Dubai and scoped it out, talking with food bloggers about an event.

And on October 4, I will do a full-day writing workshop in Dubai! I can’t write this without wanting to [Read more…] about Announcing Dubai, My Next Stop for a Writing Workshop

Food Studies at Universities Now Includes Blogs, Memoirs and Recipes

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Food Memoirist Judith Newton was surprised to learn her book is studied in university classes. (Photo by Eliot Khuner)

A guest post by Judith Newton

Judith Newton is Professor Emerita in Women and Gender Studies at U.C. Davis. Her recent food memoir, Tasting Home: Coming of Age in the Kitchen won an IPPY (Independent Publishers Award) in May. She blogs at Tasting Home and the Huffington Post.

In American Food Studies classes, college undergraduates read the food blogs Smitten Kitchen, Orangette, Pinch My Salt, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks with the keen eyes of anthropologists studying the customs of an unfamiliar land.

They analyze the values embodied in recipes, cookbooks, food-related memoir, and fiction. They also study film, cooking shows from classic [Read more…] about Food Studies at Universities Now Includes Blogs, Memoirs and Recipes

8 Useful Links for Food Writers and Bloggers

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Menu board at Farm Burger in Decateur, GA from a recent trip to Atlanta. Amazingly good burgers. I also tasted my first boiled peanuts — salty and addictive.

It’s almost time for my next email newsletter for food writers, filled with useful links for writers, bloggers, recipe developers, cookbook authors and social media mavens. You fit into one of those categories, right? I thought so.

So you might want to sign up for the Will Write for Food newsletter, if you haven’t already. You’ll get only four emails per year, I promise. Here are 10 terrific links from my earlier newsletter, to whet your appetite for what’s to come:

1. Did you miss the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference in New York earlier this year? Here are videos to watch of selected panels.

2. Got a new book to promote? Congratulations! Here’s a post about What Works and What Does Not on selling new books in 2013.

3. If you have thought about promoting on Goodreads, here’s how to do it: 2 Ways to Make the Most of Goodreads.

4. The Definitive Guide to Recipes and Copyright. Ancestral Chef’s excellent discussion, except where she repeats the old canard about changing 3 or more ingredients. I don’t agree.

5. An infographic on How to Get More Tweets — There’s actually a science behind it, says Mediabistro.

6. The Times of London’s 50 Top Websites for Food and Drink, as of 1/2013.

7. food bloggers: 150+ links to everything you need to know. A huge, valuable list by ultra-successful blogger Lori Lange of Recipe Girl.

8. How Much Should E-Books Cost? Here are recommendations and rationales on pricing.

 

Julie & Julia, The First Book on Food Blogging, Eight Years Later

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It seems like a million years ago that Julie Powell started her career-changing food blog, The Julie/Julia Project, in 2002, about a government drone who makes every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking over a year.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t read it. I didn’t even know about it. Eleven years ago, I scoffed at the idea that writing not found in print could be worthwhile or change the course of published writing in America. I was a journalist, after all, with a career only in print.

Then Powell got a book deal. The book Julie & Julia, based on the blog, came out three years later. I never read that either. It was 2005, the same year the first edition of Will Write for Food came out, where I didn’t even mention blogging.

In 2009, the movie adaptation hit the big screen. I saw the movie and wrote a post about it because I had [Read more…] about Julie & Julia, The First Book on Food Blogging, Eight Years Later