Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

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5 Writing Books for Holiday Marking and Underlining

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My highest compliment: A marked up first edition of my book. (Photo by Jo Stougaard)

You’ll probably get on a plane soon, off to see grandma, friends or kids. Why not spend your plane time reading a how-to book?

No, not the ones about making money or dieting! I mean books about writing and publishing. Put your tray table down and furiously underline, fold pages over, add sticky notes, and fill pages with highlighter. The only hard part is adding a beverage without spilling.

It took me years to mark up my non-fiction books. Now I take it as the highest compliment when readers tell me they’ve violated Will Write for Food in the same way.

Although sometimes it sounds a little extreme. One reader told me she tore the book in half so she could read the unread part on a plane!

After the first edition came out in 2005, Jo of MyLastBite, a respected Los Angeles blogger, sent me the above two photos of my book, with an email about her mark-up system:

“My copy of your book is never far from reach. When I read books, my system for flagging specific pages are: 1) Flagged page on top means “great quote.” 2) Flagged page to the right means “action” or “get more info.”

“After I read your book (the first time), my husband made fun of me because almost EVERY page was marked with a flag on top, AND on the right.”

What a huge compliment. And I encourage you to do the same with whatever book you’re juggling on your tray table. How-to books are made for destruction, and we authors don’t mind.

Here are five books to improve your writing and knowledge of the publishing industry, from the classics to the newcomers:

1. Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. I never tire of recommending this book, just as I never tire of re-reading it. And most importantly, Lamott is the one who came up with “shitty first draft.” I never tire of using that term as a writing coach and teacher, either. It always gets a laugh, but mostly because [Read more…] about 5 Writing Books for Holiday Marking and Underlining

Tons of Conferences and Workshops Coming Up

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Why go to a conference or workshop? I can think of a million reasons. It’s fun. It’s a great way to hear speakers you admire, or people you only know online. You’ll be energized, you could make contacts leading to more writing assignments, and you’ll definitely get out of your usual routine.

In the sessions, even if you think you’ve heard it all, you could:

  • Be inspired to reach for a new goal
  • Remember something important that you need to work on
  • Think about a current project in a new way, breaking through clutter or obstacles
  • Hear messages you’ve heard before, but this time they sink in!

Whether you’re a food writer, food blogger, or food historian, here’s a big list of upcoming food-based conferences to tempt you (and some where I’m speaking):

December 9 – 10, Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Conference. Held at the University of Las Vegas campus, this conference attracts academics who speak on agriculture industry, geography, culture and aesthetics and policies. Las Vegas, NV

January 28, 2012, Food Blog South. This year’s one-day conferences features a keynote by Kat Kinsman, managing editor of CNN’s food blog Eatocracy, and vice chair of the James Beard journalism committee. I’ll be speaking on food blog ethics, a favorite topic. Birmingham, AL

February 9 – 11, The Roger Smith Cookbook Conference. Tracks on the past, present and future of the cookbook, with panelists from the cookbook, agenting, publishing and literary worlds. New York

March 16th – 18th, Food Sense: 8th Annual MU Life Sciences & Society Symposium. This symposium investigates “how our taste for food is shaped by biological triggers, cultural norms, economic activity, and [Read more…] about Tons of Conferences and Workshops Coming Up

Comparing

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You have a friend with more followers than you on Twitter. Another blogger gets more comments than you on her blog. Your friend who wrote a cookbook got nominated for an award.

You read the bios of food bloggers and food writers online, and feel envy about how much media attention they get, or whom they write for, or how clever they are. Or you spend hours on Facebook and Twitter, admiring how some writers craft a witty sentence, and seeing how many “Likes” and comments and RTs they get.

Then you try to comment but you find you don’t have [Read more…] about Comparing

Q&A with Veteran Cookbook Collaborator Mary Goodbody

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After Mary Goodbody left Cook’s Magazine (now Cook’s Illustrated) in the 1980s, she got her first opportunity to co-write a cake decorating book for a packager. She took the job and never looked back. Since becoming self-employed in 1984, the food writer and editor has collaborated on close to 50 cookbooks.

She lives in Connecticut, inherited a 200-acre sustainable farm in northwestern New Jersey with her seven brothers and sisters, and blogs about her visits there.

We spoke recently about collaborating on cookbooks and her long career. I have collaborated on a cookbook (Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas) and edited recipes for publishers. I wanted to learn more about these jobs as careers for freelance food writers:

Q. How do you define the job of a collaborator?

A. I’m the project manager. I make sure the book gets done. I’m pretty detail oriented and I work and think in a linear fashion, which helps the authors keep their deadlines. The author might do some writing, but I edit it. I keep in touch with the

Who Gets Paid to Write Recipes?

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In preparation for a recent recipe writing panel for the International Food Blogger Conference, I decided I wanted to know more about career recipe developers and how they work.

So I spoke and emailed with professional recipe developers who work for retail food manufacturers, growers, commodity boards, and commissions such as the California Walnut Commission. My goal was to get more information about corporate recipe writing, and also to understand what kinds of opportunities exist for food writers.

Here’s the first thing I learned: The culinary experts who get these jobs are not necessarily food writers or cookbook authors. These professionals might have backgrounds in nutrition, or they’re dieticians, or they have a degree in home economics or food science. While they may not have been to culinary school, they are skilled cooks who can write recipes using a variety of techniques and styles. They also might be members of IACP‘s Test Kitchen Professionals Special Section.

When coming up with ideas, these recipe developers [Read more…] about Who Gets Paid to Write Recipes?

Food Writing and Farm Workers: What is the Connection?

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How often do you think about farm workers when you choose your food, cook it, or write about food? Yeah, I thought so. Me too.

Last week I went to a talk about agriculture and social justice by writer Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation; Greg Asbed, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW); and Lucas Benitez, co-director of the coalition.

Schlosser spoke plainly about how conditions for farm workers have not improved since he took a year to write about the servitude of strawberry pickers for the Atlantic in 1995. In fact, he said, it’s worse now. Minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, is now one-third less than pay in the 1960s and 1970s. And on top of poor working conditions and pay, some states have passed draconian anti-immigration bills that have terrorized farm workers and cost farmers money.

What struck me most about what Schlosser said is how the food movement does not seem to care. As food writers, we’re part of the food movement too. We write about food, farmers, even animals, but we don’t write about who supplies our food. Yet we should be grateful to farm workers for making it possible for us to eat healthy food every single day, he argued, and help them earn a living wage, with decent working conditions.

So as food writers, how likely are we to cover this topic, and how does it fit in with the writing we already do? Granted, most of us aren’t going to choose a career as [Read more…] about Food Writing and Farm Workers: What is the Connection?

Blogger Quits Day Job, Creates Successful Online Business

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Jenny McGruther quit her job as an office manager last year to devote herself to her online cooking business, Nourished Kitchen. (Photo by Kevin McGruther)

Do you dream of making enough money from food writing online to quit your day job? Do you want more income as a self-employed writer and educator?

Jennifer McGruther started down a path to lucrative self-employment in 2006, when she switched to a traditional foods diet. She defines this style of eating as “the foods that your ancestors ate prior to the industrial revolution in the 19th Century and the green revolution in the mid-20th Century.” The focus is on raw dairy, cultured and fermented foods, broth, offal, and grains and beans that have been soaked, fermented or sprouted. Protein sources must be grass fed, pastured or wild-caught.

She had trouble finding enough information about traditional foods (Sally Fallon’s Weston A. Price Foundation and her book, Nourishing Traditions, are pioneers). So in 2007, McGruther started a blog as a way to track the recipes she developed.

Based on the amount of interest in her blog and her newsletter (begun in 2009), she launched an online business of teaching people to cook traditional foods. She charges by the month and by the class for her online cooking classes and healthy meal plans. Hundreds of people sign up. Last year, she quit her day job as a Colorado office manager to work full time at her business, Nourished Kitchen.

Today, her newsletter has more than 21,000 subscribers. (Her Facebook fan page has more than 22,000 Likes.) Now she has a full website that sells two kinds of products: meal plans and recipes and video cooking classes, all aimed at an audience interested in pursuing the traditional foods diet.

We spoke recently about how her online business evolved and how it works:

Q. What’s interesting is that your readers are willing to pay for recipes, even though the web — and your blog — offer so many recipes for free.

A. When you develop a relationship with your readers, they are wiling to pay something more. I have solid, well-tested recipes that can be reproduced easily, and people value that.

When I decided to branch into premium content, I had about 2000 newsletter subscribers, and about 80 ended up making purchases. Their feedback was excellent and it gave me the confidence to continue providing premium content in addition to the free content offered on the site.

Q. That’s a good number, as a start. What came next?

A. In February, 2010 I launched free daily emails based on giving up processed food for a month. I increased my newsletter subscriptions by 1500 subscribers and was featured on CNN. That taught me people were interested in getting more involved. They kept emailing me with questions. I realized they didn’t know how to cook unprocessed food.

The daily emails were my pilot program for unveiling cooking classes. I worked with several other bloggers to [Read more…] about Blogger Quits Day Job, Creates Successful Online Business