Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

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The Perfectly-Prepared Dinner that Failed

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I planned a dinner last week, hoping to achieve these goals. I wanted to cook for my cousin Dana in Los Angeles, who is dying of cancer.

He requested two dishes that did not go together: spaghetti and meatballs, in honor of his mother’s Italian-Catholic side; and Hamoth, a sweet and sour beet stew made by our Iraqi-Jewish grandmother, which is actually an Indian-Jewish dish.

(Confused yet? Now, if you had an Italian-Catholic mother from New York and an Iraqi-Jewish father from Shanghai, what would your identity be? Dana chose to play the bagpipes.)

I cooked the meal at the home of my friend Mary Ann and her husband Daniel, where my [Read more…] about The Perfectly-Prepared Dinner that Failed

Should You Start a Blog or Quit One? Depends Whom You Ask

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Blogging is either a demanding waste of time or the greatest marketing tool ever, according to two articles Faith Kramer sent me.

How can blogging be both? Let’s take a look:

1. Blogging is a Demanding Waste of Time

At Crain’s Chicago Business, a story called Bloggers quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards profiles those who shut their sites. One launched careers of others on his site, but not his own. Another chronicled a sabbatical but when it was over, had nothing more to say. One became a parent and said his blog became less interesting because writing about his wife and family was off limits. The last person quit because he found it too much of a time sink. Says the article:

“Some have simply switched to another blog-like medium, say, Twitter or Facebook. Others have faced unpleasant facts about blogging. It’s cheap to do but usually doesn’t pay. Having a platform [Read more…] about Should You Start a Blog or Quit One? Depends Whom You Ask

5 Tips on Establishing An Audience for Your Book

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Talking about recipes at a local bookstore reading for Will Write For Food. Audience members included friends, colleagues, readers of my blog, neighbors, and members of my aerobics class and book group. (Photo by Owen Rubin.)

When you approach agents about your book idea, they might ask some version of, “Why this book now, why you, and who cares?”

A book proposal must answer those questions immediately. Last week I posted tips about defining your target audience for a blog. Now let’s look at the target audience for a book, which is not necessarily the same.

When it comes to writing a book, one of my agent’s favorite questions is, “Who is going to pay $25 for it?” That is different than reading a free blog. You need to identify that person in as much detail as possible, and make a cogent argument for why she (women buy the most books) would spend the money.

Some cookbooks, such as those for vegans and gluten-free cooks, have potential audiences that are easy to identify, compared with general cookbooks. Other books, particularly memoir, have elusive readerships. Still, identifying readership can have benefits far beyond completing that section of a [Read more…] about 5 Tips on Establishing An Audience for Your Book

5 Tips on Defining and Building Your Blog's Audience

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When you first start a blog, you just want to get your thoughts out into the world. Eventually you wonder: Who should read this, and why?

It’s time to find out more about your readers and commenters. Or be strategic: Whom do you want as your audience, and can you attract those readers?

Once you know who they are and what they like, targeted readers can be a source of inspiration for future posts, help you shape your posts, and help you build a bigger audience (by RTing your posts on Twitter, for example). Here are five tips on how to assess and build your readership:

1. Analyze your readers by using demographic criteria relevant to your blog posts. The more you know about your audience, the more you can write to them directly. Puzzle out such demographic details as:

3 Comments Guaranteed to Irritate Bloggers

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One of the first posts I wrote, after reading dozens of food blogs, was “What’s the Value of ‘Looks Delicious?'” I was frustrated by seeing dozens of boring comments, and wondered if they were just thinly-veiled attempts to get visitors to the commenters’ blogs.

Lately I’ve been thinking about what else can go wrong in a comment on a food blog. Here are three effective ways to irritate the writer of the blog post, and make yourself look bad in the process:

1. Adding a link to your own post. I’ve done it. And then I’ve regretted it instantly, because it looks like free advertising. I would have been better off with a condensation of my main points.

Some people say, “This is the web, so everyone adds [Read more…] about 3 Comments Guaranteed to Irritate Bloggers

Wrestling with Angels: How an Award-Winning Food Writer Crafts an Essay

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You may not have heard of Natalie MacLean.

Yet she has won six Bert Greene Awards for Food Journalism, five awards from the Association of Food Journalists, four James Beard Awards, and two awards for best writer from Les Dames Escoffier and the Louis Roederer International Wine Writing Award.

At the 2003 World Food Media Awards, MacLean beat out 1,000 other writers to win the award. And don’t even get me started on how many awards her first book (Red, White, and Drunk All Over) won, including World’s Best Drink Writer from Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards. (She’s working on a second book of more travel adventures, to be published in 2012.)

Natalie MacLean is the writer to beat. And chances are, you won’t be successful.

Here’s a little background: She studied English literature at Oxford University and earned a Masters in Business Administration in Ontario, Canada. While on maternity leave from a high-tech marketing position, Maclean started writing freelance articles about wine for magazines, and then sent them out as emails, the start of a wine newsletter. Today, her free e-newsletter has a circulation of more than 100,000, and she has written for more than 60 publications.

We met years ago when she endorsed my book, Will Write for Food, on her website. After she won the MFK Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing from Les Dames Escoffier, I called MacLean at home in Ottawa, Canada, to interview her about food writing technique:

Q: What is it like to write from Ottawa, not exactly known as the food and wine capital of North America? Do you travel all the time, or do you find that you can drink and write just fine from home, thank you?

A: Ottawa is terrific for the work ethic because nothing happens here. There are very few road tours by wine councils and vintners. When they do a cross-country tour, Ottawa is not on their list. I live a [Read more…] about Wrestling with Angels: How an Award-Winning Food Writer Crafts an Essay

Should Bloggers be Praised for Recipes They Don't Write?

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After years of wondering if she should do so, she wrote her first cookbook, based on family recipes. Included was her grandmother’s spice cake, invented for her mother’s wedding cake, put into print for the world to share. It was the cake the author baked and took with her to book signings, the recipe that always worked.

And now that cake recipe is available online in a blog, published pretty much verbatim, except for the icing.

Close to 100 people have commented. They praise the cake, saying it is a perfect dessert, how one was planning to make a different cake and now would have to [Read more…] about Should Bloggers be Praised for Recipes They Don't Write?