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Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

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Freelancing

4 Ways to Use Instagram Strategically

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sternmanule-Instagram

A guest post by Cheryl Sternman Rule

In our social media ocean, most of us swim, flail, float, glide, and sputter, sometimes all in a single day. We do our best not to drown as we navigate crowded platforms, with varying degrees of success, enthusiasm, and begrudging obligation.

We also play favorites.

I, for one, love Instagram. Instagram has grown my network in ways I both couldn’t have imagined and didn’t know I needed.

Yes, I use other platforms, too, but my heart belongs to [Read more…] about 4 Ways to Use Instagram Strategically

Submit Your Writing Now to Lucky Peach

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Lucky PeachLooking for a paid outlet for your food writing?

Recently Lucky Peach launched a new website featuring “daily essays, recipes, restaurant recommendations, comics, and other miscellany,” says editor Chris Ying.

That means they need lots of content, which is the best news ever for freelance food writers. Here are some guidelines for submission:

1. Write for a monthly theme, tied to the [Read more…] about Submit Your Writing Now to Lucky Peach

Where to Write for Clips, Not Money

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Writing-for-PublicationI’m always telling people to write for pay, and to ask to be paid well. But some food writers write for self expression, or to get clips, and money is not the most important thing.

If so, these publications might be right for you. They pay anywhere from nothing to not much, but offer the satisfaction of publication:

  1. The Bitter Southerner. This gorgeous start-up online magazine only recently came up with money to pay its writers, and maybe not all of them. Here are submissions guidelines.
  2. Graze magazine, based in Chicago, is a semi-annual literary magazine. Here are submission guidelines. As told to the Review Review: “We’re interested in [Read more…] about Where to Write for Clips, Not Money

My Year of Submissions to Literary Magazines

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PaulaPanichA guest post by Paula Panich

Fueled by frustration and a manuscript of unpublished culinary essays with recipes, I spent two years writing letters to agents.

Silence.

Only one wrote back with regrets: She hadn’t heard of M.F.K. Fisher.

Fit to be tied, I swore I’d never write again. Then I thought: The literary magazines! Why not make a game of getting published?

Hundreds of small magazines buzz under our radar. These publications—some print, some online, are known as literary magazines and journals. They’ve been quietly present since [Read more…] about My Year of Submissions to Literary Magazines

How to be the Writer Magazine Editors Want

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John Kessler 1

John Kessler explains how he gets repeat assignments.

Freelance writers like John Kessler are rare — the kind of writer editors can count on, who  can tackle just about any story and come through at the last minute.

John is the full-time dining columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. On the side, he freelances for Garden & Gun, Food Arts (recently deceased), GQ, and has written for Cooking Light and Every Day with Rachael Ray.

What does it take to be the writer editors call upon? Kessler has ideas:

Q. Do you pitch new publications or do editors come to you?

A. My best work always comes from magazines where I’ve [Read more…] about How to be the Writer Magazine Editors Want

The WaPo’s Bonnie Benwick: “Send Me a Clever Recipe”

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Bonnie Benwick

Recipe Editor Bonnie Benwick at the Washington Post is open to pitches. (Photo courtesy of Deb Lindsey.)

Bonnie Benwick, deputy food editor and recipe editor at the Washington Post, is obsessed with good recipes. She tests and edits a slew of them every week for the paper’s Food Section, and wrote the Post’s first cookbook.

She also manages a crew of 30 testers, sometimes makes dishes at home for the photo shoots, and is not above running around town to find a prop or ingredient for a dish.

We met on e-mail, when she told me she was reading my book, Will Write for Food, while on vacation! More recently she interviewed me on cooking smarter, and after discussing my rant on not specifying the amount of salt in recipes,  she wrote this feature article: ‘Salt to taste,’ taken with a grain of regret. Here are her thoughts on what makes a good recipe for the Washington Post, should you wish to pitch her:

Q. Where does the Washington Post get its recipes ?

A. It’s a mix. I choose some from new cookbooks, some come from [Read more…] about The WaPo’s Bonnie Benwick: “Send Me a Clever Recipe”

“Find the Story Only You Can Write,” says Carolynn Carreño

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Carolynn-Carreno

Freelance writer and cookbook collaborator Carolynn Carreño, with her beloved dog Rufus. Do you notice that, like her advice, this photograph tells a story that is uniquely hers?

A brainy freelance writer, high-end cookbook collaborator,  and three-time James Beard journalism award nominee, Carolynn Carreño blogs  atCarolynn Carreno.wordpress.com and the Huffington Post. I tracked her down for this frank and wide-ranging interview about food writing and her own path to success: 

Q. You come across in your bio and writing as a totally food obsessed person.  Did your  writing come from that obsession?

A. Definitely. I had no intention of being a food writer. I started before blogs, and being a food writer was for stuffy old men who worked for Gourmet. I couldn’t relate to a lot of food writing because I thought it was for people who travelled and stayed at fancy hotels.

I was writing mostly for Seventeen magazine, lots of personal essays. Food started to make its way into my stories, through my family. Then I pitched a story about my dad, who had a restaurant, to Colman Andrews at Saveur. He got back to me 13 months later.  He said he was interested in [Read more…] about “Find the Story Only You Can Write,” says Carolynn Carreño