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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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Want to Write Cookbook Reviews? Here are 5 Tips

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image for cookbook reviewingA guest post by Martha Lorden
 
I love cookbooks, so it’s only natural that I hunger for a way to share my interest and enthusiasm. As a result, I write cookbook reviews for Publishers Weekly (PW), a professional trade magazine designed for the folks who purchase books for libraries and bookstores.
 
PW reviews the latest and hottest cookbooks in 220-word reviews. It’s no easy feat to craft a succinct review of that size that is accurate and fair. In fact, it is maddeningly challenging.

[Read more…] about Want to Write Cookbook Reviews? Here are 5 Tips

If You Want to Write a Biography About a Famous Person or Two…

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image for story on writing a biographyAt a conference I attended recently, a panel focused on two kinds of projects: writing a memoir and writing a biography. Moderated by Cara De Silva, the panelists were memoirists Elissa Altman, Mark Russ Federman, Madhur Jaffrey; and biographers Laura Shapiro and Anne Mendelson.

I zeroed in on Anne, author of Stand By the Stove: The Story of the Women Who Gave America the Joy of Cooking. I had met her decades ago at a Symposium for Professional Food Writers at the Greenbrier. She clutched her typewritten address and read it to the crowd. It was an insightful and wry essay about her experience. She was the biographer of the [Read more…] about If You Want to Write a Biography About a Famous Person or Two…

Smitten Kitchen Shows You 100 Ways to Promote Recipes

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lead image for post about Deb PerelmanOne of the things food writers struggle with most is how to promote recipes in a way that sounds authentic and not too braggy. You know your recipe is “the best,” but you can’t keep saying that for every one you write.

So what can you do to improve your blog posts, recipe headnotes, and social media blurbs? First, I went back to my most visited post: 100 Verbs for Recipes, from Julia Child. Who else could I research, I wondered, who would [Read more…] about Smitten Kitchen Shows You 100 Ways to Promote Recipes

5 Ways To Boost Productivity When Writing About Food on the Side

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image for post on productivity

A guest post by Sarah Burchard

Barbecue sauce turned me into a writer. After 12 years of working in restaurant kitchens, I entered the world of entrepreneurship, launching a line of barbecue sauces and spice blends with a partner. At the same time, I started writing about food on the side with my blog about barbecue, taking notes wherever I went.

After seven fruitful years, I closed up shop and headed to Hawaii to pursue new dreams. While building a new career here and working on it full-time, I’m still [Read more…] about 5 Ways To Boost Productivity When Writing About Food on the Side

What I Learned by Starting a Blog Interview Series

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image for post on starting an interview series.A guest post by Lisa Johnson

A few years ago, I started a food interview series called “You Pick Six.” To my surprise, I have now completed 21 interviews of local food bloggers, food publicists, authors, news anchors, food entrepreneurs and others.

When I started blogging in 2006, I wrote at least one weekly post. But sometimes life gets in the way. Late 2014 into early 2015 was a blur of stress. My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and our family [Read more…] about What I Learned by Starting a Blog Interview Series

What I Learned Writing a Cookbook as a Late Bloomer

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A guest post by Sara Bir

My whole life I’ve dreamed of writing a cookbook. But even with formal culinary chops and years of experience as a writer, it seemed like no one in the publishing industry took me seriously. So I guess you could say I’m a late bloomer.

It probably didn’t help that my two previous book proposals were hardly mainstream. There was my idea for The Great Big Book of Hot Dogs, which I envisioned as a lavish cultural history of hot dogs; and The Pocket Pawpaw Cookbook, a book with nothing but pawpaw recipes. Do you even know what pawpaws are? Most people don’t. [Read more…] about What I Learned Writing a Cookbook as a Late Bloomer