Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

Writing

Is Ruth Reichl Selling Out at Gilt Taste?

by 40 Comments

Earlier this year, former Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl began her consulting gig (rumored to be worth $250,000 annually) at Gilt Taste, a high end web food store that’s paying her to advise on food writing on its website.

Gilt Taste is a new kind of media for Reichl, one that blurs the line between advertising and editorial. That’s a sea change from her days at Gourmet, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. To my surprise, she welcomed the switch.

“The notion of the wall between advertising and editorial,” she begins in an interview with Eater, “If you’re dependent on sales and you only have things you are really proud of, there’s no need for that wall and there’s no reason to be embarrassed by saying a product is great and this is why it’s great.”

Really? My eyes widened. So she’s assigning advertorial now, where a company pays to get an enthusiastic article that looks and smells like regular journalism? And her big name freelancers are going for this? The former magazine editor in me got ready to protest.

No, no, and no. It’s so much tamer than that. Some of the stories have links to products Gilt Taste sells. That’s it. Links.

(Here are two examples. For a recipe by New York Times regular freelancer Melissa Clark on steak and potatoes, the words “boneless ribeye steaks” are hot, and they link to a catalog item for $127.95 for four [Read more…] about Is Ruth Reichl Selling Out at Gilt Taste?

When Your Partner Reads Your Work

by 81 Comments

Last week at a panel on writing at BlogHer Food in Atlanta, David Leite said he never asks his partner to read his drafts.

“My husband cowers in the corner when I ask him to read something,” he confessed. He suggested people find someone else to review their writing, or just read it themselves.

“Do not give it to your partner to read,” he cautioned. “They’ll either fawn over caca or critique everything.”

I took the mic and respectfully disagreed. My husband reads almost every blog post I write. And I’m thrilled that, after 23 years of marriage, he is still willing to critique my work in a constructive manner.

It takes discipline to be just as respectful as he delivers the news, however. I’m still working on that. If I get out my annoyed voice and say, “What are you talking about? Of course readers will understand,” it doesn’t help.

Here’s what Owen reads for in a blog post:

1. Am I talking to myself? Sometimes I assume readers know, and he has no idea what I mean. In the rewrite, I back up and explain a situation or fill in a gap.

2. Is he bored? My post is exciting to me, but I notice if he’s not getting into it. While he is not my target reader, if he finds it difficult to concentrate, I figure out how to pump up the language, make the beginning snappier, or tighten the delivery. (Miraculously, he found this post riveting.)

3. Do long sentences need untangling? Sometimes he trips over them. That lets me know that I need more variety in my sentence lengths, to establish rhythm and interest.

4. Do I have typos, spelling or punctuation errors, or  extra spaces? He’s great at finding them.

I don’t ask Owen to read everything. For a cover story on food writing for the May/June Writer’s Digest (sorry, it’s only available on a newsstand), I enlisted two colleagues, both bloggers and freelance writers, to review a draft for me. I promised to read something for them in return.

Ironically, I realized recently that Owen doesn’t ask me to read his stuff (he writes product reviews for a Mac website as a hobby). When I asked him why, he said I’m too busy editing other people’s work. Sweet!

If you don’t have someone to read your work, try reading it out loud to yourself. And if you do use a partner or spouse for feedback, I’m curious to hear how, or whether, it’s worked for you.

Photo from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5 Ways to Write Recipes that Sell Without Selling

by

It’s a quandry. You want to entice readers to make your recipes, but you don’t want to just hit them over the head with sales pitches.

Fortunately, there are more subtle ways to attract people to a recipe. Here are five methods cookbook authors use to draw in readers:

1. Make them salivate. Describe the food and how it’s cooked so readers can not only imaging tasting it, but they see it, smell it, hear it, even imagine touching it. Here’s a headnote for South Indian-Style Eggplant Pickle, from Cradle of Flavor by Saveur Editor-in-Chief James Oseland that gets the senses going:

“This south Indian-style pickle is popular in Malaysian kitchens, although the sugar in it is a decidedly Malaysian addition. Similar to caponata, the Sicilian eggplant relish, it’s made of chunks of Japanese eggplants in a lavishly spiced sweet-sour pickling base. Coriander, fennel, cumin, chiles, ginger, and cinnamon all vie for dominance, creating a lush layering of flavors. The eggplants are fried and then put in the pickling base, rather than cooked in it. Japanese eggplants, which are commonly used in Malaysian cuisine, cook quickly, so frying them first give you more control, ensuring that they won’t come out mushy.”

Notice his evocative description, so specific that you can almost taste the eggplant. He assumes you may not know caponata, so he describes it too. Then he tells you how to cook the dish, so you can [Read more…] about 5 Ways to Write Recipes that Sell Without Selling

Should @RuthBourdain Win a Beard Nomination?

by

I asked former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl this very question last week, after a talk she gave at Stanford University.

Turns out that the James Beard awards, the so-called “Oscars of food writing,” launched a new humor category and nominated an anonymous tweeter called Ruth Bourdain.

This fictional character’s rain of raunchy tweets mash up Ruth Reichl and bad boy Anthony Bourdain (That’s Bourdain’s face and Reichl’s hair in the photo), often satirizing Reichl’s lyrical tweets in Bourdain’s sardonic tone. She mimics his humor, shock value and swearing.

There’s been lots of hand-wringing in the press about this nomination, because RuBo is anonymous. Also because the category is for a journalism award. I mean, are tweets journalism?

Reichl said she “loved the idea” of a humorous food writing category, and that Ruth Bourdain “wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago,” because of Twitter. Both Reichl and Bourdain are rooting for her to win. Reichl said she suspects RuthBourdain is a man. She’s dying to see whether this [Read more…] about Should @RuthBourdain Win a Beard Nomination?

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

by

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

5 Ways to Write Posts On a Schedule

by 76 Comments

Do you write a new blog post only when inspiration strikes, or only when you have  “something to say? ”

I’ll bet that if you answered yes to either, you don’t post very often, or with any regularity.

Waiting for inspiration can be a trap. What if no inspiration strikes, or does not strike with any regularity? When it does strike, you might be busy. You may not get to your computer to develop it, or you might forget. You might write down your idea and then not come back to it. The result: you post nothing, or you post infrequently.

Waiting to have something to say works the same way. What if you don’t have anything to say for several days? Or you fail to develop the “something” when you did think of it.

Did you notice the key word? It’s “waiting.” Waiting is a waste of time. What matters is “doing.”

Blogging regularly takes forethought and a strategy, particularly if you’re a recipe poster. With a little planning, you can improve your blogging quantity. Here are 5 tips on how to post regularly:

1. Establish a schedule and stick to it. What is the right amount? Posting at least once a week is realistic. If you’re more ambitious or have more time, go for more. I post twice a week, and if I hadn’t made that decision, I’d probably post a lot less.

Whatever you decide, be sure it’s an amount that you can handle, every week, no matter what. Don’t start out with guns blazing and then fade out from exhaustion when you can’t keep it up. Be honest about what you can handle, and you’ll be more likely to succeed.

2. Pencil it in. This is an old trick. If you block out the time in your calendar, you’re more likely to get the work done. Figure out what times are best for you. Maybe you only blog at night after the kids go to bed. Maybe you’re best in the morning, before reading email. Figure out how much time you need. Don’t schedule an hour when you need three.

3. Focus. When the time comes, put your bum in the chair and don’t get up until you’ve got a draft. Don’t check email or social media or answer the phone. If you’re still drawing a blank, spend 15 minutes (set a timer so you don’t get sucked in) scanning the net, reading news items or blog posts that might inspire you. If you have the luxury, come back to your draft for a final edit before posting. You’ll always find something to improve.

4. Make a list of upcoming blog topics. It’s a sure-fire way to have “something to say.” Make it long and varied, such as a book review, an event, an essay, and a recipe. List some subjects you can write at any time, and some that require planning. Think of some short posts, a minimum of 200 words. The more you mix it up, and the longer your list, the easier it will be to pick what suits you. If you can’t come up with topics, try keywords. Or write down ideas for a series.

Stick with topics that excite you or that you know a lot about, rather than what you think you should write about.

5. Take photos to inspire you. You might decide to write about a cookie exchange, a dish you found on a trip, or a restaurant meal, all because you took photos at the time that are good enough for a blog post. Use events in your daily life to springboard into a post.

I’m not going to tell you to stockpile posts, because I can’t figure out how to do it. I remember David Lebovitz astonishing the crowd at the first BlogHer Food when he admitted he had dozens of posts in various stages of development. I can only aspire.

Got more tips on how to be a regular blogger? I’d love to know.

The Worst Food Writing Words

by

The most overused word in the food writer's lexicon.

While chatting with Brooke Burton of Food Woolf, she mentioned that L.A. Weekly gave her a list of words freelancing food writers are not to use. She reeled off a few from memory:

  • farm fresh
  • sustainable
  • local
  • yummy.

If I wanted to see a good list, she suggested, I could read these blog posts: Top Ten Foodie Words We Hate: Starting with Foodie, and a follow-up generated by the response to the first article, Part 2. Written by Amy Scattergood, L.A. Weekly’s food blog editor, the list of 20 words mixes fad terms like “iconic” and “mixologist” with bland, boring terms like “offering.”

Brilliant! Somehow I missed this list. I like it because it branches out  from the usual vague adjectives I’m always going on about: delicious. wonderful, and tasty. I’ll add a few more:

  • authentic: a hotly contested word, because no matter where you travel, there is never just one version of Spaghetti Bolognese or Pad Thai.
  • orbs: When tired of saying “grapes,” do not substitute “orbs.” No one talks that way.
  • toothsome: Not sure what this means. Chewy? If so, use a word we all understand.

Now it’s your turn. Which words make you cringe or see red? Do you disagree with Scattergood’s or my choices?