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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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Writing

Who Thinks You're a Good Writer?

October 27, 2010 by diannejacob

How I became obsessed with food from a young age. Need I say my mother was an enthusiastic home baker? My uncle Joe (right) always pressured me to read the classics.

What makes a person a good writer? Two people emailed me this week, wanting confirmation their writing was good enough.

The first was a food blogger, who wrote after reading my Beard awards post. She wondered if her blog was “up to standard” or if she was “even remotely qualified” to enter the Beard award for best blog. In her preface, she said she believed she was a good writer and storyteller and had confidence in her talents.

The second, a student in Italy studying for her masters in gastronomy, said she had read Will Write for Food, then attached two writing samples and asked for comments. She wondered if she was good enough to pursue a career as a freelance writer.

I  thought about two replies. Neither had anything to do with their work. On one hand, I thought I should encourage these two writers and say yes, because that is what people sometimes need to hear to move forward. I put that in the “Earth Mother” category of response. On the other hand, I contemplated a different [Read more…] about Who Thinks You're a Good Writer?

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: food writing, what is good writing

Food Writer Kim Severson Moves to Hard News

July 28, 2010 by diannejacob 29 Comments

As she announced on Twitter: “Look, I’ll still be writing about food. I’m just adding murder, natural disasters and politics to the mix.”

Food reporter Kim Severson is leaving her current job  at the New York Times, taking over the New York Times’ Atlanta bureau.

Why is she going? Maybe it’s for the food. In her memoir, Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life, there’s a chapter on meeting the late, great food writer Edna Lewis. Says Severson, “I didn’t know how much I didn’t know about Southern cooking until I started reading what Miss Lewis had written. Soon it spoke to me in a way that is second only to the food of Italy.”

Or maybe she missed news reporting. Her passion for getting the story was clear when I interviewed her about a typical day as a full-time food reporter for the Times. Here’s an excerpt from the new edition of Will Write for Food:

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A NEWSPAPER REPORTER

How does a food reporter at a daily paper cover her beat?

“I wake up at 6:30 a.m. and immediately hit the email to see what’s come in overnight. I subscribe to several RSS feeds and listservs. The USDA might have a package of news releases, and there are emails from grocery manufacturers associations and restaurant associations. A host of food institutions might have a valuable story idea. I can see how something’s trending, like the [Read more…] about Food Writer Kim Severson Moves to Hard News

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: food writing, Kim Severson, New York Times

Epicurious EIC Recommends You Do It Yourself

July 26, 2010 by diannejacob

Editor-in-Chief Tanya Steel was in town recently to promote Epicurious.com, home of 30,000 recipes, at the farmer’s market at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza. I thought I’d stop in to get her thoughts about today’s food writing scene.

Over spearmint tisane (for me) and coffee (for her) from Blue Bottle, she said she tries to keep her ear to the ground, stay ahead of trends, and innovate. To do so she scans 10 to 12 blogs and aggregate sites from around the country every day, including The Food Section, Cold Mud, and newspaper food section blogs. Her staff scours social networking sites.

It must be working. Her latest accomplishment, the free Epicurious app, available for the iPhone, iPad, Droid and other mobile devices, has more than 2.5 million copies in circulation, making it a leading app.

When asked how today’s food writer could get ahead, she [Read more…] about Epicurious EIC Recommends You Do It Yourself

Filed Under: Cookbooks, Food Blogging, Writing Tagged With: Epicurious app, Food blogging, food writing, self-publishing, Tanya Steel

Chronicle Books To Roll Out Cookbook-based Apps

July 19, 2010 by diannejacob

Lorena Jones became publishing director of Chronicle Books last fall, and she’s focusing on the newest part of her  job: developing dynamic digital content for mobile applications, enhanced e-boooks, and iPads.

The former publisher of Ten Speed, Jones worked at Ten Speed for 15 years. Now she’s going digital and embracing the learning curve.

“Five of us here are trying to learn all this stuff at warp speed,” she said. “We work super collaboratively.” Jones has done about a dozen deals since January, including six iPhone apps and 3 iPad apps. She calls the products “suites.”

She’s developing her talent pool, working with both established Chronicle authors and new writers excited about digital media. “I think of it like the Matrix. I think about what authors know in a [Read more…] about Chronicle Books To Roll Out Cookbook-based Apps

Filed Under: Cookbooks, Recipe Writing, Writing, Writing Apps Tagged With: Chronicle Books, digital content, digital cookbooks, food writing, Lorena Jones

The Writing Process: Are you an Introvert or Extravert?

July 14, 2010 by diannejacob 22 Comments

Just got off the phone today with the group of bloggers I’ll be on a panel with at the upcoming BlogHer annual conference in New York. And what a group it is: funny, thoughtful women, all prolific writers. I’ll be the moderator of the session, called How to Use Your Blogging to Make You a Better Writer. Here’s the line-up:

  • Humor writer Mary McCarthy of Pajamas and Coffee, who posts about such things as testing a duck-shaped dildo
  • Suzanne Reissman of Cuss and Other Rants, a New York public policy wonk by day and writer of various rants on her blog
  • Jennifer McGuiggan of The Word Cellar, who ‘s working on her MFA and blogs about the writing process.

After the session on August 7, I’ll be signing books, so if you happen to be at the conference, please stop by and say hi.

Elisa Camahort, one of the co-founders of BlogHer, was on the call and brought up how the writing process can vary  based on whether you’re an introvert or extravert. When she [Read more…] about The Writing Process: Are you an Introvert or Extravert?

Filed Under: Food Blogging, Writing Tagged With: BlogHer 10, the writing process

Anatomy of A Book Revision

July 12, 2010 by diannejacob

I thought you might like to know how a book revision works, and in doing so I’ll discuss how I approached a large writing project and how I interview.

It seems that hard and fast rules about what constitutes a book revision don’t exist. Usually it’s because the author or the publisher feels the information needs updating. And that’s how it happened.

Last year I decided to update Will Write for Food, mostly because of advances in blogging and social media. I couldn’t go back to the editor I worked with and discuss it, because a new publishing company (Perseus) acquired the original publisher of my book (Avalon). So I met with my new editor at Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus.

A girl needs to be prepared, so I brought her a list of what I thought I could enlarge upon from the first edition.  I wanted a big new chapter on food blogging. I wanted to incorporate information from bloggers in other chapters such as freelance writing and how to get started. I had co-written a cookbook in 2008 and wanted to say more about the process of writing and production, photography and collaboration. Self-publishing had changed, particularly when it came to e-books and print-on-demand. And freelance writing had changed, some of it drying up. There had to be a positive way to approach that.

She said a revision had to be 25 percent larger than the original book. That meant adding 20,000 words, about 80 pages of 8 1/2 x 11-inch paper, double spaced. We spoke in pages, though: 50 pages on blogging, 7 more pages on freelancing, 9 more pages on cookbooks. Fortunately, our meeting [Read more…] about Anatomy of A Book Revision

Filed Under: Cookbooks, Food Blogging, Writing Tagged With: Book writing, food writing, writing a revision

The Blog Turns One

June 29, 2010 by diannejacob

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…oh, hello there. My blog has made it to the one-year mark and I’m celebrating. Want to join me?

I know I’m a piker compared to many of you, but when I started blogging about food writing, I didn’t know if I could continue posting at least twice a week, or if I’d have enough to say (hah!).

I just looked back at my first post, and I think I’m still delivering what I promised: a useful place to read and comment on the world of food writing. I also said you’ll find  links to lots of articles and sites on food writing, and while that’s true,  you can now find more in my tweets, so people can read them right away. I had no idea why Twitter was valuable back then.

Launching the blog has been exhilarating. Here are some of the benefits, for those of you who might [Read more…] about The Blog Turns One

Filed Under: Food Blogging, Writing Tagged With: food writing

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