Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

Writing

All the Other Jobs We Do

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Food writing doesn’t pay the bills. I hope this isn’t news to you. Sure, a few people are employed full time to write about food. Did you notice the key word? Few.

To make ends meet, the rest of us self-employed types take other jobs: cooking classes, private cheffing and catering, consulting for corporations, more lucrative forms of writing, and editing. And a lot of people have real jobs during the day and write about food on the side.

The thing is, we’re still obsessed with food. So how can we get  jobs working on what we love?

Enter two books. The first, self published in 2008 by the wickedly funny Irena Chalmers, teacher of food writing at the Culinary Institute of America, is Food Jobs:150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers. Now, I can’t be objective about this book because I have adored Irena since I heard her speak at an International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference years ago. She was hilarious and wise, and I vowed to get to know her.

I have, and now we are friends. I was a guest speaker at her class last year, and she published an excerpt from my book, Will Write for Food, in Food Jobs. So of course I think this book is good reading, practical, and jammed with good ideas and insights.

Coming from a culinary school perspective, Irena [Read more…] about All the Other Jobs We Do

Writing Contest: Similes Make Food Writing Fun

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It’s been a while since I’ve held a food writing contest on this blog, so I thought I’d blast out another one, just for fun. This time, let’s have a simile writing contest.

Similes are comparisons that starts with “like” or “as,” for comparing two unlike things. Why would you want to use them? You need as many tools as possible in your writing toolbox. Similes are a welcome alternative to adjectives. They’re playful, making your writing fun to read. Restaurant reviewers are particularly good employers of similes because [Read more…] about Writing Contest: Similes Make Food Writing Fun

An Artist and Her Process: No Words Necessary

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Last week I walked around a San Francisco art gallery with an artist friend. An abstract painter, Kimetha had a solo show of small oils on wood. As I admired her images, I thought about how different we were as painter and writer.

As a word person, I immediately reached for words to explain my reactions to her pieces. They remind me of bright summer light, I told her, and the movement of a slight breeze through curtains or an open window.

She nodded politely. She doesn’t think about her paintings in that way. Her process, similar to a writer’s, involves putting work down and then erasing it. She might work on a painting for a year, layering color and then taking it away to let the underpainting shine through. She uses small brush strokes, tiny edges of color. She burnishes it and sands it, just as writers polish their work.

On that late spring afternoon, she had come to say good-bye to her paintings. The show closed the next day and most of her pieces were sold. For a year’s work on this painting, she will make a few hundred dollars. That’s another way she is similar to a writer, I thought.

Kimetha  struggles to name her abstract paintings and leaves some untitled. For her, the words are an afterthought. For me, they are everything.

Dissing Food Can Be Dangerous

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Remember back in 1996 when Texas cattle ranchers sued Oprah Winfrey for discussing mad cow disease on her show? The ranchers lost in an appeal, but the lawsuit had a lasting effect.

Or did it? Did you know that we have to be careful when writing critically about any food or ingredient?

Food libel laws, like the ones in Texas and in 12 other states, are still very much alive. They allow a food manufacturer or processor to sue for what they believe are disparaging remarks about their products. Apple growers sued CBS a few years ago after the Alar apple scare, and McDonald’s has sued two environmental activists in England over a critical pamphlet.

Carrie Vitt of Deliciously Organic reminded me of these laws recently. She’s working on a book based on her blog, and her publisher is concerned about what she says in print. “I am allowed to say, “I don’t eat conventionally grown spinach because when I do I get a severe migraine. That would be OK because it’s just my opinion and I’m not telling [Read more…] about Dissing Food Can Be Dangerous

Of Course Food is Just like Fashion

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bacon-cupcakesTut-tutting erupted earlier this week when the soon-to-be publisher of Bon Appetit told an interviewer she didn’t see much difference between food and fashion.

In an interview in Women’s Wear Daily, Carol Smith, senior vice president and chief brand officer of Elle Group, said she was lured from her current job while having a drink with future boss Thomas A. Florio, Condé Nast’s senior vice president and publishing director:

“He said, ‘Could you ever see yourself doing for food what you did for fashion with Elle?’” Smith recalled. “I had never even thought about it….Then I started to think, you know, what’s the difference between [Read more…] about Of Course Food is Just like Fashion

Cookbook Giveaway: Seasonal Fruit Desserts

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Fruit Desserts.Madison

Six years ago Deborah Madison started working on a cookbook she called “Desserts for the Pastry Impaired.”

“Pastry chefs are exacting people who have a deep sense about measurement and clean aprons,” she explains. “Cooking is more intuitive, more relaxed, with more opportunities to taste and adjust.” She wanted to write a less rigid book about desserts.

As she wrote the book, the focus gradually changed to fruit, a natural for someone with a bent towards produce. “When you’re working on a book it talks to you in different ways over time,” she says. Apparently it talked to the editor in a different way too. Madison found out her editor regarded her title as a placeholder. “That kind of changed things,” Deborah admits good-naturedly.

She was already three years into the project when it shifted, but that was fine. Seasonal Fruit Desserts: From Orchard, Farm, and Market stayed “in the background, although I was always working on it.” 

Here’s what she was doing in the foreground. She wrote three other cookbooks: What We Eat When We Eat Alone: Stories and 100 Recipes; Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen; and Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen.

No stranger to working on challenging projects in tandem, Deb had opened a restaurant during the [Read more…] about Cookbook Giveaway: Seasonal Fruit Desserts

Darra Goldstein’s Magnificent Brain and My Pink Bathrobe

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GastronomicaEditor in Chief Darra Goldstein swept into town the other night to celebrate 10 years of Gastronomica magazine, her quarterly food writing journal about “sensual and intellectual nourishment.” She founded the publication in her copious spare time as a professor of Russian at Williams College.

I saw her in a wide-ranging conversation on food, culture, and identity at UC Berkeley with sociology professor Barry Glassner, author of The Gospel of Food: Why We Should Stop Worrying and Enjoy What We Eat.

The multiple award-winning Goldstein, who lived in Russia, studied in Helsinki and is the author of four cookbooks, began the conversation discussing Culinary Cultures of Europe, a book she edited where writers from 45 countries laid out views on how food could be used to encourage tolerance and diversity.

Oh, how wonderful to leave my office and computer for a few [Read more…] about Darra Goldstein’s Magnificent Brain and My Pink Bathrobe