Skip links

Dianne Jacob, Will Write For Food

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

Header Right

Main navigation

freelance writing

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

by 2 Comments

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

5 Ways to Know When Your Writing is Done

by 4 Comments

Image for how to know when your writing is done.How do you know when your writing is done or your blog post is finished? You could keep going over it endlessly, rewriting and wondering if you need to do more research or explaining. Or adding more keywords and spiffing up the SEO.

But if you do so, will it be finished then? Or maybe you’re not sure what constitutes “finished” in the first place.

As an editor, I know what it’s like to pull a piece away from a writer who wants to keep working on it. And as a writer, I also know what it’s like to refine right up to the last second. So I have some ideas that might help.

Here’s how you know when your writing is done:

1. You have a deadline. If an editor hasn’t given you one, set one anyway. Doing so helps you create an end for your work or post. My blog post deadline is Tuesday morning. I can’t keep working on each post forever that way.

2. You have been over the blog post, chapter, or story, many times. You gave yourself time for a thorough edit, and you don’t see what to change any longer.

3. You have spell checked every single sentence. Everyone hates typos. It makes you look careless. I find that even with spell check, errors creep in, so make time to print out the piece or post, and look it over carefully. Or have someone else read the post for you.

Also check all links to make sure they open correctly, and in a new window.

4. You met your criteria. If you have an assignment letter or a contract, review it. Or review your pitch letter and emails to make sure you’re sending the story the editor expects.

If you’re blogging and use regular structures for your posts, make sure your post complies. (You use links to past posts, for example.)

5. You have done your best. Do you feel satisfied that you have said what you wanted to say, the best you could? If you have a level of confidence about your piece or blog post, you’re done.

Do you have trouble letting go of a story or blog post? As an editor, I can relate. I can keep editing forever, it seems.

* * *

You might also like:

Why it’s Both Easier and Harder to Freelance for Publication

by Leave a Comment

Bonnie Tsui has freelanced for publications for more than a decade, including The New York Times, Travel + Leisure and as a contributing editor for San Francisco magazine. Recently she received an annual award for food writing from the San Francisco Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier.

That gave me the opportunity to interview her, since both of us became Dames recently. She concluded that [Read more…] about Why it’s Both Easier and Harder to Freelance for Publication

Damn Right: I Do Make a Living Writing About Food

by 39 Comments

A guest post by Naomi Tomky

As a freelance food writer, when I saw Dianne end her post positing that, perhaps, food writers are their own worst enemy when it comes to demanding good pay, I knew she was right.

But it’s a deeper problem than that. Not only did her piece on how there’s no money in food writing not match my experience, but in a way, it [Read more…] about Damn Right: I Do Make a Living Writing About Food

12 Tips for Pitching Articles to Publications and Websites

by 6 Comments

I’m just back from the Wine Writers Symposium in Napa, where one of the panels I was on covered pitching articles.

I was really roughing it at this conference, if you must know. The event was at Meadowood, a luxury resort, for four nights. We drank or tasted many fine Napa Valley wines both there and at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. And we feasted on fresh crab, duck, truffles, and waygu beef.

But now back to real life, where I need to diet. And you, dear reader, would like more freelance assignments. On the Symposium panel with me were [Read more…] about 12 Tips for Pitching Articles to Publications and Websites

On Writing an Award-Winning Essay

by 29 Comments

dianne-jacob-mangoes

Can you tell that I still love mangoes, the subject of my essay? My local supermarket stocks succulent Atulfos, similar to the ones my dad adored. (Photo by Owen Rubin.)

You might think that writers who win awards have natural talent and dash off their stories in an afternoon. That’s the stereotype. Yes, a story I wrote called The Meaning of Mangoes won two national awards! But I didn’t dash it off, and it took me forever.

Here’s the path of my mango essay and what I learned:

Sixteen years ago, I wrote a piece about my parents and mangoes. A start-up website published it. It happened because I sat next to a woman during an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conference, and told her a few stories. The next day she [Read more…] about On Writing an Award-Winning Essay

My Year of Submissions to Literary Magazines

by 24 Comments

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