Get Started With Food Writing

The farmers markets are in full swing and it's a great time to get inspiration in the kitchen. What is in season right now? Take it home and try to cook a few recipes. If it is an original recipe, write down everything that you do. Buy enough so you can test or develop several recipes. When you have 4-5 recipes with that food, you can pitch for next summer in the appropriate cooking magazine.

Part of the battle with writing about food is that you need to find the right words. To simply say that food is "tasty" or "good" is not enough.

As an exercise make a list of your favorite foods. Try to find at least five. For each food, use a separate sheet of paper.

On the top of each page, write the food. Set your timer for fifteen minutes for each food item. On each page, write about the food. Use words and adjectives that come to your mind. Try to get creative, but your goal is more speed than creativity. Try to fill up the page. You don't need to write complete sentences, you can make a list if you want.

For example, if you wrote that "mac and cheese" you might write about a memory you had, your mom's classic recipe, or that the way the cheese and the macaroni blend together reminds you of a river... all of those would be acceptable.

If you do this several times a week, you will find that it improves your writing.

If you are a food writer (or an aspiring one) you may want to consider writing a cookbook. A good way for a beginner to do this is to write a cookbook and then publish it yourself. This works especially well if you have a blog that already has a good readership. If you don't have a blog yet, don't worry. You can set the blog up while you are working on your cookbook and promote it.

Do you want to get practice as a food writer? Then start a blog! You can use a free service such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com.

Or you can host a blog on your own domain.

Your food writing blog should contain food photographs (you can either take your own, purchase photographs from stock photography sites, of find some in the public domain). You can also share your own personal tips and recipes.

The goal is for people to get a feel for your style and the types of foods that you cook.

I like Blogger much better than wordpress.com because with Blogger you can put up Adsense adds. In fact, it seems encouraged. However, I haven't used these free sites in a while. My favorite way to have a blog now that I know better is to reserve the domain and install wordpress.

I have really neglected my food writing. I've been spending a lot of time completing projects for clients, and not enough nurturing my own career and my own creativity.

In an effort to change that, I am challenging myself to getting back into food writing. Here is what I will do:

1. Write five queries a week
2. Maintain a blog with my own food writing
3. Keep track of all my recipes
4. Finish the food writing class I took a while ago. I'm almost there!

I am not completely out of touch because I have a very rewarding gig as the Greek Food Editor at BellaOnline.com. But, I want more. :) I'll keep you posted.

Update for July 6, 2007

I updated my food writing blogs today for the first time in a while. This is a good first step for getting back into food writing. :)

Check them out:

Katherine Cooks

This Girl Cooks

Update for February 21, 2009

I am no longer writing at any of the places I mentioned above. However, I do have some new food blogging related projects.

Greek Cooking

This Girl Cooks

Mangia Mediterranean

April 30, 2009

I've completely stopped posting at those blogs. Instead, I have some other projects in the works. I am getting back to my old fashioned roots of querying and writing for publication. I can't wait!