Will Write for Food. Was there ever a better book title to pique your curiosity?
Dianne Jacob, journalist, author, and writing coach, said during our recent chat (she in her beautiful home in Oakland Hills, California, and me sitting in a big comfy chair in my Brooklyn dining room), that the original title of her book was “How to Write about Food.” But “Will Write for Food” engages all the senses, going way beyond didactics, almost begging the reader to explore hidden desires and latent hungers – because, after all, who doesn’t want to scribble about edibles?
Lesson #1. A provocative title is a good start. But it is the subtitle to Jacob’s fourth edition: “Pursue Your Passion and Bring Home the Dough Writing Recipes, Cookbooks, Blogs, and more,” that says it all.
I wish this book existed in the mid-1970s when I got started in this business – first, as a chef, and then as a food writer. I’d have had all the tools I needed and the confidence a new writer longs for. Yet, even now (13 cookbooks and 600 articles later), Dianne’s fourth update still reveals professional secrets to me and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Each edition is a sociological map of the culinary landscape harkening back to 2005 when the first “Will Write for Food” was published -- well before the riotous world of blogging began. The second edition published in 2010 was early to food writing’s more entrepreneurial vibe, while the 3rd edition, published in 2015, inched away from gastronomy’s Eurocentric point of view. Now Jacob’s newest edition embraces roiling diversity and the artful virtue of “voice.” Not necessarily “storytelling,” according to Dianne, but the development of personality on the page.
What’s most different today, she observes, is that “to be a food writer also means to be a business person.” So while Jacob stirs in ample amounts of editorial prowess about how to structure a story, do an interview, or invent a good lede, she serves up multitudinous interviews and real-life experiences shared by the food writers who are joyfully, and successfully, singing for their supper. “I love unearthing this information and talking to really smart people about it. I love the learning. The people who want to write want to learn,” she said.
In this newest edition, Dianne demystifies the process to make it possible for anyone (imagine!) to write about food. “And,” she says with great earnest, “there is now money in it. A website with ads and high traffic can bring in a six-figure income.”
“Is anything being lost?” I innocently asked, “in this bulging-influencer-foodie-zeitgeist?” “The writing is suffering,” she replied. “Those who are interested in business are not necessarily focused on the writing.”
Dianne, for whom writing is paramount, comes armed with two degrees in journalism and decades of positions as an editor-in-chief and senior editor at a handful of publications, in addition to being the restaurant reviewer for the San Francisco Weekly (where she misheard be “edgy” as be “bitchy,” and so a riveting style ensued.)
More riveting still may be Dianne’s childhood table: laden with Bombay-Baghdadi food, Japanese food, Iraqi Jewish food, and Chinese food. Curious? Her parents, Orthodox Iraqi Jews who lived in China, were obsessed with food, and cooking became a metaphor for identity. Her book is dedicated to them: “For my parents who cooked to remember who they were.” I especially loved hearing about a beloved family dish that was prepared for the Sabbath: Hamin, a multi-layered complex recipe of rice-stuffed chicken with more rice and spices and boiled eggs, gets baked overnight, and then served with radishes and green onion. But that’s another story for another time.
For now, you may enjoy as a special treat, one of Dianne’s personal favorites – about comfort food and memory
https://www.diannej.com/MediaFiles/MumsComfortFood.pdf
or you can simply devour Will Write for Food, 4th edition, 2021.