No one is a pure type. But, as writers, we all correspond loosely or tightly to certain types. You are not alone, or utterly unlike all others, or without the ability to contrast and compare yourself to writers whom you resemble — if only slightly. The deepest and best reason to do this is to grow in self-knowledge, and in the ability to tell your own tent from the tents of others.
As a writer, do you know your type?
No type below will be 100% you, but one will be much closer than all the others. You will glimpse key aspects of yourself in two or three. You will feel a strong disaffinity for one or two.
Type 1 – The Literary Writer
Love of language gets this writer to her desk. No pleasure she can experience rivals using language to its fullest – whether to break your heart, deliver you the subtlest of foods for thought, shake the dust off you, or simply to knock you down. Not that she needs an audience – she writes to be writing. When she writes about food, it’s not about food, but about the language that conjures the food. Maybe the world knows her, maybe it doesn’t, but you’ve sized her up: She’s an artist, deep and true.
Is this you?
If yes, then your greatest strength is the quality of your gift. Obstacles you may meet include perfectionism, isolation, making deadlines, debilitating bouts of writer’s block, crises of doubt, and being too thin-skinned for the marketplace.
Something very exciting is happening this month. A brand-new food magazine – In Search of Taste – is due out in Britain. Forget any stereotypes of British food that you’re hauling around in your mind.
International in scope, In Search of Taste promises stunning imagery, artistic nuances, and a sense of beauty in a world fraught with terror and suffering and pain, reminding us of the very things that makes us so human: cooking and cuisine and culture.
The following interview with In Search of Taste’s editor, Keith Reeves, offers us a taste of what we can expect. As Reeves so rightly says, “Eating and drinking are the most important things anyone must do, and selecting what to eat and drink is the most important decision we all undertake.”
What prompted you to start In Search of Taste? Tell us a little about the background. Was there an epiphany moment or did the idea come slowly?
Epiphany carries far too many connotations of urgency and divine inspiration. Intermittent revelations better describe the magazine’s journey, with gathering flickers rather than one blinding light. But we’re still en route!
I initially felt that there were more than enough column inches written on the subject of food and wine and to attempt further comment was perhaps foolhardy. But when I looked closer, simple and direct dialogue seemed scarce. There appeared to be something of a drift towards entertainment and a move away from straightforward and helpful information.
The first of a series of articles for an upcoming book on writing about food
Getting Started
Pretend for a moment that this is you.
Over lunch, you and a friend discuss an important event. “I’ll have to go shopping,” you tell her. “My only outfit that’s perfect for the occasion has been seen too many times.” Your friend’s eyes sparkle as she replies, “Be sure to find something that expresses your personality and taste, and that sends the right vibe at a glance.” She’s kidding, of course – she knows that’s the only kind of shopping you ever do.
Is branding yourself as a writer this easy? Let’s anatomize the process.
Everyone is unerring about something — the can’t-fail baked pasta dish, the elevator pitch that always lands a meeting, the only words in the world that will comfort a desolate child. If you look closely at areas of your life where high competence and pure instinct lead you again and again to distinctiveness and success, then you will come face to face with your personal brand – nothing more or less than the way other people know you to be in the world, the keynote behavior they have come to expect of you.
Your personal brand does not deny the breadth or depth of your individuality. Rather, it introduces you to others in a way you can control – until you decide when and how to let them know you even better.
Good branding as a writer leads to your being enough of a known quantity that editors and publishers think of you when they have a certain type of assignment to hand out, and to your being counted on by a readership to deliver a certain kind of experience it craves. Your sense of your brand increases your writing efficiency, too, by making it faster and easier for you to know the difference between projects that are right for you and projects that are merely interesting to you. The difference between being appreciated as a versatile writer and being dismissed as “all over the map” is often a matter of branding, and this is a crucial consideration when you first set out to create a coherent body of work.
It’s never too soon to establish your brand as a writer. Here are 7 high-yield prompts to tighten your focus on branding, even before you begin to organize your writing life or choose the topic of your first piece.
Would you rather tell a story, or convey information in a non-narrative way?
Are you writing from expertise or as a generalist who can do the research?
Do you write for a specific readership, and know exactly what you offer it?
Which of these word counts is the most “you” – up to 750, 1000 to 1500, or 1500+?
Is your voice intimate and conversational, or do you favor a professional distance?
What’s unusual or even unique about you that will come through in your writing?
Once readers begin to know you a bit, which three words should come to their minds when they see your name?
Remember, a brand is not a label. Rather, it’s powerful knowledge that you have about yourself as a writer, and that you want others to recognize you by. They shouldn’t have to hunt for a label to do that. And the best thing about branding yourself as a writer is that it prevents others from labeling you first.
Expanding Your Brand
The time will come when you want to expand your brand. Life will deliver you a compelling new interest that becomes intrinsic to the writer you are. Or, after some time, your readers will know you well enough to welcome what they don’t necessarily expect from you, as you selectively introduce it to them. Journalists who know the secrets of telling a great story may turn to fiction, for instance, without losing readers. Food writers may move to another country, where food culture is different from what their readers usually seek information about, yet this new focus is an addition to their portfolio, not a departure from it. The key to expanding your brand is to do it mindfully and not all at once – just as you might include one unfamiliar dish, not five, in a party menu that already works beautifully.
Rebranding
If you are a writer shifting your focus to food and travel writing, but that’s not how people think of you yet, well – first, congratulations on already having readers who think of you a certain way. The chances are that you have written about food and travel before, even if tangentially, so this change is not coming out of left field. To be true to themselves, many artists and writers have had to redefine their mission, and do a lot of letting go in order to move faster in their new direction. This is risky and it takes courage, because a readership is a priceless asset, and no writer wants it to melt away.
Unlike brand expansion, rebranding is official business that a writer needs to take charge of unambiguously, if not with fanfare. You might start with the story of an experience you found irresistible, that led you straight to a new commitment as a writer. You are the same, only different – can you share the excitement about that? You have new vistas for your readers – you want nothing more than to pull back the curtain. If you suspect or know that your readers are not – particularly — gastronomes, then start with the story of how you came to develop this interest, one they can follow with pleasure even if they are not yet there. Readers may not care as much as you do about food, but they may be led to care tremendously about the cultures and the communities that food writing can open to them.
Owing to your new subject matter, you are hardly a different person as a writer – you are a writer whom readers already know, throwing open a new window onto the world for them. Aim, if you are rebranding, for the kind of continuity that underlies all shifts in subject matter – the continuity found in voice, tone and in the mission to connect.
To sum up —
If you are consistent over time, then you already have a personal brand that is very real to others. Do you know what it is?
Your brand as a writer enables readers to choose to read you, and editors to choose you for assignments. Now – what is it?
A sure sense of your brand will save you time as a writer by quickly steering you away from subjects that are “not you.” Now — can you see that body of work that is you in sharper focus yet?
Developing a strong brand as a writer will make it harder for others to either label you themselves or draw a blank when they see your name. Is there an image management problem for you to solve here?
Tread carefully and strategically when you expand your brand, or rebrand. If this is what’s next for you, have you crafted a plan?
Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.
Every Thanksgiving I make a list of the 10 books about food and cooking that made the greatest impact on me that year. My criteria? I have to have bought them, read them through, loved them and cooked from them if they include recipes. Not all do. Food writing is changing — one glance at the list below will show you how much. What about your own Top Ten?
1.) The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food, by Dan Barber
A visionary book. Can we make this future? Will we?
2.) The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity, by Sandra M. Gilbert
The subject as considered by one of the great minds of our time. Endlessly rewarding.
3.) The Food History Reader: Primary Sources, by Ken Albala
Magnificent choices. Now everyone can be a student of the dazzling Ken Albala.
4.) Cumin, Camels and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey, by Gary Paul Nabhan
Nobody knows the desert and its potential like professor and farmer Gary Paul Nabhan. An exceptionally moving book.
5.) Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts, by Aglaia Kremezi
To simplify, to exalt real flavor, to live lightly on the earth — this is the book.
6.) Yucatan: Recipes from a Culinary Expedition, by David Sterling
Deep insight into a marvelous, highly local cuisine with unique features.
7.) Heritage, by Sean Brock
A chef of passionate dedication works to preserve the heritage foodways of the American South. Certain people who shall be nameless have given Southern cooking a bad name lately. THIS helps!
8.) The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, by Dan Jurafsky
Hilarious and erudite. If you don’t really know if you like language better than food, or vice versa, read this. Zero conflict.
9.) Porta Palazzo: The Anthropology of an Italian Market, by Rachel Black (paperback edition 2014)
The largest open market in Europe holds up the mirror to Italian society.
10) Simple French Food, by Richard Olney (40th Anniversary Edition)
Were you trying, as a teenager, to master the art of French cooking? Then of course you went to Julia, but you might have gone to Richard, too. Matchless instruction, such beautiful prose that you can read it aloud for pleasure, and recipes that cannot disappoint.
Everyone is interested in Kate Middleton’s diet(s), especially now that she is pregnant with her second child
by Jonell Galloway
Everyone is interested in Kate Middleton’s diet, but is there really anything we can rightly called The Kate Middleton Diet?
There is more conjecture than anything, and it makes for lots of print in the British tabloids.
Most tabloids claim that Kate Middleton, now Duchess of Cambridge, followed the Dukan Diet to lose weight for her wedding. Pierre Dukan, founder of the protein-based, low-carb diet, told the New York Daily News that Middleton lost far too much weight before her wedding, but stated that it is still safe for her to continue it during her second pregnancy, despite her severe case of hyperemesis gravidarum, characterized by severe nausea, vomiting, weight loss, and electrolyte disturbance during pregnancy.
But word has it that this is just one of the diets Kate has done. Apparently, another diet secret which she followed it during her first pregnancy, and now follows two days a week, is an all-juice diet.
To lose weight after her first pregnancy, The Daily Mailreported that Kate went on a raw diet, munching on only ceviche, goji berries, gazpacho, watermelon salad, almond milk and tabbouleh.
The Dukan Diet is a classic diet French women use to control their weight. The French site Baby Book agrees with Dr. Dukan that it is safe to continue the diet during pregnancy, and that the days of women eating for two are behind us. Of course, Dukan was banned from practicing medicine in his native France in 2013. Both his U.K. and American sites have been removed. The French domain name, dukandiet.fr, is reportedly for sale.
Since graduating from college, the Duchess of Cambridge is said to have gone from a size 10 or 12 to a size 6.
Controversy surround Kate’s seemingly favorite diet or weight control secrets and will undoubtedly continue to be followed closely both by the press and readers for years to come.
Below you will find a spectrum of behaviors that are food writer markers in early life, as well as some behaviors that do not strongly associate to food writing. Say yes to all that apply. Attach a zero to behaviors that do not resonate with you. Each entry below, a. through e., is is worth points in ascending order — a. is 1, b. is 2, c. is 3, d. is 4, and e. is 5. So, the most you could accumulate for each division — (1,), (2.) and (3.) — is 15 points, for a total score of 45. My research and experience tell me that scoring higher than 40 makes you, hopelessly, a food writer. See that you think!
(1.) In childhood under 10, you
(a.) Ate what you were given, mainly, but thought over the texture pretty hard.
(b.) Wondered about the food in foreign countries. Was it better? Could you cook it just fine without going there?
(c.) Read carefully, rather than skipped over, the bits about food in your usual reading matter.
(d.) Sniffed from spice jars.
(e.) Were asked not to complain about the food, ever, even though you weren’t complaining, exactly. You were trying to help.
(2.) In early adolescence, you
(a.) Read and wrote well ahead of your grade level, regardless of other academic aptitudes.
(b.) Cooked with adults, for lack of interested peers. Cooked to get adults out of the kitchen.
(c.) Started feeling passionate about certain writers: they were writing for YOU.
(d.) Put out at least two issues of a newsletter about the food at school and at hangouts.
(e.) Sniffed wine, tried to taste it, daydreamed a lot, wanted to be older — at least 16.
(3.) Mid-adolescence through age 21, you
(a.) Worked to expand your food vocabulary because there were food sensations you experienced but had no words for.
(b.) Considered “year abroad” programs based on the food that might be involved.
(c.) Used more of your available funds to eat well than other students did, cut back elsewhere to afford it.
(d.) Sniffed fragrances, liked satin, drank wine.
(e.) Made lists of destination restaurants, and other things to experience for the sake of writing about them.
Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.
So many great writers need their writing rooms to meet precise specs. E.B. White preferred a rough-hewn, minimalist space, with nothing but a typewriter. Virginia Woolf needed lots of green around her, and took some serious kidding about it from her sister. I have noticed that a writing room is almost never gender-neutral, even when the writer is going for a low-key, orderly space that gives little away. There’s something I need, that I’ll give up things I like to get: a window. Looking at photos like the National Trust photo above, of Vita Sackville-West’s writing table at Sissinghurst, I always notice — does the writing table face a window, or a wall?
Which leads me to wonder — how much of a writing prompt is your desk itself? It has four corners, like the ancient Chinese idea of the Universe. Within that space, you can put anything you have that helps. When you look up from your work, are you still seeing with the mind’s eye? What could you arrange to see, physically, that would give you the most of what you needed to keep writing?
Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.
We value a bright kitchen for many reasons — ventilation, ease of cleaning, the unimpeded visibility of the food we prepare, and not least, the maintenance of the mood of the cook. The cook is almost always the owner of the kitchen, now. In a centuries-old kitchen, however, like this one at Townend in the UK (National Trust Photo), that was not the case. There were paid workers who lacked for light and fresh air, in the kitchen all day and into the night. In these circumstances, even a tiny slice of light makes a big difference. One candle, reflected in a glass bowl full of water. It was called a light enhancer, and it could bring deep joy.
Elatia Harris is a writer and consulting editor in Cambridge, Mass. She is most often at work on books and articles about food, wine and travel. Contact her at elatiaharrisATgmailDOTcom or via text at 617-599-7159.
