Resources

Stimulation for Writers in the TRE Community

Food Writing Prompts

Do you have a great idea every single time you sit down to write? An idea you are on fire with?

If so, that would be most unwriterly.

Not feeling inspired, however, is what keeps many writers from being productive – even from beginning to be.

Productivity will come with application. Inspiration is a matter of showing up for it. Be there.

Be here, too. Where we provide you with stimulation. Writing prompts, for instance. Rather than ask you to force a focus that won’t come, we invite you to jumpstart your productivity with writing prompts. Whether visual, verbal, or olfactory, prompts work the way leafing rapidly through a cookbook works, when you can’t think exactly what to cook: you may not see a recipe you’ll perform, but your thinking gains in ease and speed from small doses of stimulation that throw open big windows for you. Check out our food writing prompts.

Food Writer Role Models

Be who you are, of course. It’s the Socratic lesson.

And it’s hard. To make it a little easier, we have assembled a company of writers for you to engage with (LINK TO ENTIRE LIST) en route to establishing both your turf and your voice. These writers may treat food glancingly or with intense focus, but they all treat it vividly. Whether known for their food writing, or known better for writing something altogether different, they are citizens of the world of the senses, and their approach is unerring.

Classic Food Writers

Is food writing from earlier centuries a bit flowery? Does it take too much time to read? No. It’s surprisingly lean, precise and vigorous. Past masters of this kind of prose were not searching for words. They’d found them. Browse these authors (LINK) to see if they tire you with excess. We’re betting that won’t happen. And, please comment to add to the list.

Contemporary Food Writers

Are there true masters among us today? Food writers whose work is both current and lasting? The journalists, memoirists and novelists who now turn their attention to food make our era a very rich one. Food writers of our time have much more mobility than those of earlier times – the world is their material, as it is yours. Browse these authors to find kindred spirits. (LINK) And, please comment to add to the list.