Writing for magazines is like any other kind of writing (no matter how many times you’ve seen The Devil Wears Prada); you just have to know enough to get you where you want to be. With a few strategic tweaks, you can make your stories stand out in the sea of cluttered inboxes.

So, here are 25 tips for pitching, writing, and being published in magazines:

1. Read the magazines you want to pitch to before you send a pitch.

2. Not sure if your story is the right fit? Look at the magazine’s press or media kit. It’s for advertisers, but will have editorial calendars you can use for pitches and story ideas.

3. Find your niche, but be open to adapting. What you like to write about may be different than the work you like to read. Start with what you’re drawn to and see how it evolves over time.

4. Want your story in print? Pitch your story 8-12 months in advance. Most print publications work 6+ months in advance, and with editors’ schedules, it could take you a lot longer to get in touch with them and for them to develop your story. 

5. ALWAYS look for submission guidelines. Most magazines have a preference for how they want you to send them story ideas and the kinds of stories they’re looking for. They also may include tips on how to best pitch them.

6. Don’t submit just one story idea. Have 2-3, so if your first pitch doesn’t get chosen, editors already have a couple of other options. 

7. Add the word PITCH to your email subject line with the general topics or ideas you’re pitching or if there’s a specific vertical/column/section you’re pitching your story for.

8. Make the first paragraph of your pitch email a connection one. Whether it’s a recent story you read in the magazine (online or in print) or a personal connection you have to the editor. Show you’re paying attention to them and their publication.

9. In your second paragraph move into why that inspired you to reach out to this specific editor at this specific time with these stories.

10. Give each of your story ideas a headline. You can use tools like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to test out headlines and see how effective they are on an audience. 

11. Make your story pitches no more than 3 sentences. Give the who, what, when, where, and why it matters now.

12. In your closing, mention other places where your work has been seen. These clips can be your own website or other magazines and publications where you’ve been published. Also mention that if they have any questions or would like additional ideas, you’d be happy to provide them. 

13. Be professional, but sound like yourself. There are basic structures to pitches, but the important thing is the content. Get to the point, be a real human and show why this idea matters. 

14. Editors are people too. Be kind to them and their time. Haven’t heard back from them in a week or two? Send a quick email just checking in and seeing if they have any questions. Don’t be rude or demanding. After your second follow-up, if there’s no response, you can move on. But if it’s a publication you really have your eye on, you can send a third follow-up but leave it after that. 

15. Find an assistant or junior editor to pitch to—they need stories and will be more likely to open and respond to your emails than a more senior editor. You find full lists of people in the masthead (at the beginning of the magazine).

16. If a magazine doesn’t have submission guidelines or you want to pitch to a specific editor, you can look for a contact page or even Google the specific person with the email at the end of their name ex. “Quinn Jones foodie fan magazine email.” If you can’t find the email of your targeted editor, find the email address of other people who work at the magazine and just add your editor’s name there. Ex. You find lu.parker@foodiefanmag.com, instead of Quinn’s. So, you’d email jones.quinn@foodiefanmag.com.

17. The editorial world is small and people move around a lot. The editorial assistant you pitch to one year could be a senior editor in the next year or two. So, be gracious in all of your pitches and follow-ups. You never know what pitches weren’t right at the time, but are perfect for a future spot in the magazine.

18. If you have an outlet you really want to write for, send an editor an interesting subject or story idea or compliment them on something they’ve recently written or published. Don’t forget that your insights and connections are also valuable, and these quick check-ins will remind your dream outlets of that.

19. So, your pitch has been accepted? Huzzah! Your editor will give you a deadline, and it’s yours to keep. If you get stuck or need an extension, tell them as soon as possible. They can’t help you if they don’t know what’s going on.

20. Revisions are part of the process, and your first draft is….a first draft. Yes, you want to submit a solid piece of writing, but very rarely, will an article be published untouched. Be curious about your editor’s suggestions and presume they have the best intentions with their edits.

21. Pitching to magazines is the best way to find a book idea and grow your audience. A lot of writers begin with a personal essay or article for a publication that turns into a full-length book. They also are able to expand their platform and reach, which comes in handy regardless of what genre you’re writing in.

22. Hone your craft. Some helpful books to get you started are The Essential Feature by Vicki Hay, Telling True Stories: A Non-fiction Writers’ Guide from the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University edited by Mark Kramer, and Story Craft by Jack Hart.

23. Join professional groups for magazines and also organizations in your niche. Not sure where to start? Find writers and editors you admire and look at the groups they belong to. You’ll often find this on their LinkedIn, website, or even their social media.

24. Support other writers when their stories get published. It’ll make it easier for people to support you when your work is out in the world too.

25. Have a friend who’s written for a specific publication? Ask them who their editor was, and if they have any suggestions on what kinds of stories to pitch. Your network is bigger than you realize, and most people are happy to share advice and connections. Just make sure you pay it forward when the time comes.

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever thought about pitching articles to magazines?

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach, who guides food folks through the writing process. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. To connect with Amanda, you can find her on her website.

The post 25 Tips for Pitching, Writing, and Being Published in Magazines appeared first on DIY MFA.

It happens to the best of us. 

Some professional nonfiction food writers have dipped their toes in the world of fiction to only sink. Sounds harsh, but writing about food is never writing about food, especially in fiction.

Just as The Office wasn’t about paper, all stories are about connection and what events mean for characters in their personal journeys. It’s easy to get swept away with what you think a story is about, but harder to dive into what’s underneath. Sometimes, you read a novel and know something is off, but you can’t quite pin it down. Chances are that there’s one thing likely happening, or not happening, in the story.

So if you’ve found yourself at a crossroads in your own work or want to learn from the mishaps of others, here’s the biggest mistake people make when writing a food novel, and how to fix it.

Focusing on the Food, but Missing the Real Story

Food is pretty seductive. People are endlessly fascinated by the behind-the-scenes of Michelin-starred restaurants, the lives of food writers and every other culinary-related job in-between. So a novel with even a hint of food in it will capture a reader’s attention immediately. 

But that’s where most writers go wrong.

They throw in savory specialty shops, fine dining restaurants and maybe even a handful of recipes and expect it to carry the entire story. Some writers bury their story under hypnotic cadences and a sea of anecdotes, thinking that it’ll be enough. But a cool concept and pretty sentences does not a book make.

It’s also just the setting with food as the props. So readers get excited only to find themselves in lots of hip places bombarded with endless details with a story that goes nowhere. Your novel isn’t a montage, and while it can be fun for a bit, readers want to sink their teeth into something. 

Why Writing a Food Novel is Tricky

Food is an intimidating topic to write about for a lot of writers, and they don’t want to look like amateurs. But if you study chefs, for example, they all have different methods and backgrounds. Some are passionate about recipes and the precision of their execution, while others lean into intuition and the mood of the day. 

Food writing can cover a variety of topics, including restaurant reviews, cultural criticism and feature articles about the people and movements behind the scenes. Yes, you want to stretch your skills, but don’t pretend to know more than you do. Readers can feel when you’re adding details just because. 

If you want to include something food-specific, but feel insecure about it, start researching and interviewing experts. You may use their knowledge, or it may serve as an invisible foundation for your characters. Regardless, the more you know, the easier it is to add tiny details throughout your story instead of a giant information dump that folks will probably skip.

Whatever your culinary background is, you can write about food and not be Samin Nosrat or Ruth Reichl. Promise.

How to Turn Your Story Around

After all of that, if you’re looking at your current pages and feel like you’ve buried your story with deliciously described smells and kitchen notes, don’t worry. You can turn your story around with a few tweaks. 

Here are a handful of questions to ask yourself:

• What’s happening between the characters? 
• How does the environment and surroundings influence their decisions and keep them from their goals? 
• What does the food reveal about your characters and how they see the world?
• If they don’t get what they truly want, what will they lose?

Still not sure how this would show up in your own story?

Well, if you have a chef who has recently lost their job and is on a journey to finding themselves again, you have to dig into their internal struggle as well as their external one. Writing a food novel is more than tasty dish names and an occasional recipe. There has to be a transformation at the end of the novel or else, why are people buying the book in the first place? 

Everything you introduce should have a purpose, or you’re just filling space. You can skip the elaborate descriptions of how people are working in the kitchen or how to cook the perfect roast chicken. That’s what cookbooks are for.

You can absolutely be detailed about a cooking method or specific dish, but it should be for a reason. Let’s say your main character adds milk to their scrambled eggs, even though they know it waters them down and makes them burn more quickly. But it’s how their mom cooked them growing up, and since she passed away six months ago, it makes her feel closer.

Food, like any other topic, is about connection and how we relate to the world. It’s easy to skip the story to get to the fun stuff, but you know deep down, there’s more to your book than that. When you dig into the meaning food has for your characters, you’ll tap into endless story possibilities and something worth your time to write.

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever experimented with writing about food, perhaps a food novel? How did it go?

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach, who guides food folks through the writing process. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. To connect with Amanda, you can find her on her website.

The post Writing a Food Novel? Avoid This Mistake appeared first on DIY MFA.

So if you feel like you want to throw all of your pages out of the window because you’re not sure where to go, here are 3 ways the holidays can revive your book. It’s time to let the holidays leave you and your book feeling brighter and happier, no matter how you spend them. 

1. Slow Down and Soak in the Moment

One of the best parts of the holidays is the opportunity to slow down. There’s less guilt about enjoying an extra cup of hot chocolate or wine. You’re allowed to linger and savor conversations, meals, and as many old movies as you like. 

Maybe it’s the twinkle lights or heaps of cookies that show up everywhere, but every moment feels thick with magic.

Most of the year is spent rushing off to the next thing, so let yourself soak in everything this season has to give. Take the long way home to look at Christmas lights on your favorite street. Grab your baking sheets and some friends for a gingerbread-making afternoon. Order the kringle from the bakery with the line around the corner—it’s worth the slight frostbite.

You never know what can pop up when you lean into the holidays. The same is true for your book. 

As a writer, there’s pressure to produce pages and to be in a constant creative flow. What if you just soaked in how it feels to write again? Instead of trying to get through it, slow down. Make an extra-large pot of coffee, put on some festive instrumental music, and block out time for writing. 

If you stare out the window for 30 minutes, it’s okay. 

Feel like rereading your entire manuscript? Do it. 

Want to pull out old material just because? No one is stopping you.

Whatever you do with your time is exactly what you should do this season, so enjoy it while it lasts. This act of savoring the feeling of writing can help you revive your book.

2. Get Curious About How Traditions Started

Ever notice how people seem to do the same things every year, but no one knows why? You’re also doing it with your book. For some reason, you have an idea in your head that this is how your story has to be because you’ve always imagined it that way.

Now is the time to get curious and ask questions.

With the holidays, why did your dad never let you eat latkes with applesauce? Why does the next-door neighbor, Connie, make glögg for her annual party when she’s not Swedish? Who started putting walnuts and oranges in stockings and how can you make it stop?

Well, your dad thought applesauce looked like baby food and didn’t want that touching his bubbe’s pristine latkes. Your neighbor used to have a Swedish roommate who would throw dinner parties all throughout December with a kitchen full of glögg ready for anyone with an empty mug. And the nuts and fruits in stockings? Your mom’s great-grandparents started it during the Depression and stuck with the family ever since.

When you get curious about origin stories, it’s easier to see why things happen—which is crucial to reviving your book and writing. 

Ask yourself some of the same questions, including:

• How did this all start?
• Why have you continued with this version of it?
• What (if anything) can you change?

By getting curious, you open the window for fresh ideas, which is exactly what you need to revive your book for this last part.

3. New Places to Go and Things to Eat

Now that you’ve slowed down and gotten curious about your own holiday routines, you can branch out. As tempting as it is to keep things as they are, every tradition starts somewhere. It’s your turn to do something different.

Maybe you channel your year abroad in Japan and invite your family over for a traditional Kentucky Fried Chicken Christmas dinner. Not sure what to bring to your first neighborhood potluck? Ask your uncle for his Groundnut stew recipe. Throwing a New Year’s Party sans the booze? Stock up on non-alcoholic spirits and test out some new mocktail recipes.

And don’t be afraid to shake things up with your book. Grab a stack of index cards and map out your chapters or outline. Rearrange them on the floor or a whiteboard and write new ideas on additional notecards. Let yourself see where your book could go if it started differently or if you cut out a huge chunk. 

Still not sure how to get the creativity flowing? Listen to a writing podcast. Watch the movie version of your favorite book. Grab your headphones and the soundtrack to your favorite musical. Test out a new recipe from your new cookbook.

Implementing different techniques to use for your writing practice will be easier the more you do it. Pretty soon, you won’t be holding onto the one way you write or approach your story. You’ll be open to the endless ways your book could unfold, which will help revive your book. 

Keeping the Holiday Spirit Alive

Wouldn’t it be great if you could bottle up the feelings of the season to keep year-round? Well, the good news is you can. The holidays are just a designated time to slow down, lean into traditions, and be open to what’s around the corner. 

Every project needs a reset, so drop the guilt and lean into everything this holiday season brings to your creative doorstep. Then, when you feel burned out on writing your book throughout the year, remember that you can revisit these three ways to revive your book anytime you want. You can even throw on some Rudolph tunes if need be.

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach, who guides food folks through the writing process. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. To connect with Amanda, you can find her on her website.

The post 3 Ways the Holidays Can Revive Your Book appeared first on DIY MFA.

Amanda is a writer, book coach, and food writing columnist for DIY MFA. She began her career with acting and improv, she shifted focus to food writing which led to her being the first dedicated segment producer of Facebook Live for Time Inc.

While in that role, she oversaw more than 300 live segments and created the company’s Food Media Junket, bringing in James Beard award-winning and Michelin-Starred chefs for over a dozen food and lifestyle brands. These days, she helps food folks through the book writing process, helping them craft a story only they can tell. 

Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Time, Southern Living, Food & Wine, and more. She lives in Nashville, but a piece of her heart will always belong in California.

In this episode Amanda Polick and I discuss:

• Why food writing can encompass so much more than just the “how-to” element.
• How to find your own voice and discover what is unique about you in your writing.
• The importance of challenging yourself as a writer and what you can learn in the process.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Amanda Polick

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach. After saying “see you later” to her acting and improv career, she fell into food writing which led to being the first dedicated segment producer of Facebook Live for Time Inc. There, she oversaw over 300 live segments and created the company’s Food Media Junket, bringing in James Beard award-winning and Michelin-Starred chefs for over a dozen food and lifestyle brands.

With over 20 years of storytelling experience and helping hundreds of writers, Amanda now guides food folks through the book writing process. She believes in using her clients’ work as a whole to craft a story only they can tell. 

Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Time, Southern Living, Food & Wine, and she’s a food writing columnist for DIY MFA. Amanda lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. 

You can find Amanda on her website.

Link to Episode 385

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 385: Life Lessons from Food Writing – Interview with Amanda Polick appeared first on DIY MFA.

You love to read other people’s recipes, and you’re no novice in the kitchen, but how do you actually develop a recipe worth making?

Recipe development takes time and a lot of patience, so be easy on yourself. There’s no one way to do anything, but here are some tips for creating recipes readers will swoon over in your novel.

Choose Exciting Recipes for Readers to Make

First things first, add a recipe or recipes readers are itching to get in the kitchen and make. In both Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala and The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux by Samantha Vérant, the authors drop their shining recipes at the end of the book. The recipes they include are items featured throughout the story. So, it’s a treat for readers to find those delicious sounding recipes, like chicken adobo and pan-seared scallops wrapped in jambon sec and prunes with balsamic glaze, laid out from start to finish.

Then there are authors like Joanne Fluke, who is known for sprinkling tasty recipes throughout the chapters. The creations in Fluke’s Hannah Swenson mystery series (now also on Hallmark Channel’s Movies and Mysteries) were so popular, she made an entire cookbook out of them.

When choosing a recipe to include in your novel, make it one that’s important in your story. You don’t want to throw something in there just because. Add recipes that have significance for your characters and story. 

Also, readers will be more excited to make a recipe if they don’t have to spend a lot of time in the kitchen or money on ingredients. No one wants to spend $5 on a tablespoon of an obscure spice they’ll probably never use again or to be locked into a 7 hour cooking extravaganza. Be kind to your readers’ time and budget, and you’ll already have them swooning.

Research Similar Recipes and Create Your Own Twist

Just as the old adage goes that every story has already been told, every recipe has likely been created. With those creations also comes a lot of imposters. For Friends fans, you’ll remember the moment of horror when Monica realized that Phoebe’s grandmother’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe was actually the recipe on the back of the Nestlé Tollhouse bag.

If you have a recipe in mind, even one that’s been in your kitchen rotation for awhile, do some research on it first. A quick internet search of “recipe stealing” will pull up heaps of stories about celebrities and non-celebrities alike who have been accused of taking people’s recipes without proper credit. The truth is, though, a lot of folks may not realize they’re taking someone’s work.

For some things, there’s primarily one way to make it, like Caesar dressing or pasta. Pull up a recipe for either of those though, and you’ll find differences in the thousands of recipes.

The unofficial standard for changing a recipe to make it your own is that 3 things have to be different from the original. It could be cook time, temperature, measurements, ingredients, or the process. 

Don’t let the sea of recipes already in existence overwhelm you. Instead, use it as an opportunity to create more flavorful, inventive and swoon-worthy recipes for readers and yourself.

Develop Your Recipes with Detailed Notes

Once you pinpoint the recipe or recipes you want to include, it’s time to hit the kitchen. Regardless of how many times you’ve made a dish in the past, developing recipes for readers is a different ballgame. The goal is to have a perfectly explained plan anyone can follow without additional help. 

Most people don’t realize the extra pinch of salt they always add or that halfway through the cook time, they rotate the baking sheet in the oven. In fact, that’s why when New York Times bestseller Julia Turshen co-authors a cookbook with someone, she watches them in the kitchen, instead of reading their recipes.

Don’t have someone to observe your cooking habits? Grab your iPhone and film yourself. Jot down notes as you’re watching with questions you think readers may have regarding process or even ingredient substitutes. 

For the recipe writing portion, list ingredients in the order they’re used and don’t forget to add time elements throughout the process. If you ever get stuck on how to map it out, grab a set of cookbooks or even scan food magazine websites for example templates. 

Hire a Recipe Developer

Have an idea for a recipe, but not sure how to create it? Bring in the professionals to help you. Most recipe developers are also food stylists and even bloggers. They regularly work with brands and individuals to create unique recipes for a variety of platforms. 

How do you find these folks? There’s nothing like a good internet search or even word of mouth. If you’re starting from square one, scan the acknowledgements of a food novel or cookbook, and you’ll find references to developers and testers. You can find the majority of those people mentioned at their own websites. 

Sites like Upwork or even LinkedIn can also connect you with freelance recipe developers who would love to craft tasty recipes for your book. Just make sure it’s clear about how and when the recipe will be used, and if there are any rights the recipe developer will own.

Get Recipe Testers

Now that you have your recipe, you need to test it. If you used a recipe developer, they may have built in revisions for the process and may even help you find testers. 

Developed the recipe on your own? Ask friends or family if they’d be willing to test your recipe and fill out a tasting note sheet. Sometimes, you may offer to buy ingredients or even pay folks to do this. 

The important thing is to get usable feedback. You’re looking for notes about cook time, temperature, equipment, ingredients, and how clear your instructions are. If you estimate that there will be 24 servings of cookies, but a tester ended up with 36, that’s important to know.

Some questions for recipe testers can include:

• Did you follow the recipe exactly?
• If you didn’t, where did you change the recipe and why?
• Was the equipment easily accessible?

You want to ask questions that allow testers to share where they deviated from the recipe and why. Most people use their instincts in the kitchen, so if one of your testers skipped a process, you want to know why and see if it’s worth changing the recipe for. 

Once you have your first round of feedback, decide how you want to adjust the recipe and have testers make it at least one more time. You’re creating a recipe to serve your readers, so the more intentional feedback you can gather, the better.

Feeling Confident about the Recipe You Choose

Creating recipes for readers to swoon over in your novel is daunting. You don’t know if it will work until the masses have their hands on it. But much like your novel, there are signposts along the way to help guide you. 

Use your instincts, but also the feedback of your recipe testers and developers. Getting your recipe into the hands of real people is the best way to know what’s working and what’s not. And don’t forget that you’re painting a picture along the way. 

As the late novelist Pat Conroy said: A recipe is a story that ends with a great meal. Give your readers just that, and you can be confident that the recipe you choose is the one they’ll love, even after they put your novel down.

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach, who guides food folks through the writing process. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. To connect with Amanda, you can find her on her website.

The post How to Develop Recipes for Readers to Swoon Over appeared first on DIY MFA.

A book proposal is the business plan for your book and a way to sell your memoir before you have to write the whole thing. Some agents and publishers will want the full manuscript too, but a book proposal is worth doing either way.

There are many reasons a proposal is rejected, like personal taste or being a good fit at the right time. However, it’s better to be rejected for things you can’t control than to be rejected for something you can control, like formatting. So, here are the three reasons the book proposal for your food memoir will be rejected.

1. Your Author Platform is Too Small

When you imagine writing your dream food memoir, you probably don’t think about your platform very much. Sure, you may imagine how people will share it on social media and how you might engage with them, but a platform is larger than that.

One of the biggest reasons a book proposal is rejected is because the author’s platform isn’t big enough. Agents and publishers want to know that you have authority on a topic or angle and can reach thousands of people who will want to buy your book.

A platform can mean a lot of things, but the important thing is your platform is made up of places you like to hang out. Your storytelling skills are a gift for building your platform.

Are you hooked on Twitter and not wild about Instagram? That’s okay. Maybe you’ve found success as a regular guest contributor for a popular website. Or perhaps the inspiration for your book started with social media like Emily Nunn’s The Comfort Food Diaries. Perfect. You want to show that you’ve created an engaged audience, and you’re able to increase that reach.

One element of your platform should absolutely include an email list. You’ll want a direct line to your people, so no algorithm or missed post hides your work from them. It’ll also be a way to build a deeper community, which you’ll rely on when your book is released and long after.

2. Weak Competitive Title Analysis 

This may be hard to hear, but just because your story is yours, doesn’t mean it’s never been told before. Writers love to believe that their story is not like anyone else’s. While that may seem romantic and revolutionary, it’s bad for selling your book. Your book proposal is a business plan, so it’ll be rejected if agents and publishers don’t know where it stands in the market. 

If you believe your book is one of a kind, it also means you’re not reading enough. Even Anthony Bourdain admitted that Kitchen Confidential was heavily influenced by George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, which was an insider’s guide to Parisian restaurant life in the 1920s. 

You also need to choose books that did well commercially. If you list an obscure title that has six reviews on Amazon, agents and publishers will throw your proposal in the trash immediately. Give your food memoir its best chance by digging into comp titles, figuring out how it stands out amongst its competitors and making the case for how readers want the book you have.

3. Not Knowing the Complete Story

A client of mine was told by some published authors that my client could write their proposal after 40% of their memoir was figured out. In theory, this makes sense. One of the main reasons to write a proposal is so you don’t have to write the entire book first. However, you still have to know the complete story to write a book proposal.

With every proposal, there’s a section for the chapter summaries. This includes a chapter title, paragraph or two about what the chapter is and a line about what recipe you would include if you have one. For the writer who creates by the seat of your pants, this may be your actual nightmare. It doesn’t have to be though. 

You may write your entire book before you hone in on your story. Every writer has their own process, but sometimes, writers sit in the pantsing or plotting process to avoid the actual work. It’s scary committing to a story you believe in, but you also can’t hide from what you’re meant to create.

The outline of your book will show agents and publishers the heart of what your story is about. If you can show your story telling abilities in the paragraph or two for each chapter, you’re proving you have a well-crafted food memoir on your hands. It’ll also make the book writing process that much easier once you sit down in front of the computer.

Troubleshooting the Rest of Your Book Proposal 

Now that you know three reasons the book proposal for your food memoir will be rejected, how do you know that you’re not making other mistakes? From Jane Friedman’s self-study course to How to Write a Book Proposal by Jody Rein and Michael Larsen, you can find a number of easy to access resources to walk you through the process. If that doesn’t quite cut it, you can always hire someone to coach you. 

Like any writing project, it will take longer than you expect, and you will make mistakes along the way. It’s expected! The important thing is to stay curious about what makes a book proposal great and know that even if your proposal is rejected, it’s all part of the process.

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach, who guides food folks through the writing process. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. To connect with Amanda, you can find her on her website.

The post Why the Book Proposal for Your Food Memoir Will Be Rejected appeared first on DIY MFA.

No. No. No. 

That’s my home. Those are my people. Wildfires are common in the West, but my gut told me this one was different. The fire that would be known as the Tubbs Fire, the worst in state history until then, had jumped over eight lanes of freeway and was ferociously making its way through Napa and Sonoma counties. 

Journalists were telling people to call and wake up their friends and families. My own friends were posting evacuation stories with their neighbors staying behind with hoses in hand, trying to save the neighborhood from the disaster. After more than 36,000 acres were burned and almost two dozen souls were lost, one of the biggest questions still seemed to be: Will the wine be okay?

Millions of visitors from all over the world come to sip the nectar of the valleys, and they flood the area with billions of dollars to do so. The question of what would happen with future harvests was valid, and the vineyards and people’s stories go hand in hand. To see the grapes rebound would also mean that the locals have found new ways to adapt, to innovate, to prepare for next time. 

Food and nature relentlessly intertwine, and it’s why their stories create the most beautiful tension. These are the stories that command you to your feet, but they’re often overlooked in food writing for memoir and fiction. So with examples from investigative journalism and real-life natural disaster, let’s open up the possibilities of how to use the natural world to create more meaningful and riveting food stories.

Heroes and Villains Emerge

I’m always surprised when writers are hesitant to create “villains.” On one hand, I appreciate balanced characters who keep you guessing with their “save the cat” moments. However, what seems to happen more often than not, is writers don’t want to make anyone the bad person, so everyone gets along and there are no true issues. Boring.

Beyond that, people don’t have to be villains. Situations can be their own offenders. For example, in Mark Arax’s piece “A Kingdom from Dust,” which was selected for The Best American Food Writing 2019, his focus was on one element of food often forgotten—water. His work is primarily around the water barons and the agriculture effects on California’s Central Valley. In fact, the idea that California is sinking is largely due to the overpumping of its farmland. 

This crisis is the culmination of years of legislation, back-door deals, and land grabs. None of which is surprising for the state with the most agriculture cash receipts. You could try to point the finger at a single person, but it might just be bent back at yourself. 

Now let’s talk about heroes. In Fire in Paradise, Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano bring you into the minute by minute accounts of what was, at the time, the most destructive fire in California history. With a heartbreaking detail, you find a retired volunteer firefighter trying to save the town’s gold mining museum, and strangers rescuing one another within moments of being taken by the blaze. 

Emergencies, like the Camp Fire, require people to give their all because time will run out. Small acts of kindness and quick thinking are compounded by a wildfire that would level the entire town. All of those elements produce instant tension within the story and cause you to ask yourself: What would I do? 

Moments of Reckoning

While it’s fun to dream of lavishly leisure meals and to paint pictures of quality time in the kitchen, every story needs some heat. There’s a moment where what has existed cannot be anymore. So, what does that mean for the people involved and how does that affect what appears on their tables?

From the moment I fell for the wine of Lugana in Northern Italy, I was met with stories of how the high-speed railway was set to destroy it. While it’s not a natural disaster, the man-made effects would devastate the region. The area’s white wine is distinct because of the climate and soil, so what happens when it disappears? How does it change a region’s identity?

Some moments of reckoning are more thunderous, like the Dust Bowl. A mixture of drought and over-farming manifested ten years of horrific dust storms and crop failure that caused many people to leave the Southern Plains. It was also the catalyst for the characters’ journeys in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. 

With the Dust Bowl, one disaster rippled into another disaster—such is the harmony of cause and effect. Somehow with food writing, it’s easy to forget that what appears on the table is decades in the making. People traveled great lengths to bring specific food to a region or to save what was being destroyed. To preserve a culinary tradition is to protect a history. So, what do the soft and loud moments of reckoning reveal about the root of your story? How does it alter what happens next?

Harnessing Nature for Your Own Work

Stories show us how to live. Who are the people we want to be remembered as? What kind of work do we want to leave behind? When nature is brought into your food writing, it can show you who (or your characters) want to be. When disaster is thrown in the mix, it reveals who those characters are. 

All stories need to reveal something deeper about the people in them. Food can be joyful and elegant, but it can also show us who we are when the natural odds are against us. Just like the Napa and Sonoma Valley wines after the Tubbs Fire, they wouldn’t be the same, but new flavors were forged. With every fire, flood, and drought, there’s an opportunity for transformation, and food writing or not, that’s where the magic of every story lies. 

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach, who guides food folks through the writing process. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee now, but a piece of her will be in California forever. To connect with Amanda, you can find her on her website.

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The surprising part for some admirers may have been that Julia Child’s masterpiece wasn’t entirely her own doing. Two French writers and chefs she met while living in Paris brought Julia Child on to help them complete their masterpiece.

At the advice of a good friend and American author, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle were told to: Get an American who is crazy about French cooking to collaborate with; somebody who both knows French food and can still see and explain things with an American viewpoint in mind.

Enter Julia Child.

After Julia Child signed on, it was nine years before Mastering the Art of French Cooking would hit stores. While the trio knew the entire process would be a major commitment, most writers think it’ll be a few years, tops. Tell them it would take almost a decade like it did Beck, Bertholle and Child, and they’d throw in the towel. However, a few publishing lessons from their journey may help reframe your own and give you the inspiration to push ahead.

It’s Not Personal, It’s Business

Beck’s and Bertholle’s cookbook was 600 pages when they invited Child to be their partner, and they were swimming in overwhelm. A freelance editor had been working with the two for a few years with the goal of releasing a series of recipe pamphlets to build excitement about their full collection. He published a small version of the project without their permission and quickly disappeared — along with their publisher.

With no signed contract, the duo was left to complete “The Book”, as they called it, on their own. Which is why they needed Child more than ever. 

Through an unlikely series of events stemming from a Harper’s column and a set of knives, Child sent their chapter on sauces to Avis De Voto, the wife of a Houghton Mifflin published author. When Beck and Bertholle’s original publisher came back, Child was firm that they owed him nothing and should move on without him.

Houghton Mifflin bought the cookbook, but ultimately decided it was too long to publish in the end. Child and company had previously agreed to condense their work, but the completed work was a staggering 750 pages. However, their champion Mrs. De Voto believed she could have luck sending the manuscript to another publishing house, Knopf. 

Besides that, Houghton Mifflin broke down the cost, and it didn’t make sense on paper. They believed what the three women had accomplished was extraordinary, but they couldn’t justify getting behind such a large project at the moment. 

As much as the publishers had to do what was best for them, Beck, Bertholle and Child also had to keep their interests in mind. They were open to new opportunities and finding the best possible home for “The Book”, which led to their success.

Publishing is All in the Timing

Not everyone is going to like your work, and even if they do, it might not be the right for them at the time. It was 6 years between the time the book was sold to Houghlin Mifflin and when they decided to end the agreement. At the time, Houghlin Mifflin cookbooks were kitschy themed ones, rather than “serious” books for home cooks.

It brought up some valid questions for Child:

• Was it too late for a book of their caliber?
• With simpler cookbooks on the market, would home cooks want to master intricate details?
• Did Americans even care about French cooking?

Some books are breakout hits because they enter the market at the right moment. While others may be brilliant, but not what the public or publishing houses are looking for.

However, at Knopf, they didn’t have any cookbooks slated for release. The manuscript landed on the desk of editor Judith Jones, who brought The Diary of Anne Frank back to life from the slush pile. Jones made a few of “The Book’s” recipes and was hooked. She also had lived in Paris after World War II, so she shared the group’s passion for the project. Another editor who was behind The Joy of Cooking hopped on board too. Finally, the pieces were fitting together.

Timing is a tricky beast. It’s hard to remember when you’re not getting the answers or movement on your project. Knowing what’s happened for other authors though can give you some hope as you’re figuring out the timing.

Be Your Own Publicist

When you imagine your work on bookstore shelves, your dream probably also includes a press tour. You can’t wait to get on your favorite podcasts or local networks to gab about your book and why folks should pick it up. The hosts will find you charming, and the listeners will love it and you. So, let’s get on with it already!

What you probably aren’t imagining is that you should be prepared to make all the above happen — on your own. Depending on the project and contract, publishers may be able to put a solid publicity plan in place for you. However, publishers also want to know that you plan on helping with the marketing for your book. 

In fact, when Mastering the Art of French Cooking was released, Knopf ran some ads, but the rest of the publicity fell to Child and Beck (Bertholle had taken a smaller role by that point). They were clueless as to how to create a promotional tour. So, they bootstrapped their efforts for multi-city pop-up cooking classes and signings with help from friends in said cities. The power of a good network!

Within a month of the book’s release, a second printing was ordered. Yes, timing plays a role in every release, but you also don’t know who could see or share your work. 

This is why an author platform is a key to getting your book sold. As much as you love the craft of your work, book writing is a business. Learn to love promoting your work. Know how to talk about it and pitch it. The worst thing that could happen is someone tells you ‘no’.

Publishing is ever-evolving and can seem hard to pin down. It requires specific amounts of passion and detachment, which become elusive in a long process. Knowing expectations and having a positive mindset can be the difference between success and “failure”.

As Julia Child said best: “…all I know is this—nothing you ever learn is really wasted, and will some time be used.”

Amanda Polick is a writer and book coach for food and entertainment professionals based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has been featured by Cooking Light, Food & Wine and Time, and she’s currently working on her first novel. To connect with Amanda or to get weekly writing and life inspiration, you can find her at https://amandapolick.com. 

The post Publishing Lessons from Julia Child’s My Life in France appeared first on DIY MFA.

Writing for a magazine might not be the first thing on your mind when you think of your next food book. However, Nigella Lawson, Anthony Bourdain, and Toni Tipton-Martin were journalists or magazine writers before they released celebrated and award-winning culinary books. Then there’s Food 52’s Amanda Hesser and the iconic Ruth Reichl who both snagged jobs at publications after their debut books came out.

Pitching to a culinary magazine requires an intense knowledge of a subject, a reason you’re the one who is meant to write that piece and a seed of a larger story aka your book. Here’s how to get to your book idea with your next magazine pitch.

Explain Your Idea in A Sentence or Two

Be it screenplays or full-length novels, the elevator pitch stumps writers more than the work itself, and the food world is no different. Culinary pitching may be more difficult because everyone is an expert in the kitchen now. Also, when you pitch to agents and publishers, you’ll need a quick sell in your back pocket as you talk up your book.

In the beginning, there may be this inkling of what the story is and how you’ll write it. People probably ask how the book is going, and you give a lengthy response that’s met with enthusiasm. You may have journals and notebooks with ideas and have even spent some time in the kitchen developing some recipes. The idea isn’t quite there, but you feel like you’ll be able to describe your book when it’s complete. So, you’re on a good path, right?

Not quite. If you can’t sum up your idea into a sentence or two, you don’t have a book — yet.

Pitching to a magazine though forces you to think about the essentials needed to describe your story. It eliminates the fluff and vagueness, so people know what your story is and why they should care immediately. 

Have a Bold or Unique Culinary Angle

With the rise of the celebrity chefs and influencer home cooks, you don’t have to go far to see how saturated the culinary market is. Not that you shouldn’t pursue your book idea, but you need to be intentional about why it should exist.

In improv, a performer shouldn’t enter a scene unless they have something to add to it. It’s the same with writers. There should be a reason you’re writing the book you are. Food writing is tricky because the majority of readers have access to full kitchens where they can experiment with millions of recipes on the internet. 

So, ask yourself: What’s my solution or point of view for a common problem or topic?

It was Bourdain’s article “Don’t Eat Before Reading This” in The New Yorker that shot him to notoriety and contained much of what you’ll find in Kitchen Confidential, which was published a year later. He was spilling secrets most restaurants or kitchen staff didn’t want you to know. This was probably a conversation he had hundreds of times with colleagues and decided one day to bite the bullet and put the not so tasty truth out there.

Know Where the Story Will End

There are two kinds of writers: Those who write by the seat of their pants and those who plot their work before they begin.

In journalism, you have an idea of a story, and it may turn into something unexpected, but for the most part, you know what the conclusion will be. With book writing, it’s easy to brush off the need to know where the story will end. Most writers believe they’ll figure it out along the way. More often than not, the pages are more freewriting than structured, with many scenes happening for no reason. 

Food writing trips people up because they believe universal experiences, like eating and cooking together, don’t require a full narrative. Readers will just “get it”. However, Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte chronicles her year long courtship with her now husband. There’s an expiration date on the story starting in the introduction. It’s also not just a book about food, but about how her relationship transformed her time in the kitchen.

Giving yourself a light structure for a pitch allows you to keep some guardrails on. Your book can’t contain every story you’ve ever imagined. There has to be some discernment. 

Focus On the Benefit It’ll Bring Readers (and Publication)

You can’t have a successful pitch without thinking of the person on the other side. Writers make the mistake of focusing on how writing for a publication will help them, but fail to address how it will add value for the editors and readers. 

How will someone’s life be easier or better by reading your work? Is there a common myth you want to dispel? What will a reader lose by not taking your advice? Is this the right story for this publication? 

Even if you’re a well-known food writer, editors want there to be a meaningful takeaway for their readers. People share impactful ideas. So if your story creates a clear benefit, chances are readers will want to share your work, which will increase the publication’s website traffic.

Working through each of these elements will not only help you figure out the story you want to write, but it will give you an edge for every story moving forward. Knowing how to pitch your work is essential for every writer, and if you can nail a solid pitch for your next food piece with a magazine, you’re well on your way to the next mountain — your book.

Amanda Polick is a book coach for food and entertainment professionals based in Nashville, Tennessee. When she’s not eating her way through her newest stack of cookbooks, this former actor and improviser can be found looking for her next favorite performer. Her work has been featured in Cooking Light, Food & Wine, and Time and is now a regular columnist for DIYMFA. To reach out or learn more, visit her website for free inspiration and book writing guides.

The post Why Your Next Culinary Book is in a Magazine Pitch appeared first on DIY MFA.

Some people are born storytellers. They know how to grab an audience from the first word and keep them until the last minute. Anthony Bourdain though, did that by being 100% himself. His nuance and understanding of humans on a universal level is what connected many of us to his stories.

It was hard to narrow down his best writing lessons from Kitchen Confidential. However, these five contain most of his essence and no-nonsense attitude that made us fall in love  with him in the first place.

Know Your True Audience and the Others Will Come

Fiction or nonfiction, there’s an audience on the other side who you’re writing for. Especially when writing about a specific topic, you have to know who your work is and is not for. Most writers go wrong with failing to have an audience in mind.

As the adage goes: When you’re trying to please everyone, you please no one.

In true Bourdain fashion, he aimed to please no one but the folks who you don’t see. He said, “I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.”

He wasn’t writing for the food blogger in the Midwest or the famous French chefs with Michelin starred restaurants. In fact, he mentioned as much in the introduction with the acknowledgement that most chefs might be angry at him. But he wrote his truth for his people, anyway.

The wild part? Those chefs he believed were not his people, ended up as raving fans and even friends of his.

Like Anthony Bourdain, Write How You Speak

Maybe it’s from years of essay writing and attempting to sound smart, but most writers elevate their work with words they wouldn’t use in real life. What’s meant to be beautiful wordsmithing ends up making your work sound unbelievable and unapproachable.

Enter Anthony Bourdain. It could be from so many years of hearing his voice on a screen, but there is something distinct about his point of view that’s unmistakable even in writing.

How would you do this? Write like you’re talking to a friend. Remove the fancy words and give it to the reader straight. His lack of pretense makes his work no less intentional but more relatable.

Through all of the work of Anthony Bourdain, you’re left feeling like you just had a long chat with a good pal which for some writers, might be the best compliment of all.

Let Your Narrator Have Flaws

Between scandalous back of the house escapades and cutthroat survival skills,  no one in Kitchen Confidential comes out as a saint, and they don’t need to. Somewhere along the way, writers have come to this collective agreement that main characters should be the total package — beautiful, smart, and charming with a heart of gold. Boring.

Flaws don’t make a character unlikeable. In fact, when Anthony Bourdain flat out told readers he wasn’t perfect: I’m simply not going to deceive anybody about life as I’ve seen it. It’s all here: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Readers want to find someone they can either relate to or live vicariously through. So, you may not work in a bustling Manhattan restaurant, cuss like a sailor and participate in some risky behavior, but you absolutely want to pull up your chair and watch that show.

Don’t Be Precious About What You Love

It’s easy to fall into a trap of being precious with a topic or theme you love. You want to show readers you’re a smart and gifted writer who knows a subject well, right? Yes, and no.

For instance, Bourdain was obsessed with food, and emphasized that for him, the weirder, the better. However, he danced a fine line between its utility and beauty in his descriptions. He also showed his love for the craft of cooking, but didn’t romanticize it. If anything, he wasn’t afraid of being brutally honest because he knew the culinary world could take.

Think of it like kneading dough: You start with fluff, yet the more flour you add, you have a solid creation that can withstand heat. The topics you love should be able to hold up against a microscope. There’s no need to embellish a moment when a straightforward description will do.

As Bourdain said, “Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.” Just like the belief of most chefs that salt and pepper are sturdy staples you can rely on time and time again, there’s a beauty in keeping your writing simple.

Readers want to experience rich moments, but you don’t have to lead them as much as nudge them in the right direction. Trust that less is more, and you’ll be able to deeply connect with your audience using only the essentials.

It’s Okay to Have Strong Opinions

Everyone has an opinion until they sit down to write a book. That’s when second-guessing and playing nice rear their ugly heads.

What if people don’t like my point of view?

I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

 Should I say how I really feel?

For memoir in particular, it’s overwhelming to put on a stamp on your beliefs because people will know it’s how you feel. Spoiler: Even if you’re writing fiction, people will assume those are your beliefs too.

But strong opinions make a story interesting. It’s what has a reader flipping the pages and laughing out loud because they wish they had the courage to say the same thing. If you love chicken, you probably felt slightly offended by Bourdain’s opinion or felt called out and didn’t care.

“And chicken is boring. Chefs see it as a menu item for people who don’t know what they want to eat.”

He’s like the friend who tells you to change your outfit because it’s not flattering. You get defensive at first, but then realize he’s just looking out for you — wants you to know what people might say about you.

However, the running thread through each of these lessons is to be no one but yourself as a writer. Embrace what makes you odd and how you see the world. Be comfortable being the person people want to talk about, even if it’s not always glowing. Take risks and know it’s better to “fail” at who you are, rather than succeed at being who you are not.

These are the things we’ll never stop appreciating about Bourdain. They’re also what makes us miss him so much now.

Amanda Polick is a book coach for food and entertainment professionals based in Nashville, Tennessee. When she’s not eating her way through her newest stack of cookbooks, this former actor and improviser can be found looking for her next favorite performer. Her work has been featured in Cooking Light, Food & Wine, and Time and is now a regular columnist for DIYMFA. To reach out or learn more, visit her website for free inspiration and book writing guides.

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