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HOW TO LAUNCH A CAREER AS A FREELANCE FOOD WRITER
by Brian Konradt
If you have a
good appetite and a way with words, food writing may be a career option to
consider. Not only is doing research for food writing one of the more enjoyable
tasks in freelance writing, but you'll never be short of restaurant
recommendations and potential free meals -- though you may run short of
well-fitting pants.
To become a successful freelance food writer,
you'll need to know how to describe food well. The key to description, at least
in traditional literature, is to make focused, concrete comparisons. To see
why, ask yourself which sentence you find more appealing: "It was the tastiest
shrimp I've ever eaten," or "The lime-pressed garlic shrimp, grilled over
applewood, had a texture between the crunch of caramelized sugar and the soft
resistance of a medium-rare salmon filet"?
The fundamental law of food
writing is to make your reader wish that he or she had some of whatever
delicious dish you're writing about, to make the reader personally invested in
the food. And there's a strange quirk in the human mind: whenever we think
about an object or activity, we activate the parts of our brain that turn on
whenever we're interacting with that object or engaged in that activity. In
other words: if we think about throwing a baseball, the nerves in our arm
twitch. Or, if we think about eating a thick steak, our stomach grumbles and
our mouth waters. When you're writing about food, you want to activate those
same parts of the brain to make your reader feel that he or she is sharing in
the experience of eating it. Words like "tasty," "delicious," or, worst of all,
"really good," won't do anything for your reader's emotions. Only words related
to food -- or words and images with strong emotional connotations -- will
really get your readers' mouths watering.
Once you've written your
articles, where do you market your food writing? If you live in a large city,
you can write for a local newspaper or an alternative paper (i.e. the LA
Weekly, the Austin Chronicle, etc.). Millions of people read these papers daily
or weekly, and a good portion of those millions read the food section. When
anyone in a major city needs to make restaurant reservations for a date,
business dinner, party, or other social engagement, they look in the food
section of the local paper for hot new restaurant reviews. Stay on top of
restaurant openings and closings in your city. New restaurant openings can be
your “bread and butter.” Local newspapers and online city guides are
always wanting to print new restaurant reviews.
If you have a favorite
local hangout that not many people know about, write an article on it. Submit
your article with a proper query letter to a local newspaper. You might be the
first one to write about the place, throwing needed business their way. In the
end, you collect a decent paycheck from the newspaper, along with a published
clip, a byline, and hopefully more work and referrals.
Another option
is to write for magazines dedicated to food, dining, city nightlife, general
lifestyles, or for the tourist market. If you plan to write for magazines, your
choice of what to write about becomes much broader. You can write how-to
articles, interview pieces, cookware reviews, and so on. If you plan to write
for local tourism guides, your best bet is to write restaurant reviews.
Tourists may not know about any of the well-known restaurants or diners in the
area. Tourism guides provide insight and guidance to what’s hot and
what’s not in the area. This means that there's a steady flow of potential
readers for your restaurant reviews and other food writing.
If you
don't live in a large city, it's much more difficult to become a food writer.
The mom n' pop cafe downtown may have some of the best omelets you've ever
tasted, but how are you supposed to sell an article if everyone in town already
eats at that cafe every Friday night? Consider selling your articles to
regional magazines. The Department of Transportation in several US states often
publishes a monthly magazine about regional news. The editors of these
magazines often look at local restaurant reviews as a source of human interest,
or a way of boosting out-of-state tourism to non-traditional destinations.
Additionally, you might try writing sample copy for cookbooks, press
releases for food suppliers, or ads for food companies. Companies and book
publishers hire good food writers to help market anything from new varieties of
pasta sauce to gourmet steak dishes. Even a nearby supermarket might be willing
to pay for copy in weekly ad flyers.
Unfortunately for rural types,
full-time food writing is more often than not an urban game. For urban types,
food is one of the products that won't ever stop being popular, especially when
it's offered as part of a good restaurant experience. Thus food writing means
job security, and more importantly than that: it's just outright enjoyable
writing. So get to it!
© B. Konradt
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Brian Konradt has been a professional freelance
writer for over a decade. Visit his website at
BusyEntrepreneur.com (
http://www.busyentrepreneur.com ). Read more of Mr.
Konradt's articles at FreelanceWriting.com (http://www.freelancewriting.com) and
WritingCareer.com (
http://www.WritingCareer.com ).
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