How To Liven Up Your Food Writing with David Leite - Community Education Series

Hi, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and welcome to the G+ Food Bloggers Community Education Series. And tonight my guest is David Lee, and he's going to talk to you about how to liven up your food writing. So get your questions ready because we want you to ask questions while we're going on. So, you know, stop us if you have something you want to ask. Type it into the, the bar under the description there and let us know what you want to know and we'll try and address your questions for you. So now I'm going to turn it over to David Lee.

Thanks, Dennis. Appreciate that. As Dennis said, everyone, I want right from the beginning all of you to start shooting me questions because the last thing I want to do is give you something that you don't want to hear or don't want to know. So start asking questions right away. Now I'm looking at that actually rather ambitious list that I put together with Dennis Littley in the description of this particular Hangout, and it's setting a scene, describing people, places, and food, capturing dialogue, creating rhythm and style, understanding voice, making the best word choices, structuring sentences, paragraphs, and posts so they accomplish your writing goals. That's rather a big thing to accomplish. So what I'd like to do, I think an easier way to handle this is if we start with the very last thing, which is structuring sentences, paragraphs, and posts so they accomplish your writing goals. So let's start there, and I think a lot of other stuff will fall into place. So first of all, I'd like you to think, just for this one particular Hangout, think of all of your posts as stories with a beginning, middle, and end. We've been telling stories since the beginning of time. We look back at the ancient Greeks. There's the Iliad, there's the Odyssey. We're still reading them now in school. They're still making remakes of them with Bruce Willis and updated versions of it. And there's a reason why. It's because we like stories. We're just, I think, hardwired to hear stories. So let's use Romeo and Juliet as an example. Okay, we have boy meets girl, a boy falls in love with girl, boy finds out he's sworn enemy of girl, boy and girl get married, and then what else happens? And the Friar comes in, some other things happen, and then they realize that, oh my God, this isn't going to work, and they have a plan, and the girl decides that she's going to, she's going to has some sleeping potion, the boy sees her, sees her, thinks she's dead, kills himself, she wakes up, she kills himself, and everybody's dead. Okay, why I'm using that is basically we all know the story, so we can talk about that and some of the elements that I want to discuss here in blog posts. Now, you're not going to be writing Shakespeare, nor you're going to be writing Romeo and Juliet, but every good story starts with something which is called an inciting incident. Inciting incident in Romeo and Juliet that really propels the energy and the action forward is when Romeo and Juliet meet at the dance and they're masked and they don't know who they are, but they fall in love. That's the inciting incident. Without that happening, none of that would happen. So if you think of your post as a mini story, a mini Romeo and Juliet, what is the inciting incident that happened? Is it that you went to a restaurant and the waiter spilled hot béarnaise sauce all over you? Or is it that you went to your grandmother's house and suddenly an old recipe that you had not had for years and years and years she makes, and suddenly you realize, oh gosh, this is something that is such a part of my childhood that I forgot. There has to be something, I think, that propels that post, is the reason for that post being. I mean, yeah, we all do posts of like, hey, this is what I ate last night, yay. You do those, you kind of stick those in when there's not a lot going on or you just need to put something up really quickly, but I'm talking about real posts, posts that really use a lot of writing. So an inciting incident, what are some of the things that can be inciting incidents? Think about your life, think about what makes you mad, what makes you happy. Like for me, what makes me mad is rude cashiers at Fairway, which is a store nearby here. What makes you happy? Well, foie gras, it's a big thing for me. What makes you very afraid? For me, it's using up all of my Weight Watchers points before noon. I'm terrified of that one now since I've lost 30 pounds. No one's noticed it yet, but you will at some point. What past events were turning points in your life? For me, it was actually having my kidney removed. It was a big surgery. I had my kidney removed. What are some of the favorite things you like to do? For me, it's when the one and I are having fried chicken. I love to take the skin off of his chicken and eat it, which really pisses him off, but it's something that I like to do. Who is your favorite person in your life right now at the moment? Is it husband, wife, grandmother, boyfriend, girlfriend, child, dog, cat, Devil Cat? I've written a lot of posts about Devil Cat. So these are certain ways into finding what an inciting incident is when you're telling that particular story. And then if you're looking at sort of classic structure, I don't know if Diane— is Diane Jacob with us out there somewhere? She'll appreciate this. This is talking about some of the classic newspaper structures, and I think that there's a lot to learn actually when you look at some newspaper, you look at really good newspaper articles. There's the lead, the L-E-D-E, the lead. This is like the come on, this is the seduction, this is the thing that makes people go, I want to read this more. And it can be a line, it can be two lines, it can be a paragraph, but the most important thing is that lead is something that lures people in. Because if it's something like, oh, I had a bad day, I went to the dentist, is someone going to read? Or if you rework that to, you know, I was howling when I walked out of the dentist's office and scared the receptionist so much, whatever, you know, suddenly you have a story that goes on there and it's captivating, compelling. Telling. Then there's something called a nut graph, and that's nut G-R-A-F. And a nut graph is that particular— this is what so many writers do not do. A nut graph is, it comes after the lead where it tells the readers, this is where we're going, this is what the story is about. Think of it as, you know, Wizard of Oz, there were all those signs that went, you know, this way and that way. That's what this does. This tells the readers we're not going back to Kansas, we're going to Oz, or we're not going to Oz, we're going to the Witch's Place. It tells them where they're going so they know what the post or the article is about. So therefore you have them on board, they're in the boat, they're going to go for the journey with you. And then there's the body, which is the story, which is what's happening.

You have—

we talked about this last time if any of you were in the previous one that I did of my 12-step program for better writing. There's the rising action, and there's the climax, and there's the falling action, the dénouement. That's that's the entire body. That's where you flush out a lot of your story idea and you tell the story. And I think in blog posts, because it's so personal, it's so much about who we are and what our lives are like, and we introduce characters. You know, I have the one, I have Mama Leet, I have Papa Leet, I have Devil Cat, you know, my friend Ellen, my friend Danny from Britain. They're all characters, ongoing characters in my own sitcom of life. You want to have a moment of reckoning on that page, on that post, where you as a writer come to see something about yourself or the situation that you didn't know before. Now, this is not one of those, like, deus ex machina, you know, the Greek things where the gods come down and they tell everyone what's going on, and the people who were dead suddenly rise from the dead. Something like that. But it's, it's, it's your— it's you coming to understand something about yourself, because it's very fascinating for readers to go on your journey and see, perhaps before you do, where you're going to go or what you're going to learn. Or at the same time, follow you on your journey and be shocked at what you've come to see about yourself. And what I think is fascinating, some of the best writing out there, both on blog and and in print and in books is that sometimes that moment of reckoning— and that's what I call it— is not always positive. It's a negative thing. Maybe you realize that you have lost all affection for a particular person in your life, or maybe you realize that there's no moment of reckoning. That's your moment of reckoning, which is kind of odd to have a moment of reckoning about not having a moment of reckoning, where you just you're flatlined about something. There's just— there's nothing there. No ill will, no positive will, goodwill. It's just nothing. But I think if we go along that journey with you, you need to give us something that we can understand, that we can grab onto, and then understand you a bit more. And it's also— it's fascinating to watch a person come to understand who they are. And then of course you're gonna have the close, which that's like any story. So you have a beginning, you have the arc, which is the body or the rising and falling action, and then you're gonna have the moment of reckoning, which is kind of like that climax, and then you're gonna have a close. And a close to me is not just, okay, well, that's all I had, goodbye. I like the idea of bringing the close back up to the top if it's possible and finding a way to tie that in, because what you've done is you've created a circle for the reader, and you brought the reader back to the premise in which you started. And there's just a real symmetry to that kind of structure, that kind of closing the circle. And so if Romeo and Juliet, you know, kind of has that where they all come out and there's all that fighting, and then it ends with— God, I haven't read Romeo and Juliet in like 25 years, but I believe at the very end everyone comes out on stage and there's this woeful story of Romeo and Juliet and realize that what's happened is we have to put down our arms, we cannot be enemies, we the Capulets and the Montagues must come together as one because they are, even in death, they are tied through this couple who were married. And so it brings it back. So any, Dennis, any questions before I continue on with other things? I'm sure there must be tons out there.

Nothing yet. We would love to see some questions from you. I think you just got them so engrossed in what you're saying that they haven't Lord, that can't be that engrossing, please.

I'm gonna drink some water. You come up with some questions, folks.

That's right, come on, you've got the authority here on food writing. Let's use him and ask him some questions.

So let's talk a little bit about voice. And I know that when we did this last time, Diane was on and she talked a little bit about it too. Now voice is one of those things that is just really wickedly hard to discuss. Really hard to define. It's easier to hear it. Now, those of you who've read Ruth Reichl or M.F.K. Fisher, Jeffrey Steingarten, who I haven't heard a lot from recently, or Tony Bourdain, they're all distinctly different voices. John T. Edge, Brett Anderson— just throwing out some other names that perhaps you may want to follow on, follow up on. They're different voices, they're different cadences, they're different ways of seeing the world, and you can hear in their writing a voice. Now, this is how I try to define it. Forgive me for reading, but it's always hard, so I'll do this. Is that voice is the unmistakable sound, rhythm, and point of view that unequivocally evokes the writer, and you know it when you read it. And then talking about Calvin Trillin, let's say I add him to the pile, or Tony Bourdain, M.F.K. Fisher, uh, you can't substitute them. I mean, Ruth Bourdain does a very funny job of meshing them together with Bourdain and Reichel, but the truth of the matter is you know which part of her tweets are Reichel and which part of her tweets are Bourdain because they're such distinctive voices, and together she creates her own, or he creates his own voice by putting them together. Now, I really want to find an easy way of saying how to get a voice. We all have voices. And this is something that I alluded to last time, the idea of being enough. I think that was one of the first steps that I had in my 12-step program, wasn't it? Where's my 12-step program? I think it's gone away. Sorry, guys. I think one of it was enough is never enough. Donna Summers and Barbra Streisand were wrong. Enough is not enough. You have to be enough of something. And as I said before, you could be bitchy enough, funny enough, nasty enough, sweet enough, interesting enough, diabolical enough, whimsical enough for us to be able to hang something on that voice. Nothing is worse than just sort of very beige writing in a beige voice because it's newscaster voice. It's just, it's very flat, and that's something that you don't want to have. I know with me, I can tell you a little bit how I think I got my voice. It's very Freudian, has a lot to do with my mother. My mother, who is a momma lite— that's what we call her on the site— is a good, God-fearing woman and loved by all in her church. But when that woman was younger, she had one hell of a wicked sense of humor. She was funny as hell. We'd be in church making fun of people because we've always sat second row from the back. So we'd be making fun of people in church. Cracking up laughing so hard that one time she went down to kneel on the kneeler, missed it, cracked her jaw on the pew in front. She was wicked, wickedly funny. And I kind of picked that up, but I also picked up her cadence, and I picked up her sense of humor, and I picked up what she thought was funny. And it's very funny because when the one and I get together, he says, "Ah, you're being Mama Leet now. I can see Mama Leet. I can hear Mama Leet." Because I just inculcated that particular that particular kind of sound, that particular kind of energy. And I think that was the basis for my voice right now, the humorous voice that I have. Now, it just didn't happen, come out like full-blown like Athena from Zeus's forehead. I remember one of the very first attempts of writing, I was 29 years old, and I wrote this very sad, sappy story called Love Day. How embarrassing is that? And it just wasn't there. And I tried so hard, and I tried so hard to make it work, and it wasn't there. And throughout my 30s, when I got into advertising, you know, when you're in advertising, you have to write every single day. You have to make your clients happy. And if you don't make your clients happy, you just make your clients happy. It's just that simple. So I learned how to write quickly. I learned how to write daily, and I developed a lot of my voice there. And that kind of smart aleck voice worked for me when I was in advertising. And then I kind of brought that forward into food writing. So I had a whole decade because my first food writing article was 1998. So I had like 8 years or 9 years of practicing before I even attempted to do something. When I read that post, it's really kind of a bad post— I mean, a bad article. It's on the site now, but it took that long to start developing it. So I urge you to listen to voices around you that you find fascinating, that you find interesting. When you're reading, highlight those passages of what they are, maybe even copy and paste them into computer if you can, and then read them aloud because you're going to fall into a rhythm. You're going to fall into some sort of cadence, and you're going to understand how someone else does that.

That's sort of like—

it's kind of like wearing someone else's clothes. They're not going to fit you. They're going to feel awkward. They're going to be too big, too large, too small, too loud, you know, too sedate. But you're going to be in them and you're going to start playing around and feeling around in those words and in those sentences, and you're going to realize, "No, hyperbole does not work for me. I'm much subtler. I like satire, so I like wit. I don't like broad humor," or, "I really like to tell a very simple story with very powerful words." You'll come to start seeing that, but if you're not exposed to a lot of voices and hear a lot of voices, read out loud a lot of voices, it's going to be hard to figure out exactly where you fit in that whole piece of the pie. Now Dennis, please tell me we have a question.

Oh, we have a few questions now, David. Lori Lynn Hirsch Stokey, if I pronounced that right, I'm sorry if I didn't, says, can you tell us what not to say, words not to use, or what kind of writing turns the blog reader off?

I think every blog reader is different. I think if you took the Pioneer Woman's readers and you put them on my blog, I think there would be a great massive exodus because it's a very different thing. And I think if we took Dennis Littley's readers and we put them onto Ruth Reichl's website, there's going to be an exodus because it's just different. But I think some of the things that I would suggest staying away from is, uh, it's words. I was going to get this to the later, but we can talk about it now. Our particular words, things like delicious, savory, sweet, yummo, yummy, uh, they say nothing to the reader. Because if you take all of the deliciouses out there and then you look at all the foods they're talking about, what you're doing is you're grouping all that, all those foods into one under one umbrella of the word delicious. So I try very hard not to use the word delicious. If I do, I might use it ironically. I love when people say that, that was ironic. I use it ironically. But one of the exercises I gave my class when I used to teach was I would tell them, I want them to come up with 100 adjectives, 100 synonyms for delicious without using the word delicious. And it took them quite a long time to come up with different words, but once they had them, they suddenly had a vocabulary that they can work with. And so that is something that I would really stay away from, those real cliché terms. Does that answer your question?

That answered it for me. We have one here from Chef Mirelle.. And she wants to know when posting recipes, she usually writes a narrative as the lead, but she sees other recipe bloggers who just post recipes. They don't put any kind of narrative in. Sometimes she worries that her narratives are too long. On average, hers are 2 to 3 paragraphs. What do you think is a good fit?

Is that— well, it's hard to ask her. Ask her though, is that the part above the recipe, like the post itself? To me, it's not too long. Chef Mirelle, I do things that are 1,000 words. My attitude is if you don't want to stay around in my house sitting in my chairs listening to my stories, there are a lot of other houses and a lot of other chairs you can sit in. And so I don't really worry about length. Diane Jacob, if you're out there, I'm really sorry about this, but Diane and I vehemently, vehemently have different ideas about this. She thinks posts should be a certain number of words and it's relatively short. I'm like, I don't care. I have one blog post entry that was an article that's 6,000 words and people read it all the time. I think if your work, Chef Mireille, is engaging— excuse me— and interesting, if the characters are round and full, if the action is pushing you and the reader forward, if it's telling me more about who you are, if it's bringing me in closer to your world, I'll stay for the ride. And really, your recipe is nothing more than a free gift with purchase in my mind. I want to know you through your words.

That makes sense. Okay, we have another one here from Gail Watson, and she wants to know, and it really ties into this, how do you balance personal with too personal? She says she's sure that Devil Cat is fascinating, but sometimes a blogger will go on and it's, well, not too fascinating.

Very, very good question, Gail. I think what you have to do is, if you have the luxury of doing this, and I don't really have the luxury of doing this anymore, writing it, putting it away, and coming back to it a few days later. And if you're writing about Double Cat, if you're writing about the grocery store, if you're writing about the DMV or whatever it is, and it's just going on and on and on, I think you're going to know it inside. But you can't, you can't know it when you're writing it because I have to fall in love with what I'm writing for me to write it, and then I can fall out of love with it very quickly. I'm a very capricious lover when it comes to my writing, but I think you have to fall— I have to fall in love with what I'm writing. So put it away for a little bit if it's something you're not very sure of. I know that Jenny Fields actually and I were speaking about this, and she had a post that she wasn't exactly sure of. She wrote it, she put it away, she revisited it, went, ah, I see where I need to go with this, and then it was a beautiful post. So the idea of going on too long is— you'll be able to tell from the comments too. If a post goes on and on and on and you get 4 comments, that's telling you something. Think of all of your people who comment as a focus group. So if you write a post about Devil Cat or you write a post about the DMV and you're getting 60, 80, 100 comments, then you know that you've hit the right balance. And just kind of analyze what that balance was. How long did you go on? When did you introduce the inciting incident? When was the rising action? When was the falling action? When was the close? It's not that hard really to pull it apart and parse your writing. And when you do that, you're going to start getting a sense of how you write and what draws people into your world and your story.

Okay. Our next one comes from Dion Baldwin. Mahalo, Dion. She wants to know what you would recommend if there is a food or recipe that they really want to post about but the story you're telling doesn't tie into it, into the post. How do you— can you get creative and interweave it or should you just take it in another direction or do a recipe?

You know, I think you can do a couple of things. One, I think you can just tell the story without the recipe. You don't have to always have a recipe at the end of a blog post. I certainly don't because my life I'm so busy with the website and everything else that I do that, you know, I've said this before, when I'm in New York, which is where I'm at right now, I don't cook during the week. I cook Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday when I'm in Connecticut, or if I stay there longer, that's when I do a lot of the cooking. I'm just too busy here. So if I'm writing a blog post, I had a blog post, uh, no, the last one that just went up was the Fatty Daddy cocktail, which is something you all should try. But the one that's coming up next is about the demolition of our kitchen. We're starting a renovation. There's no recipe in there at all. Excuse me, in the series that we're gonna have of 4 or 5 blog posts about the demolition, the renovation, there's gonna be no recipes in that. So if it doesn't really fit and you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole, don't. Just let it end. Or maybe take that recipe and you'll find another story for some reason that even though it's not germane to the idea— let's say you're talking about grandmothers and cookies or baking or something like that, and it's a cookie recipe that you have, and it's not your grandmother's, but you can then make a tie-in saying, even though it's not my grandmother's, this is one of my favorite recipes, and it just— baking is healing and love, and I think of my grandmother as love, and then you make a tie-in that way. So some things are oblique tie-ins, some things are absolutely linking, and some things don't need to have a recipe.

Very good. Alright, Brooks Walker wants to know, he says he struggles between the voice inside and grammatics, and how do you pen your voice and buffer it so it lays on the page with correct grammar?

First, you don't worry about correct grammar, Brooks. What you simply do is you write the story. I write with typos and spelling errors and incorrect tenses and verb and subject non-agreement. It doesn't make a difference. I want to get the story down. I want to get the emotion that's behind it. I want to be able to ask myself, what am I trying to communicate to you, Brooks, as my reader, so you understand this? When that's all done and you know you have it on the page, then you go back and you do correct grammar. But if you— I use— if your voice is grammatically incorrect sometimes, I'm okay with that. I use ain't and I use don'tcha and won'tcha. It's part of how I speak and kind of what I do, and I'll use that, and I will purposely— actually, the Fatty Daddy cocktail post that just went up, the very last line or two was written as if I were drunk because that is a very powerful cocktail. And so it's grammatical errors, there's typing errors, it's a mess. And I had a great time doing that because I thought, okay, what would I be like if I were drunk and trying to type? And I didn't want to get drunk while I was typing because I had the rest of the day to do, to work on. So I would really— I've spoken to you, I've had the pleasure of speaking to you, Brooks. Brooks, you're very articulate, you're very precise, you think very carefully about what you do. If that's the voice that you want to put on the page, that's perfectly fine. If that's how you speak to your wife and your kids, that's fine. But if you speak to your wife and your kids and your friends in a different way, start looking at that voice, and maybe that's a voice that you want to start playing around with. But grammar should always be the last thing you worry about.

And Dionne asked pretty much the same question. She says, do you know any books you could recommend if you want to check punctuation or grammar?

Sure, Grammar for Dummies. Absolutely, hands down Grammar for Dummies. When I started writing, because I was in advertising for 18 years, when I started writing for food, I forgot how to write because you don't really write well when you're in advertising. You know, you do everything incorrectly because it's all about how things sound and about style. So what I did was I hired a copy editor for the first 5 or 6 articles that I wrote. And I learned a tremendous amount through her. And then I took a copy editing class, and one of the books that was recommended was Grammar for Dummies. Another book that I found that I absolutely love, and I think I even have it here— isn't this funny? Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Great, great book, because it's eats, comma, shoots, and leaves. So it sounds like someone is eating and then shooting and then they're leaving. And what it really is, it was about a panda that eats shoots and leaves. They eat, they eat, or they eat barbecue, uh, barbecue. They eat bamboo shoots and leaves, but in the newspaper that it appeared in, it had "eats, shoots and leaves." So suddenly it was a felonious bear, a felonious panda. That's another one that's great. I also like "Woe Is I," which I believe was written by one of the copy editors of the New York Times. Engaging and funny, because "woe is I" is correct, not as "woe is me," which Shakespeare put. And I'm sure Shakespeare knew he was breaking a law, a rule, because when you use the verb "to be," anything that follows after should be in the, um, it should be "I," not "me." And, uh, of course I'm forgetting what that particular case is, but so that, those are the books that I use. I also use Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary online for spelling, and I also use all different kinds of thesauri online to be able to find— I'm looking for another way of saying something.

Okay, Stephanie Manley just put a question up. She wants to know, do you suggest that we should go with a mentor to help our writing? And if so, where do you find a good mentor?

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, get a mentor. And the way to find a mentor is you find someone whose writing you like, and you cozy up to them. It's nothing wrong with that. It's very flattering for people to be told that people like your writing. And, you know, a lot of people are very busy, but I know that over the years I have taken on different people after my writing classes or in between my writing classes who were very interested and very motivated. Do make sure that you wave a little bit of cash in front of them. That always helps because they should be compensated for their time. But someone who's thoughtful and caring and you can tell loves words and loves, as I said before, stringing words together like pearls on a necklace in order to have a beautiful sentence, is somebody you should get to know. And the thing is, Stephanie, your mentor will be my mentor. My sense of humor, my point of view, the way I think is different than yours. So perhaps I would choose this person when you would choose that person. But yes, I think that that is it, and that the way to do it is to approach someone whose writing you like and write a very flattering and not stalkerish but a very flattering email and ask if they would be interested perhaps working with you.

Good advice. Samantha Ferraro just asked, she says, I find more creativity in writing about my dish, the taste, the smells, etc., but having a difficult time connecting my writing on a more personal level. Do you think one should work into getting more personal?

It's Stephanie, her name— no, I'm sorry, Samantha. Samantha, Samantha, I'm sorry about that, Samantha. I think what you need to do is you have to find out, is that something that you're you're comfortable with in your life. Are you comfortable getting personal with people? Are you the kind of person who at a cocktail party can talk about your life and talk about certain things happening in your life and you're not very guarded? Or are you someone who likes to play, hold their cards very close to their vest, play it very privately? If you are, and actually Dennis, ask her, she can hear this, are you someone who plays things very close to the vest and see what her answer is. If you are someone who does that, then that's what should be reflected in your blog and in what you write. If you're someone like me who will talk to a tree stump, you know, I have no problem sharing a lot of what's going on in my life. So it'd be very odd for me to start writing and keep being very, very circumspect. And the only circumspect thing that I have at the moment is not saying the one's name because he just simply said, I don't want you to say that. But I talk about having a gay relationship and all the crazy things that go on with it, my mother and the crazy mother and traveling that we do and a crazy cat. A lot of crazy in my life, as you can see. A whole lot of crazy going on. So it should reflect who you are. Don't be someone else. So did she answer back yet?

No, I don't have any fucking idea. Okay, I have a question here from Jason Sandman, and it's not as much pertaining to writing as he wants to know. He says he's been writing his food blog since 2008, and I think he feels he's doing alright with that, but he's not as successful as he would like because his photography skills are not good. How important is it to your blog to have good photography skills if your writing is good and your food recipes are good?

That's a great question, Jason. The truth of the matter is I think that they are incredibly important, and I am not the person to be telling you how to do it because I suck when it comes to photography. A lot of the recipes, a lot of the photographs we have on the site, because we deal with cookbook authors, come from cookbooks. But it's very hard, and I think that Ask him, Dennis, if it is his photography skills or his food styling skills or both, because they're really— it's the price of entry now. Because when I started this in 1998, 1999, blogs didn't exist and half of you weren't even alive yet. But then you guys have all gone on to become incredible photographers and blown away so many of the traditional print world that it really is the price of entry of having beautiful photography. So I would get your butt into a photography class or get yourself into a food styling class. And we're talking hands-on. I mean, online is great to understand things. You need a teacher who's going to— as a perfect example, I don't know if Kate Jackson is online from Frame Cooks, but Kate Jackson is a very good friend of mine, and she was talking about she was with a photographer who was her mentor, and she was taking lessons from him. She was shooting in one direction, all excited about saying, "Look what I've done, look what I've done!" And then Bob took her shoulders and turned her completely around and said, "Look what you're missing. The story's over there. The story's not over there, young lady." And so you need someone who's gonna just kind of move you around and show you what to do. And the same thing with food styling. You need someone who's gonna explain to you how to put it on the plate. I learned a lot when my cookbook was shot. I still can't do what was done there, but I learned a lot about how it's done by professionals.

Sounds good. And Samantha did send a note back. She said she is, she is very open and friendly to anyone, anything, so she's not very guarded. Okay, we'll work on that.

And then Samantha, so work on that. Work a little bit more on opening up, being a little bit more friendly. I'll give you an assignment and then when you're done you send it to me. Write a blog post as if you were talking to your absolute best friend. So let's say your best friend is Stacy or Bill. It's like, hey Stacy, this is what happened to me today and then tell the story. And when you're done send it to me and I'll look at it. When you have somebody in mind when you're trying to write a blog post, a specific person, sometimes that can loosen up some of that tension inside, some of that that tightness because you know no one's going to read it. Well, I'm going to read it, but you know no one else is going to read it. So you can be very honest and you can be more open.

Okay, and we had a reply from Jason also. He says it's a little of both, but it's more about time.

Okay, time. Okay, that's hard for all of us, Jason. It really is. It really is.

Okay, we have some more questions here. Okay, we have one from Shaya Goldstein, she wants to know, what's your opinion about the length of time between posts? She goes through phases where she can post 4 or 5 days a week, and then she also gets into a rut where she has writer's block for a while, and even though she has nice pictures and recipes, she doesn't want to compromise her blog by putting something up that isn't up to her standards.

That's great, and I admire that, Shaya. This is something that I struggle with tremendously because on the non-blog part of my site, something goes up Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We're dark. Just, that's the way it is. We always put something up, whether it be writing from someone else or a recipe from a cookbook. But when it comes to my blog, I can't create a schedule. I find it very hard. My life is not interesting enough. I'm too chained to my desk to be able to have so many things to talk about. I wish I were someone like the Pioneer Woman who going here, going there, doing this, flying there, doing this TV show, having a ranch, having a husband with a nice butt. I mean, there's a lot to talk about there. I don't have that. I do have a husband with a nice butt though. So I have to wait for something to happen. I can't manufacture. But what you can do, I took a poll of some of my readers, blog readers specifically, and they want between 3 and 5 blog posts a week. I passed out. I can barely get one a week. But I asked them, if I can't do that, if I just had a photograph of something that I found very lovely at a farmer's market with just a one-liner, would that be enough to kind of like tie them, you know, kind of tide them over to the next blog post? And it was a unanimous yes. They were very happy just to know that I'm out there to kind of get a sense of what I'm doing. Because realize, when these readers start reading you, they become invested in you, and it's like watching your face favorite— I refuse to say the word reality show— but your favorite program on television.

Downton Abbey.

Look how invested we all were in Downton Abbey. And then of course, there he is dying in the end of season 3. I don't know why the hell they did that. That's beyond me. But we were so invested in what was going on with these characters, and we wanted to know what the next thing was, that damn it, if something came on on Sunday on Channel 13 that was not Downton Abbey, I would be pissed off. I don't care what Super Bowl or what March Madness was happening, it better not happen on my Downton Abbey time. That's the same thing with your readers. So if you're someone who, like me, is kind of sporadic, then why don't you have a schedule that's farther out and find those smaller things that you can put in. Maybe it's just a photograph, maybe it's just a tiny one-paragraph thing of something you've overheard.— and so therefore they know you're there.

And Jason asked another question, it really kind of ties into what you're just talking about. He says, "Do you have any tips for writing or blogging when you're working in a kitchen 70 hours a week?" I do, actually.

I discovered this— I don't know if I can get arrested for this— I discovered this while driving with my cell phone. I would tape record myself writing a blog, dictating a blog post. And Siri is pretty good at being able to pick up my voice. I've had it now for a year and a half. And I will dictate when I drive. I'll have this headset on and I'll dictate. So let's say you're at work. You have to go to the bathroom at some point. You have to have a lunch break or dinner break at some point. Talking to the phone, talking to a tape recorder, even if it's just things that are going to jog your memory later about what's been going on. You know, if you see— if someone says this most amazing thing, this most amazing sentence about food that it's like, oh my God, I have to remember this, and you know you won't, you run to the bathroom suddenly and just tape record it, you know, or write it on a piece of paper, then tape record it later, and then play it back for yourself, and then type it all up. And that's not going to be a blog post, clearly, but it could be the outline for a blog post, or it could be a list of inciting incidents. That we talked about already. But that's one of the ways in which the blog post I'm working on right now is how it came about, sitting in the car and getting an idea and then dictating.

I've actually texted myself messages when I thought of something and I knew I wasn't going to remember.

That's a great way of doing it too, Dennis.

We have a question here from Kirsten Herbert. Kirsten Herbert, I'm sorry. In some of my most well-received posts, the story is what draws people in, but I have a hard time transitioning it from emotion of the story to describing the dish being featured. What's the best way to bridge that gap?

I think you shouldn't bridge the gap. I think if you're telling a very engaging story, I think that engagement should go all the way through and right into the recipe. Somehow we feel, because we have been so indoctrinated by recipes we see in magazines, I mean, we we see in newspapers and even in cookbooks too, where you have narration and then, "Oh, oh, there's the recipe. I have to talk about the food now in a particular way." Why do you have to do that? Why can't you just go all the way down and tell your story and start talking about the food and then pull that story down to the directions? Let me know a little bit more about yourself. I was very much against this, by the way. I was— excuse me— vehemently opposed to this, and I am not anymore. Because number one, it is copywriting your work in a way that absolutely protects your recipe. Because if you're just saying things like, you know, dump water in pot, bring to a boil, add eggs, hard boil, rinse, that's nothing. But if you're telling a story as you're pulling it down through the directions, that's copyrightable, and you can absolutely get someone to take that down, or you can take action. And I think what happens is if people like your writing style they're gonna want to be— they're gonna want to hear you in the recipe. And that's something that I'm trying very hard now to do. I'm not doing it as successfully as I could, but I know that in one blog post called "A Bolognese Sauce to Appease the Grandmother Within," it was about Marcella Hazan's bolognese sauce, and I tried to get some more voice into the body or the directions of that recipe. So Almost think of it as one piece and see if that does, if that helps.

Okay, we got a question here from Mona Holmes. You're going to love this one. She says her blog has an audience where her readership is about 70% women and she's constantly trying to please both. The name of her blog, I don't know if you've heard of it before, is Cooking This Will Get You Laid. Alright, and any suggestions on how to appeal to both men and women when they're so very different?

Yes, I do. First of all, I love the title of the blog, and I've been aware of it before. Women want to get laid one way, and men want to get laid another way. We all know this. The way to a woman's heart is very different than the way to a man's heart. Both can end up in bed, the journey's different. I don't see why you can't write blog posts for men only. Women, of course, are going to want to read it because they want to see what you're saying about men so they can understand that. Men are going to want to read it because they want to see what a woman says about a man. And then when you're— when it's for women, it's for women only. And then guys are going to want to read because they want to see what women think of men and, and how they want to be approached. But I think if you bifurcate the posts you could have a lot of fun. It's almost like a he said, she said, but with gender. But trying to blend it all into one— I haven't read a blog post, so forgive me, I can't speak from experience— but if you're just trying to glom it all together and make a website that— a blog that is trying to appeal to everyone in every post, it's— I don't think that's going to be as successful. And I think that what could happen is you could get very saucy with the guys, and maybe you're a little bit more sensitive and softer with the women. It's almost like there's two sides of you come out, like the Madonna-whore kind of thing, where you play back and forth, and it can be very fascinating and very interesting to read. Good.

We have a question here from Lori Alves, and she said the mission of her blog is geared to cooking to novice cooks and parents, and she wants to know how to get the point across that her recipes are easy without making people think she's dumbing them down.

That's a great, great question, Lori. I think that, um, it's stumping me. I didn't have a quick answer for that one. I stumble with— I suffer with this one too, and I stumble over it. I think the example of what you're doing is what's going to show people that it's easy. There are a couple of things that are— I mean, obviously there are certain telltale signs of an easier recipe. It tends to be shorter. It tends to have fewer ingredients. You know, bœuf bourguignon is certainly a much longer recipe than maybe a beef stew, which is really kind of the same thing, but there's not as much technique involved in a beef stew. So I think that if you use some of the telltale signs, making sure that it's a short recipe. But quality— you're asking for quality ingredients and you're asking for quality technique in what you're doing. So you're not compromising your reputation or your quality, and you're not dumbing it down. You know, we don't want to have suddenly this Sandra Lee kind of recipe— no offense, Sandra Lee— where you've got 19 boxes and then it's like a little package of ground beef. I think that is a way in which you could hurt yourself. But if everything is made from scratch and the story involved is very sweet, if you have children, having your children making it with you so people can see that it's great for kids. I would also pick up your iPhone. I'm really starting to do this now. Dennis Littley started getting me thinking about this. I start shooting with my iPhone a lot of things now and just put them on the site or put them on Google Plus. If your kids are making this recipe with you, take a video of them if you're comfortable, clearly, and then post it. Or if not, just videotape yourself. There's no problem. Just put your camera— there's little— I think it's called a GIF, if I'm not mistaken. Right, Dennis Littley? The thing you attach to your tripod. I think it's called a GIF. Or glyph. Glyph. I think it's a glyph. And it just holds your iPhone and you put it into a tripod, press the button, tape record yourself, talk, you know, you stumble, that's okay, that's perfectly fine. But people are going to see how easy it is to do. Do Google+ Hangouts on it and then what to do, the demos, and then what to do is once that goes to your YouTube channel, take that and plop it into that video, into that blog post. You know, if you do a 15-minute Google+ hangout, it's a demo. That's genius. People can see how easy it is.

Absolutely.

Hope that helps.

Oh yeah, hangouts are a great way to get points across too. People need to start using them more. Kirsten Kubert wants to know, do you think social media cannibalizes sharing the little things as blog posts?

No, no, because I think they're two different things. I think that I think you can have— if I think I know what you mean, is you can have something happen to you and you just throw it out in social media and you get this whole thing going, and then you write along a blog post about it. I see nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, if that's what you mean— and Dennis, ask her if you could write back and let me know if that's what you mean.

Well, Carrie Weber just chimed in on the same thing, and she says she was thinking the same thing as when when she doesn't have a post, I fill with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, but she's thinking maybe that's taking away from blog writing instead.

It can, absolutely. I understand that question a little clearer. Yes, it is, but you know what? I don't mind because what I do is on my blog homepage, we made it look like an old Polaroid and it says, "A Day in the Life of David." It's not changed daily, but whenever I have an Instagram I throw it up there, and sometimes I have just taken an Instagram photograph and just thrown it into a blog post and write a little bit of something. And actually, the photograph for the Fatty Daddy cocktail, which all of you, by the way, should be drinking, that was taken with my iPhone, was an Instagram photograph that I had not yet done all the filters with. So it's kind of what my people were saying to me when I had that poll. And by the way, ask your readers have a poll, have a private poll. You go to Google and you can do their, I think it's their surveys, and you can ask people and you can give away, you know, a cookbook, or you can give away something for them to answer the poll. But they said that they were happy just to see photographs that I was taking, Instagram photographs that I was taking, anything, just to know that I was tying it in. So don't let it not I mean, you may be a person who your future is going to be Instagram and photographs. There are— a James Beard nomination was just given out to a Tumblr feed, I believe it is, if I'm not— if I read it correctly, of just all these photographs about food, and it was nominated for James Beard Award in the visual category. So that may be how you want to communicate to people, but if you're really a writer, there's no harm in using that to sort of tide people over, or even use it as just a place to start. I see nothing wrong with that.

Sounds good. Could be almost like a little bit of a tease, getting them ready for something else too.

Yes, I mean, the Fatty Daddy started that way. The Fatty Daddy picture went out 2 weeks, 2 weeks before the recipe, and people were dying for the recipe, which of course I'm like, well, it's coming to a blog post near you, because I just hadn't yet finished it.— and people were just loving it. By the time it came out, they were like, "Oh my God, it's here, it's here." It's like the second coming of Christ. So it can really create excitement for you.

Very good. Susan Powers wants to know if you can give an example of pulling the recipe into the post.

Yeah, thanks, Susan. I'm trying to think of one that I may have— you know, read Michael Procopio, Food for the Thoughtless, who by the way was nominated for a James Beard Award for a piece called KY is My New Jam or something like that. And he also was nominated for his blog called— for an IACP Award called foodforthethoughtless.com. You have to kind of dig around, but Michael has some very good examples of how he pulls it through and he talks more narratively in the directions. I'm trying to think of some of the ones that I did. If you look at my Fatty Daddy post, which is the most recent one on my blog, I pulled a little bit of that down. I'm going to go to my blog, so if I disappear, you'll know why. And if I'm umming and ahhing, it's just that I'm trying to see if I can remember one that would be a concrete example as opposed to me just making up something which makes no sense. Um, actually, yeah, the corned beef hash also. There's a corned beef hash one that I did and that talked about when the one and I first got together, and he actually ate that disgusting Alpo-looking corned beef hash out of a can. And then I kind of pull a little bit of that down, um,— let me see if I can give you an example. I mean, not fully, but it's like, you know, serve pronto. And then we have called Fancy Pants Corned Beef Hash. You know, if you want to fancy up this corned beef hash recipe, rather than just plop an egg on top, make a hash rendition of Toad in the Hole. After the hash is almost completely cooked, make 4 holes in the hash and carefully break an egg into each and lower the heat to medium, cover the skillet, Let the egg set until the yolk is runny and oh so luscious. It's not rocket science, I assure you. So it's a little bit brought down there. It was easier in— that's the fancy pants corned beef hash is what we had, what we call a tuxedo variation. But that will give you a bit of an example. I hope that's helpful. And also, and I'm only using mine because I just know my work. If you look at the the Marcella Hazan bolognese sauce, that kind of brings it down too.

Okay. Gail Watson has another question. She says she's been chided about not following recipe protocol. For instance, she would say, "Slosh this in a bowl," or, "It's ready when it smells like Sunday morning," etc. How do you feel about not sticking to traditional recipe methods or protocol?

Screw them. Screw them, Gail. You know what? Because splosh, I think, is fantastic. I wish I had figured— I think I told this last time, you know, I— when I created my cookbook, I created a vocabulary for as many greens as I possibly could. So potatoes that were chopped up and into, uh, you know, chunks, and they were put into a pot, and then you add water— well, you just didn't put them in, they plonked P-L-O-N-K. They sound like plonking, and certain things plinked, and certain things clattered. I clattered beans a lot in my book.

And if I get—

I mean, it won an ISCP Award for Best New First Book. So I say screw them. I like splashing. I like that it smells like Sunday morning. I don't know what your Sunday morning smells like. If that's all you're telling me, then that's not helping me. But if you're saying that it smells like Sunday morning and you give me more to go with, I personally love it. I think it's where recipes are starting to go because we are not being hindered by pages. A lot of times— I meant to say this before, Gale— a lot of times the reason why we're so inculcated, we've inculcated this whole thing of short recipes and short instructions is because everybody was trying to fit so much into such a little space on newspapers and food sections in newspapers and also magazines. We have the luxury of a lot, a lot of space. It doesn't cost us anymore, you know, to, to our hosting company to get this much or to get that much. So I think that's where a lot of this is coming from. Also, we have a lot of younger people writing recipes. I think you all should learn how to write a recipe correctly. That's not an excuse. The creative expression is fine, but you should still know the basis and the foundation of how to write a good recipe. But God love you, God bless you, you have my blessing, you go on, Gil.

Sounds good. Beth Vishpav, sorry Beth if I slaughtered your name there, what do you see as the future for food video blogging?

Oh, Beth, Beth, Beth, Beth, these are the kind of things that I just don't know, I'm not a seer. If I knew that, I'd be very rich right now. What do I see as the future of video food blogging? What comes to mind is I just think a lot of man on the street. I think that, you know, pretty kitchen, pretty dish, pretty hands making the dish are lovely. We've been seeing that for years and years and years and years. I think it's going to be taking your iPhone. By the way, I love my iPhone video. I don't like using one of those video cameras. I don't know how to use them. My iPhone is easy. And go into the farmer's market and talking to your butcher, talking to your vegetable guy, talking to your butcher, talking to your fishmonger, asking them questions and saying, hey, you're going to be on video, do you mind? And intercut that with other things that you do. And you've got to be a good editor for things like this or have someone who's a editor. But I think you want to tell stories. Remember, it's all about stories. We're going back to Romeo and Juliet dying in the end. It's all about stories. So tell me a story through videos. I think that it's not just pointing a camera. I think Google+ Hangouts are great because they're teaching us, but I think you're going to see Google+ Hangouts go even farther because I think we need to be told stories and we like to be told stories and we're used to being told stories visually because as a television. So I think if you get yourself out of the kitchen and then bring the world into your kitchen, I think that'd be really cool. It's kind of at least the only thing I can think of at the moment.

That's pretty good. Lori Lynn Hirsch has another question, and she wants to know— and I know the answer to this already because we covered it, but it's in another video— it's, uh, how important is it to respond to each comment on your blog?

No, thank you for asking that, and thank you, Dennis Littley, for making the point that I've already answered this in another. It's important, it's crucially important to answer every single comment. We have a policy at Leitz called No Comment Left Behind. My staff hates me because basically they have to answer every single comment. It's easy when someone says, oh gosh, I love this dish, your corned beef hash was fantastic, I loved it, it was It's great. It's easy. Oh, well, thank you so much. I'm so glad you liked it, Dennis. Next time you make it, take a picture and send it to me. Maybe we'll put it on the site. Fine. It's very hard when someone says, I made your corned beef hash and it sucked, or I made your cake and it didn't rise. I have, by the way, I think one of the best pumpkin cakes on the internet. It's a pumpkin cake with maple cream cheese frosting. Just got to say that. And when someone writes me and says, it was awful. It didn't rise, or whatever. I have to answer that too. I take it offline and I have a personal conversation with that person to help find the problem and the mistake that maybe they did. Or maybe I didn't communicate something in the recipe well enough. It's an old enough recipe that I kind of covered everything and changed little bits that maybe weren't making sense. And, you know, and work through them, work with them and through the issue. Until they either have given up, and most of them will give up after the first email back from you. I do that privately, like I said, and some people will appreciate going all the way. It's a very tiring thing, I'll tell you, it's very tiring, but the loyalty that it engenders is priceless. Priceless.

Okay, we've got another question here from Jason Sandman. He wants to know, what is your recommendation for figuring out your audience? Are there tools out there or should he do a poll?

You can do a poll, absolutely. I think that's very important. Jason, what's the name of your blog? I'd have to answer that. The reason why I'm asking is because the name of your blog— what was the one, women about getting laid, Dennis Littley? Remember that name?

Yeah, I'm trying to remember.

Mona's website. You know that's not a blog that's going to—

Cooking this will get you laid.

Yeah, cooking this will get you laid. You know that's not a blog coming out of a convent. Okay, so you know right there who your audience is going to be. It's going to be someone who is probably going to want a real kind of sassy gal talking to them. You know, it's going to want a little bit of blue talk, you know, going on.

Jake says, "Well done, chef." Okay, well done, chef.

I don't quite get enough from that of what that could be. And, you know, your tagline also could be something that can tell people what it's about, and that will draw the right people. For instance, my— no one gets this, I don't know why, but my blog is called The David Bloggs spelled B-L-A-H-G because everyone was like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and that's what they were all doing for years with blogs and blogs were really bad. And my tagline is, "It really is all about me." Again, another jab at people who just do navel-gazing on their blog. And like one of the earlier questions about how do you balance things out, Devil Cat was brought up for instance. So having a tagline will help telegraph to other people what your blog is about, Jason. And you can also do a poll, but you need to decide yourself what— who you want as your audience. I don't think you go out and then you find who your audience is. I think you need to go and say, this is the audience I want to reach because I have something valuable for them. So if you are a chef, and I'm assuming that you're a chef, if you want to reach other chefs, then you're going to be having a much more professional blog in the sense of professional world. If you're someone who wants to teach kids how to cook, your— how you're going to write and what you're going to write about is going to be different. So I think you need to decide who you want as your audience, and that will make it very clear. For me, in my— with my blog when I started, my site when I started— there were no blogs when I started. I wanted to have a cook who knew their way around the kitchen. They didn't have to be expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I did not want to have to tell someone that, you know, separate the eggs did not mean put half of them over here and half of them over here on the counter. I wanted someone to know what separate the eggs meant. And I did actually, in the beginning, because I was learning to cook, I wanted really complicated recipes because I was loving making my own puff pastry, I was loving making my own filo dough. I was loving making my own butter and this and that. Then as I continued on, you know, yeah, I can buy really good puff pastry. Dufour has a great puff pastry, or I could do a quick puff pastry. So it got a little bit simpler. It reflected more the way I was— I'm cooking now and the foods that I like now. So if you know what you want, it's build it and they will come. That's the best thing.

He just mentioned that he says he wants to inspire people to grow and cook through demonstration.

By him demonstrating to them?

I would think that's what he meant.

Okay. I'll be very frank, that sounds very lofty, and I think that's a very good goal, a good mission, but that's not really who your audience is. I'm not hearing who your audience is. The people that you want to reach. So I would think my advice to you would be simplify, simplify, simplify. Find out who the audience is that you want to reach. Use the language that is, that is their language, depending whatever that audience is. Find the stories that is going to inspire them to do the kind of cooking that you would like them to do. If, like I said, if it's professional chefs, the stories that's going to inspire them is not going to be the same as the stories that are going to inspire 28-year-old grandmothers. Yeah, 82-year-old grandmothers. It's going to be a very, very different experience, and that's going to affect your writing. It's going to basically— what's called— it'll angle your writing. You'll have to find a different angle for that.

And Lori Lynn just asked again, she said thank you for answering the question about the comments, but she's She still wants to know, do you answer someone who just says great dish or sounds delicious?

Yes, I do. If someone says great dish, sounds delicious, I will say something along the lines of Laura Lynn. Laura Lynn.

Laura Lynn.

Laura Lynn. When you say, you know, David, great dish, I'll say Laura Lynn, thanks, I appreciate that. If you haven't made it, I really suggest you do. When you do, let me know what you think. I treat every comment as if they're the only reader I have. That's just my philosophy.

Good advice. I don't have any more questions at this point.

Okay, shall I just continue with some of the other stuff, or do you want to wrap it up? It's an hour, I don't know. Whatever you want. Do people want me to continue? I will continue.

I think we have a little more time if you'd like.

Sure. So let me just go on to another document here. We've talked a little bit about voice. These are a couple of other things when it comes to voices, and we've really gotten some of these things. All right, some of these things we've covered, I just want to say it again. A great thing that you can do when you're trying to find your voice, by the way, as I said, is read your words out loud. Nobody there, just read it out loud. And if you stumble, I think you stumble for one of two reasons. Out of two major reasons. Number one, that there's some sort of grammatical, syntactical, structural error in it. You know, you have a subject and verb disagreement, or you have a dangling modifier or something. And if that's not the case, I think you're stumbling because it's not authentic to who you are. There's something that's not working emotionally for you. And I think when that happens, just make note of it, just put a little checkmark there. And put it aside and then look and say, is there something I'm not saying here? Am I not being fully truthful? Am I trying to shape something but not shape it fully? I think that's a really important thing. Another thing is I think you really want to avoid foodie speak. And by the way, I hate the word foodie. Really hate that word foodie. You know, these are words and phrases that really romance food with all those filigree touches that really want to make you barf. This is an actual phrase from a very famous writer. I will not say who it is. "The corn tasted of the earth that cradled it, the wind that caressed it, and the sun that blessed it every day." That doesn't tell me a damn thing about how the corn tastes. I don't get anything about how the corn tastes. That's romantic, fine, but give me something, give me some meat that I can hang on to and understand what you're trying to say. I mean, if you're writing poetry, that's perfectly fine, but if you're trying to reach people in a blog post or an article, they need to know some practical information of what things taste like. And, you know, also too, I did mention this earlier, Anne Lamott, who wrote Bird by Bird, it's another great book, by the way, who asked about books, It's bird by bird, B-I-R-D by B-I-R-D. You know, write your shitty first draft. Don't be afraid. Write your shitty first draft. Let it be as shitty as it possibly can be because that's what it's supposed to be. I used to be a writer who I started and I would work forever to write the perfect first line. I have to get up and almost take a nap because it took forever to do it. Then I'd write the perfect second line and the perfect third line. But by the time I get done with the piece, it was— it took me ages. And now I just, I can't, I can't afford that. And I, I realized how constipated that was making me. So now I write a really shitty first draft, as she has deemed it. I'm using her words, folks. Uh, shitty first draft. And then you put it aside and you make it less shittier and less shittier until it's no longer shitty, which is really important. Dennis Littley, is there a question? I see you looking at something.

There is one. It's from Shea Goldstein, and she wants to know, what do you consider stealing a recipe? Is there a certain number of ingredients you have to change?

Okay, the biggest— this just happened to me today. 3 recipes of mine were stolen. The most important— the way you will know if you're stealing a recipe is if you feel it in your heart. It's really the only answer I can give you. I can give you the technical answer, absolutely, I will do that. But if you know that you've taken it from someone and you have not attributed it and you have not thanked them, you have not made it clear that you've adapted, slightly adapted, got permission for, you'll know it. And for each one of those things, there's a place in hell for people like that. I'm sorry, there's a room reserved in hell for people who do that. Because there are people on the internet, and I'm sure there are many on this Hangout, who've just had their work ripped off over and over and over again. And that means that it dilutes your work, it dilutes your income. And when they take it and they don't even credit you, you know, it just completely— you become invisible. The technical way when it comes to recipes, if you were going to take one of my recipes and didn't ask permission, and you weren't— and you didn't attribute is I think that you have to change one, at least one of the major ingredients. And I think you got to strip out the entire headnote and you have to rewrite the directions from top to bottom. There should not be 3 words in a row that are reminiscent to me. They should be your own directions, because then what happens is it's just a list of, a list of ingredients and it's just directions. And that's fine, I mean, I can't fault you, that's the law. But the kind and good and right thing is to acknowledge, link off, ask permission, explain why you wanted to make my incredible pumpkin cake, and then make it. Or even better, write this incredible blog post and link off to the recipe on my site. Why do you have to use my work? And by the way, I'm going to tell you something right now. I think Dennis can probably agree with me. Google+ with verified authorship, when they start seeing duplicate content, there's a chance— I'm not saying that I know anything, but I'm reading things that if you take my recipe and you put it on your site and it's duplicate content, you're going to get dinged and dropped down. That's what they're saying is going to happen.

Yeah, they can end up catching you for that. The duplicate will get purged.

Yeah, and because if I'm the verified author of that, then they know it's me, and they will see that I came up with it, came out with it on March 1st or March 19th, which is today, and then you happen to come out with it March 21st. So, but I think the most important thing really is kindness and reach out to that author and say, I really loved your pumpkin cake, David, What's the best way that I can feature it on my site? That's always the best way.

Sounds good. Laura Lee Goyer wants to know, when you're capturing dialogue, do you need to quote what the person said verbatim, or can you take some liberties as long as you don't skew the truth?

Very, very, very good question. When you are writing for a new publication like newspaper especially, it has to be verbatim. I know the New York Times, even if some writes in grammatically incorrect sentences, if someone spoke that way. So if there is a subject and verb disagreement, they will put that in there. A lot of the stuff that I write is storytelling based upon what happened. I like to be able to say what they've said and how they've said it. But at the same time, I don't need all of what they said. I remember I had a fiction writing class with Patti Dan, who wrote the book Mermaids, and she said that this was fiction, but she said one sentence of dialogue can tell you more about that character, or in this case a person, than all these paragraphs of description. So you may realize that one part of what they said moves the action forward. You're not not telling the story, but you're not bogging us down with dictation. This is my point of view. There are other people feel very differently, but I feel if you're telling a story, and that's what my blog posts are, are stories, then I like to be able to to move it forward in a way which serves the story. And so I'm very selective. But if you're writing for publication, if you're writing a reported piece, absolutely, 100%, you have to write what they've said. But even an editor will chop down what they've said, but it has to be word for word.

Okay, I've got nothing else up here right now, so—

okay. There's a real echo now. Sorry about that, Dennis. Um, I'm just looking through. We've setting this— oh, a couple of things about setting the scene in place. Uh, too many blog posts take for granted that, um, the reader knows where they are. So you'll say, when the restaurant sat down— I don't know where you where you are. Explain a little bit of the restaurant. Describe the restaurant a little bit. Tell me the environment. Tell me some of the people in there, some of the characters that are populated there. You need to give me what I call the latitude and longitude of a story, and that is partly where you are, the place that you are, so I can understand. You know, if it's a dark— I'm just thinking of something we posted on the site not too long ago from a writer, and it was a restaurant and in Italy, and it was a little bit dark, and she made it very clear that it was dark. So every time she went back into the restaurant, I knew that it was a dark restaurant, and it was a very simple country restaurant. It was a little bit dark, and she liked to sit by the window. So that was an image for me that kept me very grounded in what was happening. And so suddenly, if it were like she was talking about the fluorescent light suddenly went on, I'd be like, what are you talking about? It's a dark restaurant, you're by the window. So I think you need to do that with setting your place, setting the scene, as well as setting a place. Think of that latitude and longitude. It might just be a sentence, like we had the— remember the lead and then the nut graph? It might just be a sentence up there in the lead that talks about, we were sitting in my favorite restaurant, the Marrow, and along the brown velvet bank of chairs. I saw, I don't know, who do I see? I saw Justin Bieber or something like that. So therefore I know where we are. The brown velvet bank of chairs tells me that, you know, we're not McDonald's. And then Justin Bieber, you know, well, maybe he goes to McDonald's, but you know, it suddenly attracts celebrities. So that tells me a lot right there. That's really important.

Okay, Susan Powers wants to know, how do you inspire yourself when you're feeling a bit dry or out of ideas?

Great, great question, Susan. I'm going through that right now because I'm questioning everything that I'm doing right now as far as my writing, to be very frank and very honest with you. These are all techniques that I'm passing on to you and that I use and need to use with myself. Um, the thing that's kind of getting me a little jazzed at the moment is, because I don't know about your life, but I wake up and there's tons of emails and I have to deal with my emails, I have to deal with deadlines, I have to deal with people not doing their job or doing their job too well, or all these different things that may go on with my blog and my site. And the site, site. So what I do now I've only been doing it for a couple of days, is I make sure everything's clean when I go to bed, which is very hard for me to do. And then I get up in the morning, I don't open my email, I don't open any browser, anything. I open up Word and I give myself one full hour of undisturbed writing time. And I hate it, and I try and I really squirm in the seat for the first 10, 15 minutes because I just don't want to be there. I, by the way, I hate writing, just so you know, be very frank. I hate writing. It's one of the hardest things in the world. I do like having written. I hate writing. But somewhere in that hour, I hit something. Something happens. A couple of, couple of words get put together. I'm like, oh, I like that. I go, oh, that's where this story is going, or that's where the story is starting. And then when that hour finishes, I don't care where I'm at, I put it away and I pick it up the next morning. So So that makes it— I write it just for myself. It may never go on the blog. I'm writing only for myself. And that makes me feel a little bit more alive creatively. Another thing you have to do, Susan, is you have to get out of your damn house. I don't know about you, but I literally— I am in the same sweatpants I've been in for the last, like, 4 days. I don't get out. That's part of my problem because I'm chained to my desk. So if you can get out, I try to give myself one day a week that I go out. I go out and I do something, see a movie. I don't go to museums, but see a movie or go to the bookstore, go to a restaurant. I don't take walks, but something, something like that where I can actually be out there where my mind is not thinking about what I'm doing. A lot of times you will get an idea because you're not looking for it. But if you're looking for an idea, it's very elusive. But when you're not, a lot of times it will come to you. So I think going to movies are great if you can afford going to the movie in the afternoon if you don't have kids or have a job. Well, I used to steal away from work, by the way, in the middle of the day to go to a movie. I think they're great places for things to start bubbling up. So give yourself the opportunity to discover. For instance, one One of the things that Juan and I are going to do is New York Magazine just came out, I think last week, with the best of New York. And there's a whole, of course, a food section. There are 33, I think, best of foods. And we're going to work one by one by one by one, going to those places or kiosks or stores and eating those best foods. It may become a blog post, it may become 33 blog posts, it may become nothing. But it's just going to be more information for for me and more inspiration.

Very good. Okay, Jason Sandeman again, he would like to know, how do you feel the food writing world as a career? I tried reading through Will Write for Food and I get the sense that it's all doom and gloom.

There's a lot of truth to that, Jason. I'm really sorry, it really is. Extraordinarily hard. Writers, unfortunately, like mothers, are not paid a lot, if at all, and their work is terribly underappreciated. Yet we have incredibly powerful positions. We can change minds. We can create worlds just with our words. We can let people— we can create so much with what we do, yet the value of that is not there because other people can't make a lot of money on it, and that's why there's not a lot of value there. We're not paid a lot. And right now the food world is so saturated. So my advice to you is find other things that you can do that are tangentially related to food. Let's say you have a great marketing background, so maybe working for a firm that has a lot of restaurant clients or a lot of food clients. Or maybe you are— you can wait tables. I waited tables and I hated it, but it's just a suggestion. Or one of the people I know worked in a cheese store. She just needed some extra money, she worked at a cheese store. She did not realize what she was going to— it was going to change her life. It was going to change her life. And then she went from that cheese store— I met her when she was an assistant to a real estate broker. Then she ended up at a cheese store, then she ended up somewhere else, then she ended up as one of the chefs she was on Martha Stewart Living Television. I know she wasn't a writer per se, but although she wants— she does write, but she didn't know where life was going to go. So your writing career may not be what supports you, but it's the outlet with which you can explore and express the other parts of your food life. I know that's bleak sounding, and I'm sorry. I really thought that I was going to be the the person who was going to crack this code when I first started writing, and I went through what I call my decade of debt, where I went through all of my IRAs and all of my investments. I even borrowed against my IRA because I just remember thinking, well, I told the one, when I, when I finally get there, when I get to the top, it's going to be different. I know it's going to be different. Everything will open up. The doors will just fly open, and, you know, and there will be all these amazing people on the other side, just welcoming me in, welcoming me in. And he had turned to me and said, you have 3 James Beard Awards, you have an IACP Award for your book, you've got 2 other writing awards, and you've been in Best Food Writing for 11 years or 12 years running. It doesn't get much bigger or better than that. This is it. This is exactly what it's going to be. And that was a major eye-opener for me. I'm very honest and very frank with you. It was It was at that point that I said I had to do something different. And for me, what I did was I had a site that had from 1999 to 2009 never been monetized. I started monetizing it because I had a decade of building up an audience. I was lucky that money started rolling in relatively soon and a good enough money that I was able to start breathing again. Sorry.

But again, you don't— I mean, it's very cliché to say it, but you do something not because of the money all the time, but because it's what you do, it's who you are, and it's what makes you happy. So I mean, doing that, even if you're not making a ton of money, is also good to do just to keep yourself sane and happy too, if you've got something else to pay the bills.

That's the whole thing, with something else to pay the bills. Absolutely.

Yeah, because I don't think, like you said, with a situation that is saturated with so So many people in food blogging, so many more coming on, and writers every day that's added to the list that the prospects are not real great.

No.

To break out of it anymore. There's not going to be another Pioneer Woman. There's not going to be another— you know, it's just there's too many people now.

And there may be another Pioneer Woman, but that particular person or that particular blogger or that particular writer or author, whatever it is, will be 180 degrees from her., it will pop up in a way in which no one expected. And, and to be honest with you, what I'm noticing— and I had a problem with it, I have less of a problem with it now— it is about personality. I think you have to have talent, but also personality is what gets people, people's attention. So if you have a great personality and your voice is great— that's why voice is so important— you can start building an audience that way.

Okay. I think— and Brooks Walker just said, "Pioneer man." So I think on that note, though, we're going to call it a night because we've had a really good chat here with you. And David, thank you so much for coming and sharing your wealth of knowledge with us and your experience. It really means a lot to get that and let everybody ask you questions.

Sure. Thank you for having me, Dennis. I really appreciate it.

My pleasure, as always. All right, folks. Thank you so much for stopping by. We are the G Plus Food Bloggers Community. This is one of our community education series, and stay tuned for what we have coming up. We're here every Tuesday, and we look forward to having you with us. So thanks again for coming, and we'll see you soon.