How does one get started in food writing?

This question has been on my mind ever since I became a stay at home mom. I need to find a way to make some money without having to put my children in day care. Food writing is something I’m interested, but I don’t know how to start. The only published works I have are a couple of poems I wrote in high school. I’m qualified to write about food as I have 14 years in foodservice 3 of them in actual restaurants and I have a culinary school degree. Anyone have a suggestion?

Questions about writing usually do best in the Cafe Society forum, so I’ll move this thread over there.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. Thank you for setting me straight.

Are you talking about restaurant reviewing? All the ones I can think of were journalists first. Experience in the food business seems to be less important than experience with writing, with a few exceptions (e.g., Anthony Bourdain.)

Not necessarily, there’s plenty to write about food that doesn’t involve reviewing. The magazines are full of article outlining techniques, histories of dishes or whole cuisines for that matter, how culture and cuisine interact, that sort of stuff. FTR I write very well when I put some effort into it.

My totally uninformed advice would be to just start writing and submitting. If you’ve got the free time for it. Pick out some magazines you think you’d fit well with, review what they tend to publish, and write some pieces that meet your interest and their demographic, and send them off. The worst that could happen would be you spend some time honing your writing skills and you never hear back. Best case, you get published. Most likely they’ll send you some nice form letters back saying that they’re not accepting submissions at that time or that they don’t want yours. Maybe some will be personalized and give you some good guidance.

Alternatively, or if you’re very concerned about wasting your time, you could get a bunch of magazines and write to them asking what their policy is on amateur submissions. That’ll probably get you a good start.

In my totally uninformed and baseless opinion.

I started in my mashed potatoes…

:smiley:

Get submission guidelines and start reading the magazines. Do not write the articles on spec and send them – most editors want query letters rather than entire articles.

Good luck!

Calling Chef Troy! Troy, please pick up the white courtesy phone…

Where’s he been, anyway?