Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Every ordinary life story is extraordinary!

Boil It Down: The Food Memoir

Should you write a food memoir?
Boil It Down: The Food Memoir
If you’re writing a memoir but finding yourself rambling without a narrative focus, you may want to jump on the food memoir bandwagon. Food memoirs are becoming so commonplace that the Literary Foodie blogger lists several hundred you might be interested in reading. Among the most popular are Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; Blood, Bones & Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton, Julie Powell’s book-to-movie Julie and Julia and Julia Child’s own My Life in France; Beaten, Seared and Sauced, by Jonathan Dixon; A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle and Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, by Ruth Reichl.
But let’s talk about you. If you’re not a celebrity chef or even a good cook, why might you want to write a food memoir?
We all eat, so food is something that draws in the reader. It’s multisensory; you can describe the look, texture, smell and taste. And it’s a memory trigger. We may be more likely to remember what we ate on a certain night at our favorite restaurant than who was in our company that evening. Everyone has dishes they associate with growing up, romances, routines, special dates and general indulging. By calling upon that aspect of your memory cache, you provide a focus and establish a consistent thread for your memoir. As an underlying theme, food can be symbolic, the topic lends itself to humor and a food memoir is the perfect vehicle if you want to write only about a limited period of your life.
http://literaryfoodie.blogspot.com/p/food-memoir-list.html

If you’re writing a memoir but finding yourself rambling without a narrative focus, you may want to jump on the food memoir bandwagon. Food memoirs are becoming so commonplace that the Literary Foodie blogger lists several hundred you might be interested in reading. Among the most popular are Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; Blood, Bones & Butter, by Gabrielle Hamilton, Julie Powell’s book-to-movie Julie and Julia and Julia Child’s own My Life in France; Beaten, Seared and Sauced, by Jonathan Dixon; A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle and Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, by Ruth Reichl.

But let’s talk about you. If you’re not a celebrity chef or even a good cook, why might you want to write a food memoir?

We all eat, so food is something that draws in the reader. It’s multisensory; you can describe the look, texture, smell and taste. And it’s a memory trigger. We may be more likely to remember what we ate on a certain night at our favorite restaurant than who was in our company that evening. We all have dishes we associate with growing up, romances, routines, special life events and general indulging. By calling upon that aspect of your memory cache, you provide a focus and establish a consistent thread for your memoir. As an underlying theme, food can be symbolic, the topic lends itself to humor and a food memoir is the perfect vehicle if you want to write only about a limited period of your life.

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Then just set up a chapter and start writing your memoir. Don’t worry about rules. There are no rules to writing your memoir; there are only trends. These trends are based on techniques and features identified in current top-selling memoirs. At best, they’re the flavor of the month. If you’re capturing your life in print for your family, for your own gratification or to inspire readers, rather than aiming to set off Hollywood screenplay bidding wars, these trends don’t even apply to you. You’ll write the memoir that suits you best, and it will be timeless, not trend-driven.There are no rules, but there are four steps:

1. Theme/framework
2. Writing
3. Editing/polishing
4. Self-publishing

You’ve researched this, too, and you’ve been shocked at the price for getting help with any one of those steps, much less all four. That’s because most memoir sites promise to commercialize your work. They’ll follow a formula based on current memoir trends, because they want to convince you that they can turn your memoir into a best-seller. These sites overwhelm you with unnecessary information not to help you, the memoir author, but to address Search Engine Optimization (SEO) algorithms so they can sell more.

That’s not what we do at Write My Memoirs. Our small community of coaches, writers and editors are every bit as skilled as any you’ll find, and we charge appropriately for their expertise and the time they’ll spend helping you craft a compelling, enjoyable read. But you won’t pay an upcharge for other websites’ commercialization, the marketing that follows, and the pages of intimidating “advice.” You can sell your book if you like—we have ISBNs available for you—but our organic process of capturing your story takes a noncommercial path.

If you want help with any or all of the four steps above, choose from our services or save money by selecting one of our packages. If you’d like to talk about what’s right for you, schedule a call. One year from now, you can be holding your published memoir in your hand. And at that point, it will be a big deal!

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