I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately and not just because I’m fasting meat, sweets, and dairy for my church’s annual 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting. 

I have also (like every other middle class American) resolved to eat a more healthful diet this year. If you need some help with your own aspiration to eat right in 2014, check out the recipe for Brussels sprouts with fried egg and curried spiced yogurt salad by Christy Turnipseed that was featured last week on SeeJaneWriteMagazine.com. 

I’ve also been thinking a lot about food because on Saturday, January 25, I will be speaking at the annual food blogging conference FoodBlogSouth. Yes, I know I’m not a food blogger, but I’ll be speaking to attendees about generating blog post ideas. 

I’m usually a bit embarrassed when people ask me how I come up with ideas for my blogs because my process is really weird. Sure, I believe you should read a lot of books, blogs, magazines and newspapers to stay abreast of trends and current events related to your niche. But I believe you still need to do something to mold all that information into a solid idea and this is where my process gets screwy. I have this uncanny ability to stare at an object, contemplate how I could connect it to my niche and produce a blog post idea from this process. 
I especially enjoy using parts of the human body for inspiration. I could stare at my big toe and come up with five blog posts ideas. (Really, I can. I tried it once.) Weird as it is, I thought this process would come in handy when the organizers of FoodBlogSouth asked me to come speak about generating blog post ideas. My presentation is called America’s Next Top Blogger: How Tyra Banks Can Help You Generate Blog Post Ideas because Ms. Banks did, in a way, inspire this strange process of mine. On her show America’s Next Top Model,  Tyra always tells the young aspiring models who are contestants on the show to model head to toe or “H2T.” At FoodBlogSouth I’ll be giving a 15-minute crash course in what I call “Blogging H2T.” I’m going to show attendees how they can generate 30 food-related blog post ideas by contemplating different parts of the human body.
I hope you’ll join me at this event. There are many other great reasons to attend FoodBlogSouth besides my weird talk. The conference will feature sessions on photography and food styling, how to turn your blog into a career, multimedia storytelling, and much more. You can view the full agenda online.
FoodBlogSouth 2014 will be held Jan. 24-25 at Rosewood Hall, 2850 19th Street South in Homewood, Alabama. Registration is $175 but See Jane Write fans can receive a discount by following this link.
My fast also ends the morning of this conference, so you will most likely see me stuffing my face with cake and cheese before and after (and perhaps even during) my talk.