What Writers Can Learn from Cookbook Editors

Tuesday evening award-winning cookbook editor Shaun Chavis treated the See Jane Write community to a free online workshop on how to write a cookbook. Though I am not a food writer or blogger, I was happy to host this workshop for the members of my community who are.

Shaun spent four years as a development editor for Time Inc. Books, where she specialized in finding and working with new talent, and managing book concepts from start to finish. Three of her books were Cooking Light list bestsellers. Cooking Light Mad Delicious: The Science of Making Good-for-You Food Taste Amazing! won Time Inc.’s Luce Award for Best Book of the Year and the James Beard Award for Focus on Health in 2015. Shaun worked on The CarbLovers Diet, which spent 11 weeks on The New York Times Nonfiction Best Sellers List.

Currently, Shaun owns Saltshaker Marketing, a boutique content marketing agency in Atlanta that specializes in cookbooks and food magazines for businesses. With this kind of resume I knew my foodie friends would be in good hands. But what I did not expect was for this workshop on writing a cookbook to help me draft an outline for a collection of essays!

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How to Choose a Blog Topic

Black Bloggers United #PowerHour is finally in Birmingham!

The highlight of my Saturday this past weekend was attending the first Black Bloggers United Power Hour event to be held in Birmingham.

Black Bloggers United, an organization dedicated to enhancing and highlighting black content creators, hosts monthly blogger meet-ups in cities across the country with the help of regional directors. (You can read my interview with BBU Birmingham regional director Keoshia Kyneard of BusyDoingMe.com here.)

Chatting with local bloggers over my favorite Starbucks tea reminded me why I love blogging so much in the first place — community. Writing can be a very lonely art, but through blogging communities, both local and national, we writers can find our tribe.

Some of the ladies who attended Saturday’s meet-up had yet to start their blogs. I couldn’t help but put on my coaching hat and try to figure out what was holding them back. They all had the same answer: “I want to write about too many things!”

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Member of the Month: Melissa Scott

It’s one of the best emails to wake up to as a writing coach:

So, the big news is…

MY BOOK IS WRITTEN!!!

Done. Done done done.

Melissa Scott sent me this email recently to let me know she had completed the first draft of her essay collection, a process I’ve had the honor and privilege to guide her through as her writing coach.

She ended her email with, “Thank you so much for all your help,” but I feel I should be thanking her because Melissa has been a source of inspiration for me for years.

As a body positive yoga instructor she inspires me to love my body as is and to appreciate my body for what it can do instead of always focusing on how it looks. And the honesty and authenticity of her blog posts inspired me to be more transparent in my own.

Melissa Scott is the See Jane Write Member of the Month for April not simply because she has completed the first draft of her book, but because she is the epitome of what See Jane Write is all about.

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