S'lovely to be so busy
Mood:  happy
Topic: food writing biz
The next week or so will be be crazy with a deadline for a real food article (Afghani food), my presentation at the Dutchess County Fair on fresh tomato appeteasers, and the usual weekly "Ravenous" deadline (next week, okra!).

Not to mention soccer (yes, I'm a "soccer mom" now, and I love it!), birthday parties for three children this weekend, and two festivals, one of which I have volunteered to help at, cleaning up after its potluck dinner. Cleaning is far from my forte but at least I'm helping...

When I come up for air after all this end of summer craziness (end of summer, sob, sniff, don't remind me), I have a mile-long list of work projects: queries to write for articles, letters to agents to sell my food anthology, front of the book blurbs for food magazines, which have to be done "on spec," meaning all written and perfected before submitting. I have the topics but just need the angles. And the time to write them.

And the web site, www.jenniferbrizzi.com, still needs a lot of perfecting, notably that maddening navigation bar. But in spite of its lack of perfection, as of this morning it has gotten 110 hits, only 100 of which are me constantly checking to see how any hits it has!

Maybe if I stopped using so many parentheses when I write, I'd shoot to success!

Rejection sucks
Mood:  irritated
Topic: food writing biz
I e-mailed three (3) panel proposals to the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) for their conference in Seattle next spring. They e-mailed me back two (2) form rejections. I e-mailed them in hopes that they were still considering one...no dice...three rejections...no Seattle for me.

Bummer. My sweet husband's telling me that someday the IACP will be begging me to do panels. That helps. I dream on...

"If eels only looked a little less like eels more people would want to eat them."
--Clement Freud

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."
--George Bernard Shaw

"I really, really love eels."
--Jennifer Brizzi

I feel like I just jumped into the deep end of the pool
Mood:  accident prone
Topic: food writing biz
Well, I've gone and done it.

I just e-mailed the link to my web site www.jenniferbrizzi.com to a large collection of my friends and family, racy first bit of "Her Feet" and all. Perhaps they will all disown me ...

It's rather scary, although presumably as my friends and family they will be kind. Likely they will all be too busy to bother with it.

Yikes.

Gigs
Topic: food writing biz
Sofia's begging me to take her to the library, and how can a Mom refuse such a request? So this will be brief.

I'm going to be doing some chef demos at the huge Dutchess County Fair next month and then at the not-so-huge Sheep and Wool Festival in October. How exciting! I hope I have an audience.

And I'm going to write an article on the food of Afghanistan for FACES magazine.

The website, www.jenniferbrizzi.com , is getting presentable at last. There are still a couple kinks to work out, notably the nightmare of the navigation bar, but it's getting there!

Words, Food & Me
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: Born to be a food writer
Topic: food writing biz
The first word most babies utter when they begin to learn to speak is "Dada." Mine was not "Dada" or even "Mama." It was "hot." I used to think it was because I was a hot ticket, but it's really because hot is a cooking term, and my path to being a food obsessed, food-impassioned writer started early.

My second word was food related, too: "apple." And when I grew a little older, to the age my own children are now, when kids eat about .005% of the food items that are offered to them, I was abnormally unpicky. I would eat everything. Although I wasn't crazy about the texture of liver or okra, I would eat them if coerced, and I ate snails, kidneys and all the green vegetables my mother put before me.

Older still, I learned to write and would practice with my spaghetti on the tablecloth, writing my name in elegant script. It was official. I was a food writer.

In tenth grade I took a mini course on Japan, for which a paper was assigned on the topic of our choice. Although at that time I had not yet tasted it, you can guess what I chose to write about.

To this day, words and food are intertwined inseparably for me. When I dine alone I love to read while I eat, enjoying two of life's greatest pleasures simultaneously, like having sex while listening to Ravel's Bolero (actually I'd pick Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez for that).

If I'm eating something good and someone begins to talk about something bad, their recent bout of diarrhea, perhaps, or how the cafeteria stew yesterday resembled vomit, my appetite will completely dissolve in mid-bite, and I won't be able to continue eating. For a minute, anyway.

In my life I've considered careers as an architect, artist, actor or teacher of English as a foreign language. I've been a nurse, a cook and a waitress. But I didn't realize what I should have known all along, that from the very beginning I was destined to write about food.

Prof dev
Mood:  not sure
Now Playing: Whereupon Ms. Brizzi confesses her deep-seated urges to be famous, or at least to make a living
Topic: food writing biz
Last week I e-mailed off three proposals for panels for next spring's convention of the International Association of Culinary Professionals in Seattle. For each one I would be the moderator with two panelists, because to be sole lecturer, you have to be a real, well-known food person, not the wanna-be I feel that I am some of the time.

One is about seafood of the Pacific Northwest, one about wild mushrooms ditto, and one called Write Like Bach, whereupon I would convince two of the country's most eloquent food writers to sit on a panel with me and teach fledging food writers how to become great writers.

Most likely the IACP will not accept any of these proposals, and life will go on. Possible but much less likely is that they would say yes to all three and I'll be busy at the conference, or best yet that they will say yes to one and I'll make $500, get a free day of conference, get to see my old friend from second grade who lives in Seattle, my second cousin who is book editor of the Seattle Times and the Kaplans who were in Vietnam with us and have two boys adopted from there, one of whom is Sofia's age. And I will increase my recognition and be on my way to...something....being a real food writer, recognized in my field, etc.

If it happens, I will have to speak in front of lots of people, something I have always been lousy at. It would be wonderful , though, and now it's time to set the thought aside and go on to other things and in the beginning of August I will find out.