Let's write about food , celebrating #indianfoodwriting , a blogchatter project

I started food and travel blogging 5 years back, and I started my personal blog www.mylifemystories.com 10 years back ,so when Blogchatter asked the question “where do you see your blof 5 years from now?” I was taken aback. I hadn’t thought about ‘taking my blog’ anywhere. I guess 5 years from now I would still have a blog, or a website or whatever they are calling it 5 years from now.

And then the guys at blog chatter started asking even tougher questions, like ‘How do you add value to the lives of your readers?’ and ‘ have you decided on taking up a project on your blog, something that could potentially change people’s perspectives and things like that?’ and then the real questions on ‘how influential are you ?’ came in, and they didn’t just mean the ‘influencer ‘ tag , whereing we calculate how many followers and such that you have.

The month of December blogchatter wanted us to pick a ‘project ‘ for our blog, and for the longest time , I thought ‘ I blog about food and travel, I write what I like and I hope my readers like that too, but honestly, how am I adding value ?’

I planned to sit this one out, but then I went back to the time when I started my food blog. Even though I had been blogging for 5 years by then, I still found that I had a lot to learn about writing about food, in a way that it made a connection with my readers. That’s when I had searched and found my bible of food writing “ will write for food by Dianne Jacob”. 

Now, two years back, I wrote to Sameer Malkani of food bloggers association of India, that I wanted to write an Indian food writing book, one which explained food writing principles, but with Indian words, phrases, Indian masalas, and masaledaar writing. I was by then getting quite tired of the ‘ Food is bae’ kind of phrases, because frankly Indians, don’t use ‘bae’ to describe food, ‘bae’ as in ‘abbae’ is used when someone cuts in front of your car, and nearly takes the rear view mirror off, that’s when you go , “ Bae ! Andha hai kya ?”

But writing a book, back then seemed a daunting task, and after an energetic start, I realised that I had bitten off more than I could chew.

I have recently started re reading parts of “will write for food” and I decided to try something fun (as well as something that will add value to my readers readings) .

Have you guys seen the movie, Julie and Julia? It was originally a blog, which got made into a movie, A girl named Julie, decided to cook every recipe from Julia Child’s cookbook and blog about her journey.

I have decided to read a hundred Indian food blogs !  Just the way we celebrate Indian cuisine, it is time now to savour our Indian food writings and encourage our food writers as well. I also will be sharing food writing tips, and have fun to do exercises that you can try at home, and on your blogs. You can tag me with #Indianfoodwriting in my “Let’s write about food “ project .

By the end of this month , I hope all my readers are writing with more focus and flair, and I can make a small contribution to the community of food writers and food bloggers in India. End of December I will publish the entire list of food blogs I have read in the month, so if you want to be on that list and want me to visit your blog, leave the link of your blog in the comments below.

Join me on my Next blog post on “finding your voice” .

this is post number 1
here is POST 2 on finding your unique blogging voice
here is POST 3 on writing with a universal appeal