According to a recent MailChimp survey based on more than 9 BILLION emails, most of us read and answer work emails from home. If you’re a freelancer, as many food writers are, email alone threatens to eliminate the already blurry line between work and personal time. Add in smart phones, laptops and portable devices such as the iPad and you’re never really off the clock.

Not surprisingly, as technology burrows deeper into our lives, procrastination becomes more pervasive. According to Piers Steel, author of Procrastination Equation, chronic procrastination has increased fivefold in the past decade. Why? We’re already hardwired to respond to distraction, and never before have so many sources been so close at hand. Steel says “As you get closer to temptation, your desire for it peaks, allowing the temptation to trump later but better options.”

To make matters worse, after each tweet, update, email or web search, it takes a good 10 minutes to get back on track. The five minutes it takes you to check and respond to email actually robs you of a quarter hour of productivity.

If you’re not getting things done, Steel suggests you add some of these to your arsenal in the war against mass distraction.

• Apple Freedom: Block Internet on your Mac for up to 8 hours. This can be handy when you’re at the keyboard and on assignment.
• Put temptation out of reach: Erase video games, remove the battery from your PDA, unplug the TV. The amount of time it takes to get the following items working again just might outweigh your urge to delay.
• Schedule leisure time: People often work harder to deadlines. Knowing you’ll have a break at a specific time keeps your desire to peak at Facebook in check.
• Banish email notification: Simply disabling email alerts can make you 10% more efficient — over a year that’s a month of time saved. Instead of responding to the ping like Pavolv’s dog, check email at your convenience or during natural breaks in productivity.
• Single-Task: The best way to be more productive is to immerse your self in one task. While multitasking sounds productive, numerous studies show that it actually makes us far less efficient.
• Keep a tidy desk: Messy works places are distracting. Ironically, the most common procrastination activity is organizing your clutter. Tidying up your desk each night will make you more productive the next day.
• Designate separate work and play spaces: Do your non-work web surfing and social networking in a different place than where you work. If a home office makes this impossible, create a second computer profile with a different login, desktop and layout. Login to your work persona when you’re working and then switch to your play persona when you need to take a break. Steel says, “If you are not willing to take the minute required to log in and out, you don’t need the break.”
• Create a routine: Predictability and routine help you stay on focused and keep distractions at bay. If possible perform your daily tasks in same place at the same time of day.

How do you keep on task? Or have you fallen victim to distraction?

Photo © smlp.co.uk. Published under a Creative Commons License.

Wondering what the picture is of? It’s an example of the code Google now requires for their Recipe Search feature. If you think it looks scary, you’re not alone. When Dianne Jacobs wrote about the issue on Will Write for Food, more than 100 comments poured in. The curious may read about it here.

In brief, Google’s new recipe search function sent many food bloggers into a tailspin since they weren’t told about the new requirements until the function went live. Meanwhile, the big name sites were given a year’s head start. What’s the issue? No matter how diligent you were with SEO, without the proper code your recipes wouldn’t show up on the recipe search. And for a lot of bloggers being ignored costs money.

Fortunately, programmers have quickly created a couple of  WordPress plugins* that will code the recipes for you. They’re quick to install and extremely easy to use. The add only a couple of minutes to entering a blog post. Best of all, they’re both free.

• RecipeSEO: Once you’ve entered your recipe using the plugin, instead of inserting text, it inserts an image. When you post, readers see the recipe text you entered, but the embedded image ensures you don’t mistakenly delete any code. If you need to amend your recipe, you can make edits using the plugin. While you can’t muck up the code, you cannot customize the recipe’s format either.

• hRecipe, on the other hand, allows you to customize the code. It also has a few more fields than RecipeSEO, such as tagging specialized diets and ethnic cuisine. However, if you need to edit your recipe, you do so in the post itself and can inadvertently remove code.

So, which one to use? It’s a matter of personal preference. They both do the coding for you, which will help your recipes appear in the new Google Recipe Search.

We only know about these two WordPress plugins. If you know about more WordPress recipe plugins or similar solutions for other platforms, such as Blogger, TypePad and MoveableType, please, let us know.

*Note: one reader says these plugins aren’t available on WordPress.com sites, which are not self-hosted.

Will Google Recipe Search Help or Hurt Us?

Written by Charmian Christie

Google has added a new search function, Google Recipe Search, that allows people to locate highly targeted recipes using a wide range of parameters. Want chicken curry without cardamom? Just click a few buttons. Got a time limit? Set that too. And don’t forget calorie counts. That’s another factor you can add to the search equation.

While it sounds like a great way to promote your expertise and drive traffic to your site, many bloggers might not think so.  According to Wired, there’s a bit of back end work to do if you want to rank anywhere on Google Recipe radar. Content may no longer be king. In this online world, code rules.

A quick search for an obscure recipe I have on my blog, which I know ranks well for a particular term, produced only two pages of recipes in Google Recipe — all from major recipe sites. My recipe was nowhere, not even buried deep in the results. According to Google Recipes, it just didn’t exist — despite all the back-end SEO work I’d done. Yet, when the exact same term was plugged into Google’s main search engine and Google’s Blog search, both times my recipes showed up and ranked well.

I already spend a lot of time writing an interesting post people will want to read, adding categories, tags and keywords, creating relevant internal and external links and taking original photos. Adding code for recipes, nutritional information and calculating prep time isn’t in my schedule. Yet without this work many bloggers won’t exist to recipe hunters.

How do you feel about Google’s newest advancement? Are you after the recipe hunters or is your target audience different? What are you willing to do or not to promote your cookbook / food career / platform? Or is this just a bump that will sort itself out with the next technological step?

Will Write For Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reviews, Memoir, and More

When you jump into the world of food writing — most probably out of sheer enthusiasm for writing, eating and perhaps cooking as most of us do — the terrain is uncertain and the pathways are mysterious. You grope for guidance, vocabulary, resources and best practices. Where does you start? How do you get your foot in the door? How do you get an article assignment? And what do you do when an editor says ‘yes’ to that pitch? A mentor sure does make things a lot easier. That is what BC-born, California food writer, writing instructor and author, Dianne Jacob’s book, Will Write for Food, has been for countless aspiring and fledging food writers.

I wish I’d had this book at my side as I took the plunge into food writing back in 2000.  So when I began teaching food writing courses a few years back, it was at the top of my list of resources I would present to the roomful aspiring published food writers.

The trouble is that in 2005, when Will Write For Food was first published, blogging was fringe stuff, Facebook was one year old (and no one knew about it), and Twitter wouldn’t be born for another year. Magazines were still publishing somewhat lengthy food pieces, and molecular gastronomy was so-very-cutting edge. While the landscape of food writing is forever changing and good writing continues to be at the core of good food writing, it was time for an update to reflect the new realities, opportunities and expectations facing food writers. Dianne Jacob’s second edition of Will Write for Food is exactly that timely response.

(Disclosure: When I found out that Dianne Jacob had a new, updated and expanded edition of her book coming out in August 2010, I did whatever I could to get her out to teach at the Okanagan Food & Wine Writers Workshop Sept 16 to 19 as one of my guest instructors. She is also stopping by Barbara-jo’s Books to Cooks in Vancouver on Tuesday, Sept 14, for an in-store book signing starting at 6 p.m.)

Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reviews, Memoir, and More (2nd edition, Da Capo Lifelong Books) is the follow-up to the 2005 award-winning edition. Newly released in August, this new, expanded version covers the rapidly shifting sands of what it means to be an effective and employed (or at least employable) food writer these days.

But what does this book have to offer for a mid-career or established Canadian food writer?

We are all having to become jack’s of many trades, from corporate gigs, to teaching to editing to writing. It’s all in a day’s work. If we are lucky. Gone are the days when a writer can base a career on being a restaurant reviewer. So in some senses, we’re all novices at various aspects of food writing and we’d better start diversifying. (One thing I appreciate about this book is the author’s candidness about how rare it is that food writing, and food writing alone, can provide an income. Misery loves company.)

Most notably (especially for those of us who began food writing before having a blog was obligatory and now we are playing catch-up), Chapter 4 outlines in detail how to start and maintain a food blog. It also has seven pages on food photography for your blog, including snippets from notable food blogger-photographers such as David Lebovitz and Heidi Swanson. This chapter also addresses the myths around making a living as a food blogger, but also why you really need this as a professional calling card these days.

Many food writers in Canada are finding it increasingly difficult to piece together magazine work in a shrinking pool of assignments are venturing into book projects. Chapter 11: How to Get Your Book Published (which includes “Writing the Book Proposal,” “Finding and Getting an Agent,” “The Contract,” and some of the pros and cons of self-publishing, is a great place to start.

The book also is a window into the US food writing industry, and the networking resources, for example, are invaluable if we Canadian food writers want to reach new markets. Just like it is in Canada, there are certain circles in which you need to travel if you want to get access to the plum assignments and publications. These groups also provide camaraderie and support as any good social network will do.

And many of the discussions that begin on the printed page are continued in one form or another on Dianne Jacob’s blog. This is where the more sophisticated and higher-level discussions rage on. From professional ethics — Do you disclose in a blog post when you have been offered a free meal? 63 comments and counting;  Should you charge or not for recipes? 104 comments and counting, at the time of writing this post — to the writerly process and everything in between. And being a blog, it’s an interactive forum, with many well-seasoned voices chiming in. Among them should be yours and mine.

“Last year’s inaugural workshop was a roaring success, so I’ve expanded the workshop to 20 participants and I’m bringing in food writing experts from the US and Canada,” explains independent food journalist Jennifer Cockrall-King, workshop coordinator. “It’s part food-writing workshop, part food and wine tour in the incredibly vibrant Okanagan Valley when local products are at their peak and just before the wine harvest.”

2010 instructors include:

• Dianne Jacob is a California-based writing coach, editor, and author of Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Articles, Memoir, and More. Re-issued in July 2010, the book won the Cordon D’Or International award for Best Literary Food Reference Book. www.diannej.com

• Born in Vancouver, Claudia Cusano is Italian by blood, and thus grew up with a love of food, family, and friendship. Claudia is the editor for NUVO magazine, a lifestyle magazine for the Canadian sophisticate. www.nuvomagazine.com

• Liane Faulder is The Edmonton Journal’s food columnist and appears in the Bistro section on Wednesdays, and on Saturdays in Lifestyle. She is also food columnist for CBC radio’s afternoon program in Edmonton, Radio Active. An award-winning reporter, Liane’s features have been published in Reader’s Digest, Today’s Parent, Venture and Chatelaine magazines.

• South Okanagan’s own Rhys Pender, is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. In 2010 Rhys became the 4th Master of Wine (MW) in Canada. Rhys is a regular contributor on wine to publications Wine Access, Scout Magazine, CityFood and Montecristo. http://www.wineplus.ca/

• Cuisine Canada member Jennifer Cockrall-King is a food writer (www.foodgirl.ca) with over 13 years of contributing to publications in Canada and the US. In 2008, Western Living named her as one of the “Top 40 Foodies Under 40.” She teaches food writing courses with MacEwan’s Writing Works in Edmonton and at UBC Okanagan. And she is the producer of the Okanagan Food & Wine Writers Workshop because it’s just too good here not to share it with like-minded people.

Registration is limited to 20 writers in order to give each writer personalized instruction. The cost of the workshop is $650 — a few early bird spots are still available at $575 (email to inquire), and includes all professional development seminars, field trips, wine touring, meals and activities, excluding travel to and from the workshop and accommodations. Special workshop room rates are available at the host hotel, the Penticton Lakeside Resort.

Detailed workshop information is available on the Okanagan Food and Wine Writers Workshop Website, or by contacting workshop coordinator Jennifer Cockrall-King at 780-242-3663 or jennifer@foodgirl.ca.

There is no more fundamental component of culture than food and drink.   As Brillat Savarin wrote, “The fate of nations depends upon how they eat.” A starving nation is known as a failed state.

These are dark days here in Canada. Food sections have been radically down-sized.  People who merely eat have become self-proclaimed experts.  Food writing is added to magazines and newspapers almost as an afterthought.   The most stunningly–stupid nail in the coffin was driven in last week in Toronto.  With the dismissal of James Chatto from Toronto Life it is clear that this particular publication has slipped into the illusion that ‘long format’  food writing is of no value and years of experience  count for little or nothing.  James Chatto’s contribution to the food life of Canada has been immense.  His book, The Man Who Ate Toronto, is the history of that city’s restaurant community.  His constant monitoring of the food scene there has made him the most respected food journalist in the region – perhaps even in Canada –  and a real inspiration for young chefs to join the gastro-scene.

As one of the judges for the Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards, let me assure you that Canada is one of the few nations on earth where such food communication – wise, balanced, insightful reporting – is dismissed so callously.  Perhaps because, for centuries, food has been so abundant here that it is taken for granted. We have so much that we simply have no perceived need to write or communicate about it unless it’s a sound bite or promotional piece.

As Dr. Barbara Santich, the co-founder of the Australian Symposium on Gastronomy writes, “As food is to wine, so is language to gastronomy… Language is a means of anticipating, prolonging, repeating, intensifying the gastronomic experience – and also an invitation to others to share it.”

Over the years I’ve come to believe that when one door slams closed, another one opens. For  James, he’ll be working on his next book, but for the restaurant community in Toronto and environs it may be a long time before someone of his ilk surfaces to nurture the talent and ingredients that we all know are part of our collective heritage.

Photo by Quinn Dombrowski. Published under a Creative Commons License.

While the black-and-white, non-illuminated Kindle hasn’t made much of a dent in the cookbook market, the shiny bright iPad might. It rivals print with crystal clear, full-colour graphics, video capabilities and a display large enough to allow two-page layouts.

Whether or not this attractive and user-friendly gadget is a real threat to the printed cookbook is anyone’s guess. But some web-based companies are embracing the technology. Rouxbe On-line Cooking School has ensured all their videos are iPad compatible and are geared to launch an iPad app in the near future.

The good news is, if the iPad revolutionizes how we read the way the iPod changed the way we listen to music, demand for written content will rise. But as the touch screen continues to evolve what form will readers expect that content to take? Will interactive step-by-step recipe instructions be the norm? With a culinary joystick in hand, will future readers be able to stir virtual batter? Flip a pancake? Learn to whisk egg whites?

With visuals and interactive features becoming as important as text, are you learning new technical skills as part of your food writing professional development? If so, what? Or do you think this trend will pass due to high development costs and users’ voracious appetites for ever-changing features? Or is simple text just too practical to go out of style?