COOKBOOK CLASS Q&A

You asked. I finally answered.

Hate having to apologize, but I do apologize that it took me until today to answer all of the amazing questions that were submitted during the live Cookbooking with Carla class.

In retrospect, I bit off a bit more than I could chew by promising to answer everything we didn’t get to during the actual event. There were a lot of queries and it was time consuming to work through them. If I had to make you wait, I at least wanted to provide you with thorough responses.

You asked fantastic questions!

Eliza Weinreb

did a service to us all by pulling the questions into larger umbrella categories, so they are loosely grouped, below.

Thank you again for buying a ticket to the class. I have a lot more ideas for future workshops and hope to bring another one to this platform before the end of the year.

xoCLM

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CARLAS COOKBOOK CLASS Q&A

Honing in on the idea

• I am used to some brainstorming online tools for coming up with ideas. Did you use any tools to kinda help with your process? (i.e mind maps, etc)

• What exercises would you recommend to help hone in on the hook / theme of your potential cookbook?

• What exercises would you recommend to help hone in on the hook / theme of your potential cookbook?

Reading these questions makes me realize that I could be relying on more tools to work on ideation! I have no idea what a mind map is, but it sounds super cool! In my case, I rely on the opinions of other cooks very much when I am workshopping recipe ideas. When I worked at Bon Appétit, that was extremely convenient and to some degree, we all did that for each other all day. These days I will still bounce ideas off of the other cooks/writers in my life for feedback, and there are a few lay people out there with great palates and opinions (my sister, for example).

For larger concepts, such as the hook/theme of the cookbook, I think the proof of concept is in whether you can write about what you’re thinking about, or not. If you are fleshing out an idea that has legs, one that resonates with you, one that you won’t get bored of during the two years it takes to bring a book to market, you should be able to sit down and start exploring it without constantly hitting a brick wall. 

For example! My agent, Kitty, who you all met on the panel, has been encouraging me for a few years to try to write fiction. The first time she suggested it I laughed it off instantly. But over time, I thought I had an idea that I could TRY to fictionalize. I even got as far as a loose beginning-middle-end narrative arc, and was trying to start anywhere. The mission was to literally write anything—give the characters names, for example. I tried and tried but it was like wearing a pair of scratchy pants. Could not wait to get out of it. I don’t have regrets about trying, but I think I was right to abandon that specific project. All the failures are going to teach us something!

Writing is very hard for most people, so give yourself some grace when you’re working on an idea—even the “right” one is going to be difficult to write. But if you feel like you’re taking an exam for a course you didn’t enroll in, it’s never going to gel. 

• If you are an unknown author - does your idea need to be even more specific or niche in order to be marketable?

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