Looking for the Write Stuff at IFBC 2017

Looking forward to driving up to Sacramento again in late for my second International Food Blogger Conference - the second one held there in two years - I had priorities. Now that I was more familiar with the city, the conference, and the herculean task of a seven to eight-hour drive, I could concentrate on making some informed choices for the weekend.

Hospitable water tower in Kingsburg, California

From last year’s trek through the Central and San Joaquin Valleys, I remembered a giant flower-bedecked coffee pot that hovered hospitably over a town called Kingsburg. Making my way up the 99 in late July’s swelter and trying to make it to Sacramento before dark, I didn’t pull over and investigate then, but made a mental note to do so on the way home this time.

I also hadn’t followed a friend’s recommendation of Biba Ristorante Italiano last year, so I made a reservation there for dinner on Friday night. Another friend who grew up in East Sacramento had rapturously described the famed Corti Brothers market, and it on my list as well.

The drive along Highway 5 was fairly uneventful. I chose the 5 because it was a bit more direct, if not as scenic as the 99. I wanted to make the “Taste of Sacramento” event and check out all the yummy samples and swag bag loot that kicked off IFBC last year.

 Idaho Potato doll reps his home state in style.

Foodwise, road trips are always a challenge, since I need to avoid soy. Stopping for lunch or a snack is no longer a fun thing, as a) there is nothing but fast food out there when you drive across the state and b) most fast food places fry in soybean oil and/or use soy flour in their bread and breaded coatings. Fortunately, I was able to winnow it down to chicken tenders and fried zucchini at Carl’s Jr. Or was it Jack in the Box? The two are interchangeable in my mind, and I rationalized the calorie-fest with the fact that I still had several hours on the road left.

Overall, there was little traffic, except for rush hour near Stockton. I had to concede defeat and call Biba to cancel my reservation – it didn’t look like I was going to make my 6 p.m. reservation. I tried to schedule a lunch for the next day but they don’t serve lunch on Saturdays, so I made a reservation for dinner on Saturday night.

I finally made it to the Hyatt Regency, which was next door to the Sacramento Convention Center. I decided to splurge on valet parking since it was about 4:10 and the Taste of Sacramento was in full swing, leaving my luggage and checking in until later.

Breathless from rushing through the Hyatt and across the street to the convention center, I entered the hall where various IFBC sponsors and featured vendors greeted bloggers and treated them to snacks, samples, and swag. My favorite things were an anthropomorphic Idaho Potato doll, a bar of Euphoria chocolate (soy-free!), and a nicely turned wooden cutting board commemorating “Avocados from Chile.” I surveyed the scene and enjoyed a glass of wine before heading out to check into the hotel.

Banana and roasted pistachio gelato from
Eatuscany Caffe on L Street.

After getting my luggage settled in my room and freshening up, I decided to take a walk around the neighboring Handle District. It’s been my habit to stop eating after 5 p.m. for the most part, unless something special is happening, so I thought I could get away without dinner that night and save my calories for the weekend ahead. I thought I would venture over to Capital City Beads, which I really enjoyed last year. But walking up L Street, I remembered the great gelato at Eatuscany Caffe. I walked to CVS eating the best banana and pistachio gelato ever. I stocked up on bottled water and Smokehouse Almonds to nibble between sessions the next day and headed back to the hotel.

This year, I decided to focus on the presentations that would help me with my writing. Margaret Andrews' talk on "How to Write a Scroll-Worthy Blog Post" was incredibly helpful. A few weeks before IFBC, she offered the chance for attendees to submit their blogs for critique, and GMS was one of the blogs that she addressed in her talk.

An apt criticism that has been pointed out to me before is that I don't describe how food tastes, which is ironic because this is a food blog. (I missed it again, just two paragraphs above!) And I don't give the most colorful descriptions of people, places, or things - I guess it's from all these years of trying to write objectively - blame my Journalism 1 class in  high school. And I have this annoying habit of assuming that everyone knows what I'm talking about.

While I still think it is a great skill to write objectively, there are times when a bit of embroidery is engaging, if not necessary. Like in a food blog. So, the need for more descriptive language is duly noted. Appealing to the senses will organically embellish a sentence, which I will attempt to do in the remainder of this post.

Andrews reminded us to avoid using cliches, provide a "hook" at the very beginning, and make our posts seem shorter than they are - which means make it interesting. She warned against what she called, "the dump post," which is SEO-based and only written to keep up posting. And probably the best advice of all: if you are bored, so are your readers. There is so much vying for readers' attention online that only the most riveting writing keeps them (and me!) scrolling to finish reading a post - and hopefully, looking forward to the next one.

The Taffy Exercise

Jennifer Flinn's presentation, "Hungry for Words - Details & Feeding the Beast," addressed one of the main challenges of blogging: consistently writing fresh and engaging content. An award-winning journalist, she has carved out a dream writing career, with books on food and the culinary arts, including the NYT best-seller, "The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry," an account of her time attending Le Cordon Bleu, and "The Kitchen Counter Cooking School," which has been enthusiastically embraced in Japan, where the it has been translated into "Miracle Recipes for Bad Women."

While preparing for her talk, Flinn cautioned us not to eat the saltwater taffy that was being passed around the room, at least, not yet. She talked about the importance of vivid descriptions and gave what is sound writing advice: you don't have to load your writing with vivid descriptions - just choose the best one(s).

Flinn instructed us to look at the pieces of taffy in their crisp wax paper, and write a description. We were told to unwrap them, consider the appearance of the paper and the candy, smell the taffy, touch it and stretch it - and write more descriptions Finally, she said to eat the taffy and describe that.

My taffy was of the "Neapolitan" chocolate-strawberry-vanilla combination flavor. It felt squishy in the middle, but firmer on the sides where the wax paper wrapper was twisted into little pigtails. When I unwrapped it, the edges of the sticky candy held the wrinkly imprint of being encased in the wax paper wrapper; the little opaque square was now flattened on my table, creased with evidence of having been twisted.

I didn't smell anything when I unwrapped the taffy, but when I stretched out the bite-size piece into a colorful strand, a synthetic but not unpleasing aroma of strawberry scratch-and-sniff sticker wafted from it. I popped it into my mouth, and the sticky texture gave way to a creamy meltedness. I ended up swallowing what was left when I panicked at the thought of my fillings being yanked out by the sticky confection.

Taste of Sacramento Gift Fair at IFBC 2017

Flinn is a great storyteller. In between anecdotes of her life as a writer and elsewhere, she offered other thought-provoking exercises and tips. Interviewing oneself with lead-ins like, "I'm happiest when..." or "The question I hate getting asked the most is..." leads to some intriguing self-examination and prose. A list of dilemmas can help create conflict-driven narratives (hopefully, interesting ones, not like the conflicts I started this post with!), and a list of what is lurking in one's freezer/pantry would also make for some very revealing analysis.

This post from the early days of GMS has been consistently on this blog's "most popular list for nearly a year. I don't know if it a) is a common readers' point of entry to GMS; b) comes up in searches for "Scarborough Fair," "The Graduate," or "chicken soup; or c) is really that good.

I finally got up the nerve to read it again, all these years later and I have to admit that it is way more personal, creative, and nervy than I have been recently. The rigors of trying to "feed the beast" while working, dealing with people in my life who don't appreciate being mentioned in the blog, and the restriction of soy from my diet - which limits foodie adventures to a surprising and disappointing degree - have somewhat quelled my enthusiasm and whatever joie de vivre that GMS used to have.

But I still want to do this. As Flinn noted in her talk, when you're a food writer, everything turns into a food story. As John Lennon wrote (I said I'd avoid cliches - quoting songs is another matter!), life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

My first book is most likely not going to be based on GMS as I had decided to do when I started this blog. But food is always going to be there, and is always going to intrigue me in numerous ways. My posts only really come alive when I'm fired up about something, not when I try to fill the SEO void. So watch this space for what will hopefully be passionate, funny, and/or informative (and descriptive!) posts on an infrequent but fully lived basis.

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