My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writing about food is my default.
I used to get criticized for putting food in novels.
I think I wrote my first piece about food in 1978.
I'm always in the kitchen, cooking and experimenting - I love it. And every now and then I think, 'I should write a cookbook' or, 'I should write for food magazines.' And then I get drawn back to writing fiction again.
I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly.
Every author has to eventually write a food book.
The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.
This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate to waste that time reading what may turn out to be junk food for the mind, when there's so much real writing to be read.
When I was younger, I read all the great food memoirs, by M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin and Julia Child and Nicolas Freeling and Ruth Reichl, and felt flooded with a sense of comfort and safety.
Of course I didn't pioneer the use of food in fiction: it has been a standard literary device since Chaucer and Rabelais, who used food wonderfully as a metaphor for sensuality.
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