I’ve been thinking a lot about food stories lately. They’ve been on my mind for a lot of reasons: Thanksgiving is coming up and I’m hosting for the first time; we celebrated my Yayo’s legacy of paella at the Paella for the World Festival a few weeks ago; I’ve been reading Heritage and binge-watching Mind of a Chef.
All those reasons plus, well, you know, working on cookbook proposals. But even all the proposals I’ve been working on lately that aren’t food-related have made me think about stories.
Stories are the magic behind books. It doesn’t matter if it’s a romance or a diet book—stories are what bring it to life and make it worth reading.
Yet stories are often the most difficult thing to coax out of authors, especially in the nonfiction world I work in. I’m convinced that it’s because storytelling is beaten out of us in school. We’re told to avoid “I,” and that what we have to say isn’t interesting enough, and that writing is just about the accurate conveyance of information.