Hindsight is 20:20
Writing a cookbook is a BIG undertaking. Professional cookbook writers and recipe developers take months to complete one. I am an amateur, planning to research and test my recipes while holding down a full-time job. I am ALSO planning to blog about the process, plus research and write extra posts about techniques and new ingredients.
I am aware that this is a massive challenge.
I have never been intimidated by big projects.
I’ve always liked to set goals for myself—big ones that I can really dig into—so when I started planning this project I wasn’t worried about whether or not I was going to finish. My biggest concern was how to organize and structure the project.
I didn’t want to just start testing recipes right away, pursuing different ideas willy-nilly and then try and force them all to fit into a cohesive thing somehow later. That would be chaos and I don’t do chaos—at least not when I can avoid it. I wanted to have a definite plan.
So I made a rough outline for the project on a legal pad, which ended up looking something like this:
Of course, you’re probably already noticing that some of my steps were already out of order. I had already created a culinary perspective; I had also started to create my website and think about branding. I had brainstormed some rough content. In other words, I had already pitched my project’s carefully crafted structure out the window.
Sometimes it’s necessary to flail around in chaos before you can create order. And sometimes it take several attempts to create an order that makes sense.
As I stumbled through those first few steps of my cookbook process, I realized that my belated outline didn’t make sense either. The project outline should have been first, followed by the culinary perspective, the blog and the brand, and then the content! Hindsight is 20:20.
I also realized that my current outline ends in a big question mark. What follows the recipe research and testing? Introductions? Headnotes? For what?
If I were actually publishing this cookbook, I would be sending proofs to an editor. But I’m not actually publishing it, and I don’t have an editor so . . . what?
I don’t know.
It’s a stretch for me to do this (I’m one of those people who likes to know exactly what will happen when . . . months in advance), but I decided to just leave it be for now. There are a LOT of recipes to test. By the time I’m done, I’ll probably know what comes next.
And if I don’t, then I’ll figure it out.
Originally posted July 4, 2019.
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