Molly Watson, the staff food writer at Sunset magazine, is juggling a bunch of projects in addition to prepping for her upcoming San Francisco food writing workshops. She's working on recipes for cover stories and planning editorial far into the future. Her humor essay "Scrambled Eggs" was recently anthologized by Seal Press, so she's scheduling readings to promote the book, with more essays in the works. With that much on her plate, we wondered why teaching was so important to her.

Q. You have a ton of teaching experience. Why do you teach? How does teaching help your writing?

A. Teaching helps me focus my own process and ideas. Drawing up a syllabus or writing a lecture forces a level of organization and thoughtfulness on how I work that I always find interesting. I get tons of energy from students and I like the energy of a classroom.

I genuinely like to share whatever bits of knowledge I've managed to accumulate. I've had so many "light bulb" moments in presentations by other people that I know that one phrase, or way of explaining something, or work habit solution, can have a tremendous impact on another writer, so I like to share as much as I can in hopes that some little bit will trigger that "ah-ha" for someone else.

And I don't know if there is anything more gratifying than hearing from a former student who is doing well and wants to update you.

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