An aspiring writer trapped in a series of temporary secretarial jobs, Julie Powell had an epiphany as she approached her 30th birthday: To add some desperately needed zest to her life, she decided to blend a love of cooking with her passion for writing. In 2002, Powell challenged herself to tackle each recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking while following her husband’s prompt to launch a companion blog, The Julie/Julia Project.
In entries about her daily cooking experiences that revealed her spicy wit, Powell mixed in ingredients from her personal life, catching mainstream attention. After the blog ended in 2003, Powell published Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, (Little, Brown and Company, 2005). Last month, the mass-market paperback edition, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously was distributed as a tie-in to the highly anticipated release of the film Julie & Julia by screenwriter Nora Ephron; Meryl Streep stars as Julia Child, Stanley Tucci as Paul Child, Amy Adams as Julie Powell and Chris Messina as Eric Powell.
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During a week of back-to-back interviews surrounding the red-carpet “special screening” in Los Angeles (described on her current blog, What Could Happen?), Powell caught up with mediabistro.com before the movie’s nationwide release on August 7 to discuss how she conceived of and executed her blog and book, the influence her readership has on her writing career, and the recipe for building a personal blog brand.
Take me back to hatching the idea for your first blog. Did you always have a love of cooking? Why did you find the prospect of a blog appealing?
Cooking had been a hobby of mine, especially at times when I was feeling unfulfilled, which was increasingly as I edged toward my 30th birthday. It was an outlet for me; it was something that I could call my own.
I was a frustrated writer. I majored in fiction writing in college and wanted to be a writer, and nothing was happening with that. I pretty much stopped writing by the time I was 29 and was feeling extraordinarily unfulfilled. So I had this midnight revelation that I would cook my way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which came out of talking about going to cooking school. But I didn’t have the money and didn’t think I wanted to be a chef or anything like that. I did want to learn how to cook well, and Mastering was obviously a great way to do that.
| “I had no notion of what a blog could do and what the medium was really capable of at the time.” |
I was trying to figure out — I wanted there to be a writing component, and Eric said, “Well, why don’t you start this blog, and blog [about your experience]?” I was literally irritated with him and was like, “What the hell are you talking about, and why are you throwing these words at me?” He explained about it, and I was dubious. But it did seem like a way to keep me honest and keep me writing about the project every day, which would maybe keep me doing the project. To me, it was very literally a journal that I kept online so that if my friends and family wanted to read it, they could.
I had no notion of what a blog could do and what the medium was really capable of at the time. I kind of chanced into it. I just was in the right place and time.
How was blogging different from other types of writing that you had done previously?
I was writing in this vacuum. I think this is one thing that blogging has changed irrevocably about the writing process. I’m sitting there in a vacuum and writing things, and I have no conception [of] if this is publishable. Is this any good? My husband says this is good, but what the hell does he know?
As a new writer — a fledgling one, an aspiring one — to have this forum in which the feedback was instantaneous, and there came [an] almost “call-in” response from readers; for me, as the writer of the blog, it was galvanizing. I never ever would have finished the project if I hadn’t had the readers there invested in what I was doing, encouraging me but also just wanting to know how it all ended. In that way, blogging was absolutely responsible for me developing my voice and becoming a working writer. I don’t know that I would have ever gotten to that place on my own.
When did you have a sense that the blog was gaining mainstream attention, and what chord do you think it struck that made it this incredible success?
It bears repeating over and over again: The fact that I started when I did, during the infancy of this medium, was part of my luck. It was a much smaller world out there. It was easier for people to find one another and to see what was going on and to take a survey of the “blogosphere” at the time. It’s the Big Bang Theory; it started from this little point, and it’s been expanding ever since. Now, there are millions and millions of blogs in uncharted waters. Back in the day, it was a comparatively small pond. So, in that way, I was very lucky.
But I do think people came to it. Two basic demographics, with some exceptions, found me and became invested in what I was doing. Women a generation or two older than me, who had already cooked through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, whose appreciation for Julia Child and what she has done during her career was already impressed upon them; they were Julia Child fans. And then there were the 29-year-old secretaries who were lost and didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives and [were] discouraged. Those two [groups] came together in the forum of my blog.
| “As a new writer, to have this forum in which the feedback was instantaneous… was galvanizing. I never ever would have finished the project if I hadn’t had the readers there invested in what I was doing.” |
There was a story in The New York Times a few years ago about the Ramble in Central Park and the birders who would go out there and be birder watching. They would run into gay guys cruising for sex. They wound up, these two communities, popping up together. They made T-shirts that said, “I came for the anonymous gay sex, but I stayed for the bird watching.”
[Similarly, the blog] became this [community of] mostly women coming together with different perspectives, but a lot of the same concerns. Turning 30 was a concern to me, and what the rest of my life was going to hold. I was using food and Julia’s inspiration to work through that on a day-by-day basis. It resonated with people.
How did readers’ comments influence your process from Day One to Day 365? How did you adapt the blog as a result of the feedback?
I started on a pretty instant level because I thought I was writing for family and friends. I would write, “Here’s what I’m cooking.” And then I would have some side notes about what was happening in my life. People ended up being interested in the food, but really interested in the other stuff. Then, I realized that I had all these readers interested in the gory details of my daily life; that’s what they were following, and they wanted to learn more about that. “Tell me about how shitty you feel about your job, and tell me more about your pet snake,” [readers said]. By that time, this bar had been set in terms of intimacy, which was very important to the development of the tone of the blog.
At that point, I made a choice. I could have said, “Oh, wait. This really isn’t a public forum, and I’m going to stick to the cooking and not talk about the rest of the stuff.” But instead, I saw from comments and people really getting involved in the personal aspect of the story that this is where the heart of it is in how the food is intersecting with this particular life at this particular time. That’s what people are coming back for. That’s what creates the suspense. If it was just recipe 228, and this happened and this happened… Setting it in the context of my life in a very unvarnished, warts-and-all portrait of the way my life was going was what was drawing people in. If I started a blog now, I don’t think I could be quite that “warts and all”; I wouldn’t have developed, what I think is now pretty essential to my voice as a writer, which is that honesty and self-awareness — maybe to the point of laceration now and again — is important.
At your Q&A session at Borders in Philadelphia, you described your husband’s discomfort watching his character in the film. What do you think, at this point, about personal writing for public consumption?
I’ve gotten very used to people just assuming that they know me, and [that] they know everything about me. I almost take it for granted now. Where it becomes a trickier thing and an ethical consideration — one that you have to be very aware of — is when it comes not to you. Put yourself out there as much as you want, but when you’re dealing with your friends and your family, that becomes a much more delicate issue. And you have to respect these people and the center of it. Eric knows that I write about personal things, and he’s extraordinarily patient with that. But I can’t abuse that [patience]. So every time I write about him now — and that’s something that I become more and more conscious of as I move forward and continue to be a writer who mines my personal life for subject matter — it has to be done with respect. If I’m veering into mopey-ness or vengeance or any of those sort of lesser emotions, that’s when you have to say, “Wait, let’s stop.”
It’s more important to be fair to other people than it is to be fair to yourself.
| “The writing always has to be at the center. If it’s good, and if you’re passionate and you stick to it — I’m not promising anyone a Nora Ephron, but that’s the surest way, to keep the focus on the craft.” |
Can you offer some advice to other writers who are interested in following a similar path from a blog to a book and movie?
Obviously, I didn’t start the blog in 2002 and say, “And then, Nora Ephron is going to make a movie.” I feel a little guilty when I’m asked this question because it was such a different world, such a simpler world, when I began. It was like cave painting as opposed to 21st-century installation video art.
The only thing useful to say is that inevitably the way blogs are now, they’re tools. No matter how passionate [you are about] the subject matter that you choose for your blog — it is very useful, [but] it’s almost impossible to see a blog as being an end in itself. Certainly, some people do. But if you see yourself as a writer, blogging is a way to get yourself out there. It’s a way to address the things you want to write about in a way that people can access it. And that’s great.
But I think you always have to keep your eyes on the prize in terms of writing about the things you are passionate about, writing about the subject matter that you really love. If you get too concerned with branding and getting the links and making sure that enough people know me — getting away from writing about what you want to write about as well and clearly and evocatively as you can — you might publish a book that way, but you won’t turn into a writer. The writing always has to be at the center. If it’s good, and if you’re passionate and you stick to it — I’m not promising anyone a Nora Ephron, but that’s the surest way, to keep the focus on the craft.
Five tips for developing a personal blog and taking it public:
1. Use blogs to develop your voice and become a working writer. “Blogging was absolutely responsible for me developing my voice and becoming a working writer. I don’t know that I would have ever gotten to that place on my own.”
2. Identify a blog’s appeal, and build on content that keeps readers involved. “I saw from comments and people really getting involved in the personal aspect of the story that this is where the heart of it is — in how the food is intersecting with this particular life at this particular time. That’s what people are coming back for. That’s what creates the suspense.”
3. Be acutely aware of ethical considerations in personal writing, and keep your motives and emotions in check. “Put yourself out there as much as you want, but when you’re dealing with your friends and your family, that becomes a much more delicate issue. As I move forward and continue to be a writer who mines my personal life for subject matter — it has to be done with respect. If I’m veering into mopey-ness or vengeance or any of those sort of lesser emotions, that’s when you have to say, ‘Wait, let’s stop.'”
4. View blogs as tools to address subjects of interest and a way to become a public writer. “It’s almost impossible to see a blog as being an end in itself; certainly, some people do. But if you see yourself as a writer, blogging is a way to get yourself out there. It’s a way to address the things you want to write about in a way that people can access it.”
5. Remain focused on the craft of writing. “Keep your eyes on the prize in terms of writing about the things you are passionate about, writing about the subject matter that you really love. If you get too concerned with branding and getting the links and making sure that enough people know me — getting away from writing about what you want to write about as well and clearly and evocatively as you can — you might publish a book that way, but you won’t turn into a writer. The writing always has to be at the center.”
Andrea K. Hammer, founder and director of Artsphoria: Visual Word Artistry, specializes in arts and business writing.
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