Jul 7, 2015Five travel books that helped me write my ownThere is no writing without reading: Without these five books, I might have been able to write my first one, but I would have been missing some major inspiration — not to mention some beautiful examples of writing about place:Travel4 min readTravel4 min read
Jun 6, 2015How to Survive the Morning After a Bad ReviewImagine your first book is about to be published. Imagine you’ve spent the past three (or four, or ten) years pouring your soul into a manuscript you know isn’t perfect but is the very best you can produce right now. …Writing5 min readWriting5 min read
May 24, 2015Once you’ve been to paradise, should you go back?“It’s a very beautiful place, a magical place. I remember when we were looking for locations with my scenographer…We arrived here and…Travel5 min readTravel5 min read
Mar 31, 2015From Blog to Book, Part 6: In Production & in LimboWhat happens in those mysterious months between the day you deliver your manuscript (huzzah!) and publication day? 1. Your sense of completion begins to evaporate when you realize that someone is copy editing your manuscript (focusing on grammar and factual errors). 2. Your sense of completion vanishes altogether when your…Writing4 min readWriting4 min read
Published inCuriosity Never Killed the Writer·Mar 13, 2015From Blog to Book, Part 1: How I Found My AgentHow did I find my agent? The short answer: Belief, persistence, and a willingness to eat a lot of beans. Vague, I know. And not very helpful, either. Let me explain what I mean. About 18 months after I started my blog in Buenos Aires, Taxi Gourmet started to get…Writing4 min readWriting4 min read
Mar 5, 2015From Blog to Book, Part 2: How I Wrote My Nonfiction Book ProposalIf I’ve learned a single thing over the course of writing my first book, it’s that complacency has no place in the process. It’s a bit like running a marathon over a hilly course. Once you crest the first hill, you have about five seconds to enjoy your triumph until…Writing4 min readWriting4 min read
Feb 26, 2015From Blog to Book, Part 3: How I Got My Book DealBy the spring of 2011, four years after I’d started the Taxi Gourmet blog, I’d moved to Berlin, I had a literary agent, a lot of good press, and a book proposal that was all bones and no soul. Short of writing the whole book beforehand, I couldn’t figure out…Writing6 min readWriting6 min read
Feb 22, 2015From Blog to Book, Part 4: How I Wrote My First DraftThis is Part 4 of a 5-part series about how Taxi Gourmet, the food/travel blog I created in 2007, led to Driving Hungry, the book (Pantheon/Random House, 2015). Stage 1: Panic It didn’t take long for the euphoria of signing a book contract to transform into panic and anxiety about…7 min read7 min read
Feb 6, 2015From Blog to Book, Part 5: A Poem is Never Finished — Revising the ManuscriptFrom Blog to Book, Part 5: A Poem is Never Finished — Revising the Manuscript “A poem is never finished,” wrote W.H. Auden. “It is simply abandoned.” This became my mantra as I went through the process of revising Driving Hungry. I don’t remember when I was forced to…4 min read4 min read
