Food, Formatting a Book, and Mom Guilt

All the things you talk about with another author-mom, Jenny Vanderberg

You may have missed the short Q&A I did with Jenny Vanderberg a couple of weeks ago. If you missed it, check it out — she and I chat about the art of reflection, fireflies, and how to know it’s time to shift gears.

After the IG reel, Jenny and I kept talking. This article comes from that well of a conversation. I call it a well because — though we were there to discuss writing — so much wisdom came from the conversation. We touched on how we grow into ourselves, make mistakes, parent, and process it all through writing.

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But also food. So, of course, let’s start there.

(And if today’s just one of those days and you do not have time for the entire article here, save it and come back to it. But do skip to the bottom to check out Jenny’s top tips about growing in your craft.)

The Jarred Sauce Story

If you subscribe to Jenny’s Substack, “Eat My Words” (also the title of her memoir), or if you follow her on Instagram, you’ve seen the gorgeous food shots and read about the meals she makes: dishes like roasted rainbow carrots and peach caprese salad. She also makes her own homemade sauce.

But that’s not this story.

We’ll start at the end of our conversation when Jenny was sharing with me how she organizes her summer days between Momming her two girls and juggling copywriting contracts. (She wakes up mighty early — starts her day at 6 a.m.) But the conversation turned to Mom Guilt when she talked about one of her recent writing days.

Jenny’s office is upstairs, and she was trying to keep pace with a busy writing schedule. She usually writes for her clients until 11 a.m. But that morning, she was interrupted several times, the girls were bored and hungry and if you’re a parent, you get it. So Jenny’s 11 a.m. “stop” turned into 1 p.m., then 2 p.m, then 3 p.m., then… “Wait, what time is it?”

Upon rushing downstairs to make sure the rest of the house was still standing and her daughters were alive, she found a sweet sight. Her girls were wearing tiny aprons from when they were younger, one boiling water for pasta and the other heating jarred sauce in the microwave. (There’s a backstory here. When her daughters have had a school day that didn’t go as planned, Jenny makes them their favorite pasta with jarred sauce — even though it just about kills this foodie to serve sauce from a jar instead of her homemade version. But hey, kids. It’s what they like.)

“It was so precious,” said Jenny, “because, first, food is how I love people, and you always wonder if your kids are going to absorb some of your good things or do they just get all of your bad things later?

“It was such a sweet thing that they recognize that that’s how I show love to them and they wanted to do this for me. And it almost made me feel like, ‘I was terrible to you all day, I didn’t give (you) any attention and then I got so distracted, I didn’t even know what time it was.’”

Thankfully, Jenny was able to move past the Mom Guilt and recognize the beauty of the moment.

“And it just didn’t matter. At the end of the day, they lit candles and … set the table with real dishes because I am finicky about the real dishes thing and it was so precious.”

When a Novel Turns into a Memoir… Sort Of

One of the first topics we dove into headfirst was the fact that I knew Jenny as a middle-grade novelist. But somewhere along the way, she switched gears to write a personal memoir about what she’d learned in life and how she thought she had it all figured out… until she didn’t. Going through a season of loss and grief brought her a new perspective that provided a shame-free lens through which to see her marriage, her faith, her career and her family.

What was the benefit of switching gears from a middle-grade novel to a memoir after 10 years of working on fiction?

She said that writing a memoir, while different, still shares sensibilities with a good story. A memoir still needs a protagonist, still needs a good plot, conflict, and villains. “All of those components that make up a really good story have to still exist. Because I was able to alleviate the work of drumming up the characters (I didn’t have to imagine those; they were in my real life), it gave that piece of my brain a little break. I could play a little bit more with the language, the wording, things I wouldn’t have necessarily had time to invest in if I was doing the creative legwork.”

Formatting a Book, Post-It Note Style

As nerdy writers do, we spent far too much of the conversation discussing the merits of Google docs vs. Scrivener, how to use either one effectively, and Jenny’s process of formatting her book of essays that are rich in food memories. (We say “yes” to the food narrative genre that’s picking up serious steam in the publishing world. And we say “thanks” to the forerunners like Elissa Altman and Molly Wizenberg.)

Anyway, back to formatting. Here’s a pro tip from Jenny: Don’t just open a blank Google doc and sock away an entire book inside it like you’re hoarding cash beneath the mattress. That Book Baby will grow and get way too big, too hard to manage and you’ll find it way too complicated to go back and find the parts you need. You’ll use up all your writing time reading and re-reading.

Jenny’s memoir is a collection of essays that didn’t necessarily have to be in chronological order. So she learned to simply keep a Google doc for each essay — each chapter. A recipe appears after each essay, something that’s related to a food memory she describes in that particular essay, or a recipe she made during that season of her life.

After each chapter was revised and titled, recipes included, Jenny wrote all the titles on Post-It notes and rearranged them on a dry-erase board so that she could play with the order of her memoir until it was just right. (She did say that for her next book, she’s looking into Scrivener.)

On Cheering Yourself Along and Fireflies

Another pro tip from Jenny is to not beat ourselves up as writers. She says we should delight in the fact that we haven’t already written our best work.

Jenny did return to writing her middle-grade fiction novel (you’ve got to watch the Instagram clip where she talks about where the idea came from, especially if you are a teacher, are a parent, or you just have a soft spot for kids and their creativity). In that process, she re-read what she had spent a decade writing (spoiler: the novel is about a firefly).

Instead of, as is common, thinking that her writing was not good enough or dismantling every word choice as “not my best,” she celebrated.

“It’s been so fun to re-read. Everybody feels differently, and I know this is very common for writers to be, like, ‘Whenever I read old stuff, I can’t do it, I’m so embarrassed, I want to put it away. I want no one to see it ever.’ And I think I probably felt like that a couple years ago, but I’ve just found shame to be so bothersome at this stage of the game. I was young, and I was just trying to do it. I think that’s pretty cool,” she said.

And after 10 years, she has found her own unique voice to lend to the novel. Even her approach to writing has been re-shaped by stepping into a different genre and allowing the novel to sit for a while.

“When you put yourself out there, you’re not going to be loved by everyone, your work isn’t going to be loved by everyone, and it may not be your best work. I think that should be celebrated. Our next work is going to be our best work, and that’s pretty fabulous that we have more work to do. I think we should be excited that we have our best work ahead of us.

“As writers, we have that luxury to be able to say, ‘As long as my brain works and my fingers work or I can dictate to someone else, I can increasingly get better at my craft and I never have to stop doing it,’” said Jenny.

Jenny’s Top Tips: Growing in Your Craft

This part is for writers who want to get better at writing – let’s make the most of this “luxury.”

Take a little time for YOU. Yes, Jenny is a memoirist and a copywriter who writes every day for others. But first, she starts her day writing for an audience of one: herself. She spends 15-20 minutes writing every morning. Sometimes it’s stream-of-consciousness writing; sometimes it’s reflective reading and writing, but it is just 15 minutes.
Start small. Did you see that last sentence on No. 1? “It is just 15 minutes.” If you are in a rut or stuck on a project, begin with something small. Reach for the lowest-hanging fruit you can find, even if it means putting that project on hold. Jenny recommends writing an Instagram caption or even a text to check on a friend — anything that will keep your writing rhythm strumming.
Take your writing seriously. While we all love those inspired moments when fingers fly across the keyboard and you’re in your head thinking, “Why-do-I-ever-do-anything-else-but-write?” we know that this kind of inspiration doesn’t happen all the time. Just like working our physical muscles through exercise, we need to work our writing muscles in some kind of regular, routine practice. Inspiration or not. (See No. 2 again.)
When all else fails, lay aside the project. Start something new and come back to it. You never know how your writing — and your entire perspective — may change because of it.

What next?

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