Hi friends,
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I didn’t start this newsletter this way. (If you’re new here, hi! Thanks for being here). I started writing on Substack many months ago because I wanted a space to write my feelings and thoughts (like blogging) but I was also pulled by the lull of exploration and discovery. If the pandemic did anything for our psyche, it’s that it has forced us to reckon with our own values—both our personal values and our collective ones.
As much as I wanted to write, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to write about. Thus, my first few posts were just…meh. Stuff that I consumed (a lot of psychology) that I thought were interesting. Or people in the world of business, finance, and psychology whom I thought were interesting. Then I got into writing letters and friendship and connection and all the “feelings” stuff, so that’s what I did for a while. Then I went into a writing slump and lost interest…twice.
In short, I spent the better half of this year trying to figure out what my “story” is. What is it that I’m trying to write? Which topics interest me the most that combines with what I can (realistically) do? I spent months asking myself this question. What is my thing?
Then I discovered this tweet yesterday. I wish it had come sooner. And I realize that she has a point there. This whole year has been an experiment in figuring myself out, or letting my niche “develop organically,” as she says. The past two months have been incredibly revelatory for me in helping me figure out the direction of this newsletter.
But first, I had to take a break to prepare for writing my first novel. I did that during the month of November, and by the end of the month, I was exhausted. I was a new novelist with a lot of story ideas and no way to put them cohesively on the page. I did the NaNoWriMo challenge and learned a great deal about myself. Then I took a break from writing for about a week or two to really reflect on where writing and reading has taken me.
Then I had another revelation.
I realized that I’ve always been interested in food stories. I’ve loved stories and books since I was a kid, thanks to my dad. I devour these types of stories with great enthusiasm, starting years ago when I read food blogs exclusively and pored over the stories (not so much the recipes, though) and the food photography. My love affair with food stories went so far as to get me my first published piece ever on Food52. I was so proud of that article. It was a story about my mom and her cha trung recipe. I also realized that the places that I’ve pitched and gotten accepted the most are the food publications. I am no expert at cooking or recipe creation. Still, I continue to consume these kinds of stories with the kind of fervor that is usually reserved for a Peloton addict. I was that excited every time I came across a food-related story (like the one about the Donut King, for example).
It’s through these kinds of stories that connects people and families and communities together through the sharing of food that resonates the most to me. Which is why I’m going to spend 2022 focusing on food-related content and the stories behind it. Stories are inside books, and as I’ve realized recently, food nurtures our bodies and books nurture our minds.
That said, this will be the place where I talk about books and stories related to food. It can be anything from food trends to food memoirs to rituals and beliefs to anything that I think are worth knowing about in the food & literary realm. My focus will be on food and family and how we nurture our communities, and what ‘family’ even means.
Thanks for joining me. Let’s hope I don’t change my mind and delete everything again. I feel pretty good about this, in fact. See you in 2022.
Cheers,
Hoang