How to become a creative food and nutrition writing therapist

May 22, 5:29 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Sacramento Nutrition Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Do you enjoy food-related mystery novels? See the Delicious Evil: Food Mystery Novels  library list. There’s a fascinating book on the list titled, Slice and Dice by Ellen Hart. The library list site notes, “Cooking queen Connie Buckridge's plans for a culinary empire in Minnesota are threatened by a nosy investigative journalist, and by the murder of a cooking colleague of food critic Sophie Greenway.”

If cooking can be blended with the science of medicine as a healing tool, it also can be woven with the art of creativity enhancement, connection, and communication. Look for similar goals. The objective is to reverse disease by scientific research, wise traditions, and through foresight, insight, and hindsight.

There's another route. You can become a medical television producer or documentarian specializing in nutrition, foods, and healthy eating. Or you can start a food and nutrition media awards project.

For example, look at the FREDDIE awards given to Web sites by the International Health and Medical Media. Creativity also is about communicating what are the most powerful and satisfying foods.

Culinary wizardry is about creativity enhancement to your tastebuds through imaginative writing. It acts as a healing tool and a multimedia experience--visual, kinetic, and musical.

When you create flavor without saturated fats, sugar, or salt, it's personalized, preventive medicine. One place to start is by writing a cookbook, life story gift book, or food-related genre novel. Perhaps you'd set your novel on a cruise shop and explore the lives of the people that cook the food on cruise ships that go around the world, perhaps exploring food created for people that live on cruise ships all-year and have their residences on cruise ships.

Their expensive condos have kitchens. What do they cook? Or do they eat the food provided in the many restaurants and buffets? Who does the cooking? What special menus are there for tailored diets?

Another possibility could be to write a food-oriented novel or career and travel documentary emphasizing a specific type of nutrition. You might emphasize a unique career as a creative food writing therapist.

You might use a novel such as Dogs with Careers with happy endings about people caring for people to inspire you to write your own novel or other fiction about cooking for dogs or traveling as a roaming chef, even though that novel is not about food.

As a creative nutrition writing therapist or assistant to a working therapist (as a creative expressions therapy assistant or intern), you'd use writing about food as a healing tool to move people onto a more nutritious track by supplementing food-related mystery novel reading enthusiasm with creating realistic cookbooks that are road maps to culinary medicine. The goal is inspiration and motivation in good taste.

Within the field of culinary medicine, (healing foods) see the highly recommended NY Times bestseller, Chef MD’s Big Book of Culinary Medicine, by John La Puma, M.D. and Rebecca Powell Marx. Get the free recipes emailed to you. View the video and information about the book on the site titled, Chef MD®.

The practicing Santa Barbara internal medicine physician went to cooking school to practice culinary medicine. The delicious and healthy cinnamon orange dreamsicle in the book is highly recommended from this base. One of the doctor's tips is to eat a handful of walnuts before a fatty meal. Within 20 minutes of eating walnuts, the antioxidants will block the artery-stiffening effect of saturated and trans fats. 

Another example in the physician's book is to eat watermelon at room temperature. Watermelon has 40 percent more lycopene and 139 percent more beta carotene at room temperature than when the melon is refrigerated. Also keep tomatoes at room temperature.

So how can you, too start on the path to becoming a creative food writing therapist? Let's look at using creative food writing as a healing tool. For example, after writing 22 novels (out of 90 paperback books myself), the most valuable lesson learned still emphasizes food, music, visual images and words as healing tools. Nutrition also is one of the expressive arts when communicated in the media visually, textually, and musically. Food has a texture, tone, and mood all of its own.

Creative food and nutrition writing therapy differs from bibliotherapy or poetry therapy. Creative food and nutrition writing therapy emphasizes using food as a healing tool while listening to oral or personal history—either one’s own or someone else’s personal history against a background of soothing music for thinking and creativity enhancement, and then writing from inspiration using facts, significant events, and turning points as highlights of an experience, issue, or life story.

Bibliotherapy may focus more on either reading books, articles, or poems and discussing the facts, experiences, or emotions in the written word read. Bibliotherapy may emphasize reading and discussion, whereas creative writing therapy emphasizes expressive writing from behavior, emotions, or logic.

Bibliotherapists in the USA have a Federal Title classification for this job description.
In 1977, a Federal Title, classification 601, was created for bibliotherapists to be hired. Poetry therapists undertook 440 hours of the study of poetry therapy became eligible for the newly created position, according to the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT). Check out the NAPT’s site.

The Association publishes a quarterly for Poetry Therapy called the A.P.T. News. It's estimated that thousands of professionals use poetry therapy. The requirements for a "trainee in poetry therapy" include graduation from an accredited college with a degree in the humanities or behavioral sciences.

Equivalent credit may be granted for combination of completed college courses and experience in a recognized institution. There should be evidence of concentration in poetry covering the primitive, classical, post-renaissance, modern, and avant-garde writing. The trainee must be accepted into a mental health program as a volunteer or paid employee under professional supervision.

As a poetry therapist, you must not exaggerate your own importance in the therapeutic team. Certification allows you to put a C.P.T. (Certified Poetry Therapist) designation after your name. Training programs in poetry therapy and bibliotherapy are offered through the National Association for Poetry Therapy and through other private schools.

Or you can study expressive arts therapies at a wide variety of universities offering degrees in one of the therapeutic arts and focus on creative food writing as therapy. Other therapies include art, music, drama, dance, poetry, and creative writing.

There are several poetry therapy institutes. The New School for Social Research in New York City offered training programs in poetry therapy and bibliotherapy. One poetry therapist, Don Theye, has a motto: "Observe, absorb, create, share." Check out the book titled: A Seminar on Bibliotherapy: Proceedings by Dr. Franklin M. Berry, a psychology professor. Research bibliotherapy-related books at the Library School, University of Wisconsin, Helen White Hall, 600 N. Park, Madison, WI, 53706.

See the ERIC (Educational Research Web Portal) ERIC # ED174226, Seminar on Bibliotherapy. Proceedings of Sessions, June 21-23, 1978 in Madison, Wisconsin. For guidelines to poetry therapy and book lists, write: J.B. Lippincott, Co., East Washington Sq., Philadelphia, PA 19105. Of interest are the pioneer books written in the sixties and seventies, such as Poetry Therapy, by Dr. Jack J. Leedy (1969), and Poetry, the Healer, Dr. Jack J. Leedy (1973). For the current newsletter, click on the association's site.

Publishing Your Creative Food and NutritionWriting Therapy Book
You can publish your own cookbook of family recipes or your originals. But another possibility is to publish life story highlights related to food and nutrition as a creative healing tool or an open door to creativity enhancement in writing, culinary arts, and nutrition.

Some people pay handsomely for one hand-bound, gilded, and elegant gift book of lifetime turning points, social issues, highlights, family recipes, or corporate events. You’d be surprised how many people are satisfied to offer up to $10,000 (or more, depending upon the publisher) to have only one copy of a hand-bound hardcover book published about their event or life story. What does it take to create and publish a memoirs gift book commemorating a celebration of life, rite of passage, affirmation, wedding, commemoration, or true experience?

What quality of personal book do you want to make from scratch—writing, printing, and binding? As far as printing and binding, you can make one finished book at a cost to you of only $1.50-$4.50. What you charge a client depends on what it costs you.
If you create and publish a custom gift book, you’d publish only one copy of a hand bound, hardcover book. The tome would contain anywhere from 60 to 100 photos.

Text material would be based on phone or live interviews. The interviews usually would run at least two hours or more for one person (and about two hours spent per each interview). The gift book would be about 80 to 120 published pages or slightly more if necessary. Look at yourself as a designer, writer, interviewer, and bookbinder.

You can even tailor a pop-up book creation (with the help of input from engineers on how to fold paper). Or learn how to make your own pop-up books. See the Joan Irvine Web site on making pop-up books . Also check out the How We Make Pop-Up Books  site.

What questions do you ask to help people respond calmly and openly at an interview? Start with “What do you enjoy the most about this particular time of life? What do you enjoy most about this event? What do you enjoy most about this holiday? What do you enjoy most about this experience? What thought, act, or feeling do you want to emphasize in the gift book?

Serious Life Experiences and Favorite Foods, Recipes, or Family Nutrition History
If the person is going to emphasize a war-related or military service event, an ordeal, medical or survival details, or a factual report of behaviors related to any other serious segment of a life story, you could ask in addition to the details, what have you learned from this experience?

How have you transcended the past and moved on? What have you learned from other people’s mistakes or choices? What have you learned from your past choices, mistakes, decisions, or alternative solutions and paths?

For business case histories, ask your client to relate the details step-by-step so readers can follow how your client arrived at solutions to problems or achieved measurable results. A memoirs book is like a public relations campaign. It’s about image built on solid detail and storytelling illustrated by visually-striking photography (photojournalism).

Answer the individual’s silence or long pauses (to gather thoughts) by using action verbs such as, “Bring me up to date on your life story, a special event, or your work. Tell me about your plans for this book. Also let your client describe experiences in detail and color. Ask interview questions such as the following: “What’s your favorite experience and why?

Describe a special gift you have given. What have you received that transformed your life? What lessons have you learned from past mistakes? What holiday or event do you enjoy the most?” For further information see the book, 30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open: How to Use Writing, Music, Drama & Art Therapy Techniques for Healing (paperback, 2007).

If you want to record the family nutrition history and use creativity enhancement as a healing tool when interviewing people for recorded life story highlights, the interview questions should be given well ahead of the time of the actual live or telephone interview. Meet with the person by phone and/or in person before you arrange any interviews so you can learn your client’s expectations.

If your client wants to exceed the maximum number of words allowed, that client would be charged usually a dollar for each extra word included in the book above the maximum words allowed. (It varies with different publishers, of course.) Each reprint of the book you’re your client would pay your team $10,000 for also would cost the client $250 or more per additional copy.

The family nutrition history and favorite foods as healing tools as a gift book could be wonderfully hand crafted in full color—a lifetime experience. The book could feature only one person being interviewed, for anywhere from two to 70 hours. Or an entire family may be interviewed in any city.

There might be only a half-hour interview of each person when 100 or more people have to be interviewed. Or such a valuable, well-crafted book may be customized to fit an individual’s special requirements. Yes, people do very happily pay this much for having a gift book crafted on them or their theme, and businesses doing this are doing wonderfully well finding clients.
The books are spectacular—rightfully gorgeous, hand bound in full color.

For $10,000 (or more) anyone with the money and the time can have a book written based on interviews from anywhere, published and beautifully hand-bound with a hard cover. Are you ready to become a publisher of customized gift books?

You can publish all by yourself at a price only you will determine as you research the markets for gift books. You have a lot of choices varying from print-on-demand software to handcrafted bindings.

One alternative is to hire a team of interviewers, writers, and publishers or put to learning volunteer help from school projects and senior centers. The outcome is all the same: recording, organizing, and publishing peoples’ true life stories or other events. And you can pay for books that can be bound a whole variety of ways.

Choose either to act alone or work with a team of hired skilled people, volunteers active in retirement, or students learning the publishing business. However you manage your craft, every life story is worth a book as well as a way to creativity enhancement.

You can open a business or enjoy a hobby publishing gift books. Food is a necessity. It also can be a healing tool and an instrument in creativity enhancement in writing or speaking as well as in the visual arts accompanied to music. Food is a subject for literature. And inspiring or relaxing music goes well with nutrition tailored to your requirements.