When words won’t flow
HOW I OVERCOME WRITER’S BLOCK
I fell in love with words long before I ever thought of myself as a writer. As a child I would spend hours paging through my grandmother’s collection of well-worn cookbooks, their spines cracked and their pages dotted with flour and fingerprints. That early fascination with food and language eventually led me into the world of magazines. Those early years in my career taught me that the art of writing, much like cooking, is about layering memory, flavour and emotion until something true reveals itself. That said, writing comes with its own set of creative challenges.
They say writer’s block is a wall but I’ve always thought of it as fog. You know there’s something beyond it, an idea, a memory or a flavour, but you can’t quite reach it. Over the years, while writing the JAN the Journal collection and my cookbooks, I’ve learnt that creativity doesn’t respond well to force. It responds to ritual and to the senses.
When I find myself staring at a blank page, I often begin with scent. Smell, more than any other sense, has the power to stir both inspiration and nostalgia and it can transport you somewhere else instantly. When I’m working on a new cookbook, scent becomes a bridge between past and present, especially with projects like the JAN Voyage Cookbook where I’m trying to capture a specific time or place. When I find myself staring at a blank page, I start with something small like lighting a candle. The Forage and Feast Ceramic French Reverie Candle has this soft, nostalgic scent that reminds me of slow afternoons in Apricale, wax and warmth mingling with fresh mountain air. It’s not just about creating atmosphere, it’s about giving your thoughts somewhere to land.
In the years that I’ve been writing about food I’ve learnt that it’s not only about describing flavours. It’s about reconnecting with the simple joy of eating and tasting something real. When I need to get the creative culinary wheels turning, I often find myself moving between sweet and savoury, almost like composing a melody of taste. There’s something about contrast, the way a bite of Forage and Feast Pomegranate Dark Chocolate, bold and bittersweet, awakens the imagination, followed by the delicate sweetness of Forage and Feast Soft Eating Bon Chretien Pears, soft and sunlit, that opens up a different kind of creativity.
Of course there are moments when the body needs something more substantial or salty to ground the mind. That’s when I turn to the Forage and Feast Wagyu Beef Biltong. It’s savoury, rich and unapologetically South African, the kind of snack that I love when I’ve been away from home for too long.
Then comes something to sip. The Forage and Feast Lemon & Cucumber Cordial has become a quiet companion during my writing sessions, refreshing enough to wake the senses, gentle enough not to distract me with a sugar rush. I like to mix it with something refreshing and pour it over ice with a sprig of mint.
There’s a rhythm to tasting like this, a back-and-forth between indulgence and balance that mirrors the creative process itself. Sweet invites curiosity, the dreaming and imagining, while savoury brings you back to earth and clarity. When writing recipes, that interplay keeps me connected to both emotion and precision, to memory and method. It’s in those small sensory experiences like a specific taste, scent or texture that inspiration often returns.