For everyone who’s making a New Year’s resolution to finally start - or finish - that novel … here, in one place, are all 7 of my rules to write by, with links to the blog for each one. I’m using a pic from when I found the French edition of “The Tin Horse in a...
The Writing Life
7 Rules To Write By #3(Continued) – Your Red Teachers Pencil
In the last 7 Rules post - on Rule #3, choosing the right critique group for you - I talked about the etiquette for giving and receiving critiques. Before moving on to Rule #4 (about revising), I wanted to go into some detail about one of the guidelines for giving a...
7 Rules To Write By #3: Choose The Right Critique Group For You
Recently my friend “Alice” told me about a writing workshop she’d joined. She was the only person who was writing memoir; everyone else was doing fiction. And she found the critiques of her work lacerating. “It’s good for me,” she said. She also said that since...
7 Rules To Write By #2
My last blog was about Rule #1: Go toward what scares you. The second of my 7 Rules to Write By has to do with the Muse. Some people wait for the Muse to show up. Albert Brooks, for instance, in the film The Muse. He’s a film writer who’s lost his edge, but...
Thou Shalt Afflict Thy Protagonist
George Cruikshank engraving It happened again yesterday. A friend in my writers group kept taking her protagonist into situations that made everyone squirm … but then backed off. For instance … The character is an immigrant maid, and the house in which she works gets...
Where Do You Get Your Ideas
Where do you get your ideas? I’ve heard authors say that their least-favorite question is “Where do you get your ideas?” Not me. For one thing, I am not one of those writers who keeps a file box (or the electronic equivalent) bulging with ideas, so that the minute I...
Yikes Ive Been Studied
I had no idea I was “mak(ing) clear how well popular culture can entertain nostalgia, trivialize history, and relieve, without really working through, the traumas of the past.” Turns out that’s what Laurence Roth, a professor of English and director of the Jewish...
The Wisdom Of The Burnout Sisters
We all know the stereotype of a book club, that it’s a bunch of women who, under the pretense of meeting to discuss books, just socialize and drink. That hasn’t been my experience at all. People in book groups I’ve visited have been insightful readers. And some of...
The Urge For Going Is It In Americans Dna
My grandmother’s family, the Antons, shortly after they came to Milwaukee from Ukraine. My grandma is the baby. I visited a book group recently, and one of the members, Cheryl, brought up an idea I’ve been thinking about ever since. We were discussing the way several...
Reading With Reverence A Subversive Act
In honor of my birthday today, I want to share a wonderful, healing gift that I received. I recently met a very wise woman, Lori Thornley, who told me about the respectful, holy way in which she approaches a new book—a practice I think of as “reading with reverence.”...
Stories Everywhere Crying Men A Seal Birth
“We are narrative beings,” said Margaret Atwood, an author I revere, at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival last spring. Along with food, shelter, and sex, one of our most basic needs is to hear and create story. Fortunately, stories are everywhere. Two stories got...
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner A Dance Review
Rabbi Lawrence Kushner doesn’t bill himself as a dancer, and I didn’t go to see him Sunday in my role as a dance critic. But the rabbi’s got moves! Rabbi Kushner was giving a talk in San Diego titled “Jewish Spirituality: It’s All God.” I was interested because I’ve...
Now Read This The Knife Sharpeners Bell By Rhea Tregebov
Now Read This! “The Knife-Sharpener’s Bell” by Rhea Tregebov Everyone’s a critic. Especially me. I write dance criticism. And, as a novelist and writing teacher, I’ve made an art of picking apart the most heartfelt, lovingly crafted prose. All of which...
Opening The Door To Self Compassion
Wherever you go, there you are. Where I have gone is a cottage in Ashland, Oregon. My husband and I are doing a month-long stay here, seeing plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and spending most of our time giving ourselves a writing retreat—I’m partway through a...
Pioneer Jews
My nominee for one of the most intriguing book titles ever is “Pioneer Jews.” It is not an oxymoron! As this deeply researched, terrifically readable history by Harriet and Fred Rochlin makes clear, Jewish immigrants to America in the 19th century didn’t just settle...
Literary L A And No That Is Not An Oxymoron
The Sunday L.A. Times carried an article by Hector Tobar that made this Southern California writer put down her cup of green tea and look for a barricade to storm. Tobar wrote about a New York Daily News blogger’s snarky response to hearing that Eloise Klein Healy was...
If Not Hillel Who
Rabbi Hillel? Really? According to a number of sources that you figure had decent fact-checkers—like O Magazine and Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird—Rabbi Hillel wrote the following bit of Zen: “I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing.” I was so charmed by...
Did You Get To Choose Your Book Cover Well Sort Of
“It’s an uneasy embrace,” my editor kept saying when I voiced reservations about the first cover Random House proposed for “The Tin Horse.” Granted, I said, the photograph of two little girls hugging conveyed both closeness and tension, an ambivalence that felt just...
Happy Birthday To The Tin Horse
It’s hard to believe, but it’s one year since “The Tin Horse” was published - January 29, 2013! Year 1 has been an amazing ride. A few highlights … * The launch party at Warwick’s Books in La Jolla was such a high! Walking from the car to the bookstore, I warned...
Blog Tour What Im Up To California Jewish Novels And Writing Process
Thank you to J. Dylan Yates, who invited me to follow her on this blog tour. Dylan’s first novel came out just a week ago! Called “The Belief in Angels,” it’s about a young woman growing up in her parents’ wild-hippie household … and fascinated by the stories of her...
Djewess Unchained Prosenpeople Blogs
Book launch at Warwick’s 1/29 I’ve been blogging up a storm, writing four posts for last week’s stint as guest blogger for The ProsenPeople, a project of the Jewish Book Council and the Jewish Daily Forward. You can link to them here: The Beauty of Broken English - I...
5 Remedies For Pre Release Jitters
5 Remedies for Pre-Release Jitters 1. Go to a Day of Mindfulness at Deer Park Monastery. Do an hour-long walking meditation. Sing sweet, cheery songs with hand gestures led by beaming Buddhist monks and nuns. 2. Feel absurdly comforted by reading, in Roberto...
7 Rules To Write By #1- Go Toward What Scares You
Hi, writers. This blog post is for you-or really, for anyone who takes the risk of following their artistic vision and putting it out into the world. I recently gave a talk at the Southern California Writers Conference in San Diego that I called 7 Rules to Write By....
