Posts filed under 'Writing Resources'

September/Tishrei 2007 Newsletter


Greetings from www.WriteInIsrael.com!

Contents

  1. My Fall Classes and Nov. Writing Retreat (with Evan)
  2. Your Publications
  3. Our Shards
  4. The Writing Life

1. My Fall Classes and November Writing Retreat

  • Wednesdays, 4:30 – 6:30 Beginning to Write
    From October 24th I will conduct a creative writing class for beginning writers. We will meet for twelve sessions at my home in Moshav Beit Zayit, ten minutes west of Jerusalem. I will focus on process and craft, as opposed to workshopping original work. The goal of the class is to get you writing, to help you discover your voice and subject matter, and to learn how to learn from published stories and essays.
    The cost is NIS 1200, payable in four installments.
    To register, email labensohnjudy@hotmail.com
  • Every other Friday, 10:45 – 12:45 Writing Workshop
    This class, from Oct. 26th, provides a framework for writers doing rewrites of chapters, stories, essays or pieces in search of a genre. If you know how to take intelligent, constructive criticism, this group is for you. We will meet at my home in Moshav Beit Zayit, ten minutes west of Jerusaelm.
    The cost is NIS 700 for seven sessions through Jan. 18th.
    To register, email labensohnjudy@hotmail.com
  • “Talk to Me,” a writing retreat on dialogue with Evan Fallenberg and Judy Labensohn.
    Nov. 14-16, 2007 at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam. There are still a few places available. For complete details and registration, see the Talk To Me Dialogue Retreat Registration Form.

I will be in the United States until Oct. 15th, but I have daily access to email.

2. Your Publications

When Anglo writers in Israel read about your publication successes, they become inspired to submit their own writing for publication. Please continue to send me your good news so I can spread the word. In this way we can create a community of Anglo writers in Israel.

  • Gila (Green) Tal’s story “Half Sisters” was accepted for publication by Pilot Pocket Books, Toronto. Gila, originally from Ottawa, is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. The pocket book is due out in November.
  • Sarah Kreimer, who has participated in my Jerusalem writing workshop for three years, has landed a New York agent for her memoir, Vision and Division in Israel: My Journey along the Seam. I look forward to being able to tell you when Sarah’s agent sells the book to a publisher.
  • Prof. Ada Aharoni has two poems published in Peace, Justice, and Jews, July 2007. The editors are Murray Polner and Stefan Merken. A second edition of her poetry book You and I is available via www.iflac.com/ada
  • Rachel Gurevich of Beit Shemesh is a winner. Her poem “I Know Kindness” won 1st place in the www.momwriters.com annual anniversary poetry contest. Her short story “One More Day, One More Chance,” won an honorable mention in WritersWeekly’s 24-hour short story contest. Rachel also had an essay published under a pseudonym at www.CommonTies.com
  • Ruth Mason continues her monthly column in “In Jerusalem,” called “Life in the 50’s.” For back columns, email Ruth at ruthm_2001@yahoo.com
  • Jeffrey Green’s story “In Vincoli” appeared on the online Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture in the July 2007 issue.
  • Reva Mann, whom I mentored during the first year of her writing what became The Rabbi’s Daughter: A True Story of Sex, Drugs, and Orthodoxy, has been enjoying fame in Great Britain. Articles about Reva and her book, published by Hodder and Stoughton, have appeared in all major magazines and newspapers in England. On July 29th her photo appeared on the cover of The Sunday Times Magazine, followed by a 6-page spread. In October, the book will be released by Random House in the US. Currently, Reva is at work on her second book.

3. Our Shards

  • In August, Judith ben Susan from Mevasseret Zion participated in a writing course at Lumb Bank, Yorkshire sponsored by the famed Arvon Foundation in England. Her review is mixed: “The experience was a memorable one and I enjoyed it very much although I was dissatisfied with the level of the tutors and I was not alone in that… Perhaps I will give it another go next year. I did not do much writing, I have to say. I feel that the course was not the right one for me. But on re-reading the blurb, I could certainly understand why I thought it was suitable…. I thoroughly enjoyed the week and meeting the wonderful talented people.”
  • Chana Coggan in Maaleh Adumim told me about these fabulous web sites: www.persimmontree.org — a literary magazine written by women over 60, and www.storyscapejournal.com
  • Call for submissions:
    • Ezrat Avot is seeking articles (250-800 words), poetry and photographs for a new English-language monthly e-magazine, “Israel Senior Life.” Visit www.ezratavot.org for details.
    • Babel, an online journal promoting freedom of speech, seeks poems, stories, and essays on identity and culture. Visit www.icorn.org for details and click the links under “babel” on the right.
    • Talia in Jerusalem is looking for one-page plays about Judaism or Israel for the One-Page Play Festival during Channukah. Email: talia.rach@gmail.com
  • The Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University is looking for an instructor for an English-language undergraduate course on Business Communications. Among topics typically covered in such a course: Preparing resumes, interviewing, writing business letters, making effective presentations. Contact person: Prof. Simon Benninga, benninga@post.tau.ac.il.

4. The Writing Life

Often our craft and our imagination are out of sync. I may have a wonderful story to tell, but have not yet developed the skills with which to tell it. Conversely, I may have skills, but lack the emotional maturity, depth and range to utilize the story to its fullest. So many elements must fall in place at the same time for a piece of writing to succeed on all levels. No wonder Bobbie Ann Mason suggests waiting twenty years before sending out our work.

Nonetheless, we do send out our poems, stories and essays because the goal of writing is to communicate. A nice thing happened to me last month. It’s called “the best case scenario for an emerging writer,” which I still am. (The cocoon, from which I emerge, you understand, is made of steel, so emerging is a difficult, painful process.) This is the nice thing: I received an email from an agent who had read my essay in The Southwest Review. He liked it and wanted to see more of my writing. The agent and I have exchanged emails and one day I may meet him. He may or may not represent me, but just receiving his email of encouragement helped me break through another inch of the steel cocoon. The email also vindicated my attempts to publish in high-quality literary magazines. Agents scout these journals. Don’t keep your writing in your drawers, closet, or computer. Put it into the world (she wrote, as a way to nudge herself.)

I am writing this newsletter from a hotel room in Pittsburgh and a family room in Cleveland. During my travels, I have met the editors of Creative Nonfiction and the Michigan Quarterly Review, journals that have published my work. I wanted to say Thank you to these two gentlemen who taught me that literary essays from Israel can enjoy a wider readership than we might suspect.

I send you greetings from the land of colored leaves and autumn scents that penetrate the emigrant soul.

Shana tova. May your blessings be as varied and abundant as the colors on the trees in northeastern Ohio.

Warmly,
Judy

1 comment Thursday September 20, 2007

Nisan/Pesach 2007 Newsletter

Contents

  1. April events in Israel
  2. Interesting web sites for writers
  3. Publications, a plethora
  4. Deadline and live wires
  5. The Writing Life

Dear Friends,

1. April events in Israel

  • “To Be a Jewish Writer,” an international conference, will be held at Beit Avi Chai, Jerusalem, April 16-19. See www.kisufim.org for details.
  • On Friday, April 27th, I will lead a half-day Hike ‘n Write at Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve, near Modi’in. This is an opportunity for those who once fell in love with a place to reconnect with that love and place. We will use biblical quotes and landscapes as inspiration for writing exercises. We will visit the “Jericho Oasis,” climb the “Hill of Milk and Honey,” sit in the shade of “Isaiah’s Vineyard,” and explore the “Garden of the Seven Species.” Time: from 8:30 to 1-ish.; Cost: NIS 165. (Does not include NIS 25 entrance fee) Pre-registration a must — limited space. Send your check, made out to Yeul Sachir, to Judy Labensohn, POBox 15306, Moshav Beit Zayit, 90815. I will send you more details.

2. Interesting web sites for writers

3. Publications, a plethora

  • Dropped from Heaven, a collection of stories by Sophie Judah of Hod Hasharon, published by Random House, is now on sale in America. Sophie’s book is based on her MA thesis in fiction from Bar-Ilan.
  • Gerry Berman’s play, “Explostion at Geha Junction” was chosen to be read at the 15th Annual Last Frontier Theatre/Play Conference in Valdez, Alaska, June 22-30, 2007. Gerry lives in Jerusalem and Alaska.
  • Ruth Fogelman’s poem “Rachel’s Eulogy for Her Grandmother” won First Place in the Reuben Rose Poetry Competition. The poem was part of her MA thesis in poetry from Bar-Ilan. To read this and more, visit http://www.geocities.com/jerusalemlives Ruth lives in the Old City of Jerusalem.
  • Laurie Bisberg’s “Forever Slim” will appear in the March-April issue of the ESRA Magazine, which is all about food. The svelte writer lives in Haifa.
  • Sue Tourkin-Komet, Jerusalem, has poems and essays forthcoming in Soul Fountain, Jewish Bible Quarterly, Matrix, and Heartbeats from Heaven, the Voices Israel Poetry Anthology.
  • Susan Sachs, Beit Shemesh, published a story, “A Day Like All Days,” in the annual Studies in American Jewish Literature.
  • Faigie Heiman, Jerusalem, had an op-ed in jewishpress.com on Feb. 28, 2007.
  • Eva Eliav’s poems are forthcoming in Stand in 2007.
  • “Explosion,” the opening story in my collection, Stories from Bethlehem Road, will appear in the June issue of Hadassah Magazine.

Mazal tov to all writers who complete a project, send it off, and live to see it accepted. Keep sending me your acceptances.

4. Deadline and live wires

  • Mima’amakin, a Journal of Artistic Exploration of the Jewish Religious Experience is seeking submissions until May 1st: http://www.mimaamakim.org/sub2007.com
  • Applications are now being accepted for the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. The program begins on August 16, 2007. http://www.biu.ac.il/HU/en/home/cw/htm
  • Robert McKee’s Story Seminar is a world-class event. The next one is in London, April 27-29, 2007. http://www.mckeestory.com
  • Varda Branfman, Sarah Shapiro, and Roberta Chester from Israel and Maine will be leading a kosher, vegetarian writing retreat for women in Bar Harbor, Maine. The one week retreat begins on Sunday, May 27, 2007. Visit www.shorepathcottage.com for inviting details.
  • For a non-kosher, one-week writing retreat on a 50 foot cruising yacht called “Enchantment,” sailing north of Vancouver, BC on July 24, 2007, write to drkurtz@MAC.COM.

There are so many beautiful places in the world to write. Make your desk one of them.

5. The Writing Life

As a teacher I am privy to writers’ stories. I want to share some with you, because they are inspiring.

A woman joined a writing group because she had always wanted to write, but never got around to it. How do I start? What do I write about? Who cares? After a few months in a weekly class, she shared her delight. “It’s like magic,” she said. “I sit down to type and these words come out and I don’t know where they come from.” Her innocence and enthusiasm awed and silenced the group. This woman, over eighty, talked about writing as if she had fallen in love.

Another woman joined a group because twelve years earlier someone had told her she should try creative writing. This woman let the idea percolate and finally, after an almost two hour drive, made it to the first of a four-session class. Unfortunately, her work prevented her from coming to the second session. I don’t know what prevented her from attending the third and fourth sessions, but I do know that this woman will write. Once the decision erupts, one slowly overcomes all obstacles.

Another woman, a mother of nine, was on the way to a Sunday retreat and her car broke down on Highway Six. Furious, she called her husband to pick her up, left her car on the road, and arrived at the retreat, panting, an hour late. “I feel I crash-learned about five years in as many hours and my smugness turned to doubt and then to alarm,” she wrote me afterwards. “Much traumatized, I spent Monday in a daze, getting my car out of a faraway garage.” She avoided eye contact with her computer and a particular wall cupboard in her home that housed clothes from every daughter for every season in all sizes. On Tuesday, she planned to reorganize the cupboard. On Wednesday, she did it. A week after the retreat, she began to rewrite.

A young man finishing his MFA in the States wrote to ask me how I began teaching. As an aside in his email, he wrote the following about my essay on the get ceremony that he had read in In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction. “I am Presbyterian, married, and live in Atlanta, GA, yet the beauty and poignancy of your Jewish divorce ritual and experience spoke volumes to me… Thanks for sharing your talent with the world.” When I wrote that essay, I wasn’t thinking about the world. I was only thinking about how to describe a complex world of ritual and emotion. Every week, when I sit with Anglo-Israeli writers, we wonder if our unique experiences will resonate with people who don’t know the difference between a get and a gat. This young man’s letter assured me that our experiences will resonate, as long as we reveal the crux of the story that lies beyond the Jerusalem Rabbinate and the archaeological park, a place we share with readers worldwide: it is the human heart.

Chag sameach,

Judy

Add comment Sunday April 1, 2007

Adar 2007 Newsletter

Contents

  1. New Hat and Required Reading
  2. New Event
  3. Publication News
  4. Apology
  5. Tips and Tidbits. Nu?
  6. My Renewed Writing Life

Dear Friends,

1. New Hat and Required Reading

I have a new hat this Purim. It crowns me the Coordinator of the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University. Shaindy, founding director of the creative writing program, died too young last year. She left a vision of a vibrant Jewish writing center in Israel, a vision I look forward to furthering.

The Program enables Anglo-Israeli writers, as well as students from abroad, to earn an MA in English with a creative thesis in either fiction or poetry. Applications are now being accepted for the 2007-08 academic year, which begins in mid-August. You can access an application online at http://www.biu.ac.il/HU/en/home/cw

Please tell your nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, and all your cousins around the world about the program.
(Know that the web site is being renewed.)

Required Reading: If you want to get accepted to any competitive writing program or publish anywhere, I suggest you read an article by Diana Hume George on copyediting. You can find it at http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/craft/craft_copyedit.htm

2. New Event (preceded by reports of the Old Events)

  • Nine fearless writers met at Kibbutz Tzuba on Jan. 28th to write about their bodies. During the break, we did the Hokey Pokey, which revved up the writing juices.
  • For the first time in her life, Sarita Perel has begun to write about her 50-year “relationship” with arthritis.
  • A small group of motivated writers met at my home in Beit Zayit on Feb. 11th to workshop their personal essays. This was an amazing day of fierce learning and sensitive, writerly intimacy.
  • My March class at Beit Berl College still has room for a few more students. It begins this Friday, March 2nd. If you are stuck and not writing, come. Email: lilish@beitberl.ac.il
  • New Event: On Friday, April 27th, I will lead a Hike ‘n Write at Neot Kedumim. (8:30 – 1 p.m.) This is a rare opportunity to combine your love of walking in biblical landscapes with your love of writing. Details in the next newsletter, but do save the date.

3. Publication News

  • Eva Eliav’s story, “In a Roman Pension,” was published in the winter issue of Quality Women’s Fiction, a bi-annual American magazine by and about women.
  • Gila Tal-Green http://gilatal.blogspot.com/ who graduated from the Bar Ilan Creative Writing Program in 2006, had a short story, “Brass Knuckles,” accepted for the March, 2007 issue of Fiction Magazine. The story is from her thesis collection called White Zion. The title story from White Zion will appear in Saranac Review in August, 2007. Gila just gave birth to her fifth child on Feb. 23rd.
  • Devorah (Debbie) Shinan, published “Kosher Under Katyushas” in the Winter, 2007 online edition of The Kosher Spirit.

Keep sending me those publication acceptances. Mazal tov to all.

4. New Apology

Evan Fallenberg and I had hoped to inspire you with another writing retreat in May, but we have decided to put it off for the time being. We offer you, our former and future participants, sincere apologies for disappointing you this spring.

5. Tips and Tidbits. Nu?

  • If you have an idea for an article for the Jerusalem Post Metro section, contact Editor Daniel Ben-Tal at danielbe@netvision.net.il He is always looking for good writers with creative ideas.
  • If you plan to be in New England in July, stop in at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, July 3-28, held at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. You can enroll for either a 2 or 4 week session. If you have only a night in the area, there are free, public readings. See www.albany.edu/writers-inst/nysswi.hyml
  • If you are going to Old England this summer, plan on a week’s writing retreat at the Arvon Foundation for Writing. Visit www.arvonfoundation.org
  • If you want to receive more writing newsletters, try www.greatwriting.co.uk and
    http://www.writersdigest.com/specialoffers.asp?NLfriend1
  • If you are in Jerusalem on Tuesday, May 1, 2007, don’t miss The Writer’s Journey Seminar, organized by Leah Kotkes. For details and registration, email lifework@012.net.il
  • Jbooks.com asked some of America’s top literary critics to forecast the next string of Jewish-American classics. High on the list is Kagan’s Superfecta and Other Stories. Author Allen Hoffman is the writer-in-residence at the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan.

6. My Renewed Writing Life

Perhaps, like me, you went through four packs of tissues in February, blowing your nose, coughing, blowing more, while all the time thinking you were dying. When the flu hits, it depresses the body and then the soul. I was sure my weakness was due to some other silent, insidious visitor, like mono or blood cancer. I had gotten a flu shot, after all, exercised daily (well, almost daily), ate organic, brown rice. But whatever hit me in Feb. paid no heed to my efforts to be healthy. Even walking to the computer, let alone writing, was a challenge.

As the days passed and no thoughts entered my head other than how to empty my overflowing waste baskets, I feared never writing again. I imagined being struck by something worse than mono or cancer: Old Age. All this tiredness, it reminded me of my grandmother, who rarely moved from her chair by the window. I was becoming a prone version of her. When I did sit up, I began to knit, a sure sign of Old Age.

Salvation came in the form of Vitamin C – 2,000 mg. a day (1,000 with breakfast and 1,000 with lunch). Within the week, I was walking next to the cesspool in the Motza Valley, so big we call it a lake, and smelling the almond blossoms to counter the stench of sewage. Each day I walked a little more. Bedtime advanced from 7 PM to 10:30. I was getting healthy.

One morning I awoke with an idea for an essay. Ahhh, the blood was again flowing to the muscle in my brain that controls imagination. Once again, as in days of old, I awoke at 4 a.m. and wrote in my mind, that glorious mental exercise which precedes all my written activity. To transcribe that perfect essay, though, onto the computer screen, felt like too big an effort. I would have to wait until all my strength returned.

It’s returning slowly, just as yours is too, if you were struck with the flu this month. I can envision a new writing life and I hope you can too. The gift does not desert us so easily, especially if we make room for it. Now that my waste baskets are emptied of tissues, there is space for first drafts.

May March be a month of blessings for us all, a month of health and blooming. May all our transformations during Adar be for the good.

Warm regards,

Judy

2 comments Thursday March 1, 2007

Shvat 2007 Newsletter

Contents

  1. Retreat, Workshop, Class
  2. Publication Opportunity
  3. Publication News
  4. Come to the Fair
  5. Good web sites
  6. The Writing Life (from a Nobel Prize winner)

Dear Friends,

1. Retreat, Workshop, Class

  • Sherri Mandel is a writer and author of The Blessing of a Broken Heart, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 2004. She is founder of the Koby Mandell Foundation Mother’s Healing Retreat that runs programs for women who have lost children and spouses in terror attacks and the second Lebanon war. On Monday, February 12th, 2007, Sherri will co-lead a half-day creative writing and arts retreat in Jerusalem. Participation fees are tax deductible and will provide vital support for the Foundation’s important work. For information about the Foundation, visit www.kobymandell.org/foundation.htm. For information and registration for the Feb. 12th writing and arts event, email sara@kobymandell.org Going to this retreat is a wonderful way for you to do a mitzvah while spending a creative morning.
  • On Sunday, Feb. 11, 2007 a group from my Personal Essay Retreat and from the Writing About the Body Retreat (Jan. 28, ‘07) will convene at my home in Beit Zayit for a day of workshopping their personal essays. I’m excited.
  • On Friday mornings, March 2, 9, 16, and 23, 2007, I will teach a 3-hour class for those who want to neutralize their inner critics and discover the magic of creative writing. The series is being organized by Beit Berl College, Kfar Saba. For details and registration, email Lili at lilish@beitberl.ac.il or Tel. 09-7476353.

2. Publication Opportunity

A new English language magazine is being developed for the frum world in Israel. The editors are looking for fiction, personal narrative, essays, poetry, “or any transporting work that sweeps the reader up into the writer’s world.” Up to 5,000 words. Query or send submissions to avmo@att.net

3. Publication News

Michigan Quarterly Review has accepted my essay from Diving Into Mount Zion for its Summer, 2007 issue. I am particularly pleased about this acceptance, since I graduated from the University of Michigan forty years ago.

4. Come to the Fair

The 23rd Jerusalem International Book Fair will be held at Binyanei Ha’ooma from Sunday evening, Feb. 18th until Friday, Feb. 23, at 1 p.m.. The Israel Association of Writers in English (IAWE) will have its own table to sell books written by its members, so look for it. Details about the fair at www.jerusalembookfair.com

5. Good web sites

6. The Writing Life

“My Father’s Suitcase,” a personal essay by Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, appeared in the Dec. 25, 2006 / Jan. 1, 2007 issue of The New Yorker. Hopefully, I will not be arrested for quoting some of the essay below.

“A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, or profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I do. As he writes, he may drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time, he may rise from his table to look out the window at the children playing in the street, or, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or even at a black wall. He may write poems, or plays, or novels, as I do. But all these differences arise only after the crucial task is complete – after he has sat down at the table and patiently turned inward. To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy.” . . .

“The writer’s secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where that comes from – but stubbornness, endurance. The lovely Turkish expression “to dig a well with a needle” seems to me to have been invented with writers in mind.” . . .

“Patience and toil are not enough: first, we must feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary life, and shut ourselves up in a room. . . .

“The writer who shuts himself up in a room and goes on a journey inside himself, will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for that is what literature is.”

I wish you all a Happy Tu B’Shvat and hope you leave your rooms long enough to smell the blooming almond trees. Send me your publication news, so I can share it with others in Israel who write from left to right.

Warm regards on a cold day,

Judy

Add comment Thursday February 1, 2007

Tevet 2007 Newsletter

Contents

  1. January 28th Writing Retreat
  2. The new www.WriteInIsrael
  3. Jane Doe Buys a Challah
  4. Publication news
  5. Miscellaneous
  6. Interesting web sites
  7. My Writing Life: On Rejection

Dear Friends,

1. Writing About the Body

Response to the Dec. 24th one-day writing retreat on the personal essay was so positive that I am offering another one-day retreat at Kibbutz Tzuba. On Sunday, January 28, 2007 we will gather from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to write about the body (only those who have one.) For details and registration, go to my new web site www.WriteInIsrael.com Cyberspace is boundless, apparently, but space at the retreat is limited, so register early.

2. The new www.WriteInIsrael.com

I loved working with Tia Azulay to create my new web site. What you see today is only the beginning. I hope to turn the Resources page into a true resource for Anglo-Israeli writers. If you published a book in 2006 (or forthcoming in ‘07, ‘08) or if you are teaching creative writing somewhere in Israel, send me your web information and I will create links to your sites.

3. Jane Doe Buys a Challah and Other Stories

An anthology of 33 short stories by Anglo writers in Israel, published by Ang-Lit Press, had its coming out party at Beit HaTefutsot on December 29th. It was wonderful to see all the proud writers, smiling, wearing their “Author” name tags. Congratulations to Ruth Abraham, Sylvia Aichel, Shoshana Preiss, Judy Hammond, Barbara Abraham, Vera Freudmann, Jenni Tsafrir, Katherine Shabat, Nancy McClure Galli, Talia Shwartzberg, Francis Assa, Laurie Bisberg-Primes, and Leon Moss, all writers I have met over the years in writing retreats.

Please buy this anthology in your local bookstore. Congratulations, too, to the editors, Shelley Goldman and Elana Shap. Their next project is a collection of short stories (600-3000 words) set in Tel Aviv, to mark its 100th anniversary. Submissions from May 1, 2007, so start writing now.

4. Publication News

  • Judy Gray, Jerusalem, whose “Turning on the Jewish Lights in Europe” appeared in the winter 2006 issue of Women’s League Outlook Magazine of Conservative Judaism, has been asked to write another article for the same magazine.
  • Ruth Mason, Jerusalem, has a new, monthly column in In Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post week-end supplement, called “Life in the 50s.”
  • Linda Goldberg’s (Boston) story “Heads Up” was published in the Nov. 20th (29 Cheshvan) issue of Binah Magazine.
  • Sophie Judah, Hod Hasharon, who completed the Bar Ilan Creative Writing Program, will have her collection of stories, Dropped Into Darkness, published by Shocken/Random House in Spring, 2007.

5. Miscellaneous

  • New Writing Group: Michael Loftus of Mevasseret would like to start a writing group in Mevasseret or Jerusalem once a month, to workshop fiction and nonfiction. Phone or email Michael for details: Tel. 02-533-2306 ml.loftus@gmail.com
  • Techie Tip: Steve Kohn, a business writer from Ra’anana, who participated in my Dec. 24th writing retreat, uses a voice dictation system called Dragon Naturally Speaking. It records and types his words. As Steve says, this might be a valuable tool for other writers who suffer from illegible handwriting, poor typing kills, or arthritis in the hands. You can email Steve directly at stevkohn@netvision.net.il for details.
  • Evan Fallenberg: For a terrific article about Evan, my colleague with whom I lead three-day writing retreats, and whose first novel, Light Fell, will come out in January 2008, click the following link. http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2006/12/14/features/profile/fallenberg1215.txt

6. Interesting web sites

  • www.nextbook.org – the gateway to Jewish literature, culture and ideas
  • www.zeek.net – Zeek Magazine (online and print) is an independent Jewish journal of thought and culture, which features innovative wrietrs, artists, and critics
  • www.eve-tal.com – From Kibbutz Hazor, Eve writes for young people. She is an expert on writing about the Holocaust for children.
  • you are here: the journal of creative geography is calling for submissions until Jan. 20th for its Summer 2007 issue. You are here, an annual publication, focuses on Place, how Place is interpreted, experienced, and created. For submission guidelines, visit http://www.u.arizona.edu/~urhere

7. My Writing Life: Some Thoughts On Rejection

Being a writer enables me to continually deal with the issue of rejection. All writers, who try to publish their work, have to learn how to deal with rejection. I used to keep all my form rejection letters in a large notebook, until the notebook was full. How masochistic did I have to be? When I renamed the letters “clutter,” I was able to throw them out.

I was so used to rejection that, when I had a story accepted at Kenyon Review, I wasn’t sure I had understood the form letter. It came at a time when my rejection letters were becoming personal and encouraging. The KR acceptance letter was impersonal and dry.

I knew I was in trouble when I started preferring warm rejection letters to cold acceptance. The Kenyon Review acceptance helped me to keep writing, like any acceptance does, but when the issue with my story arrived at my Jerusalem home, no trumpets blew, no angles descended from heaven. I wasn’t invited to one talk show. Again, I learned that writing is its own reward.

Once, I received a two-page letter from an editor after she had kept my essay for nine months. It had gotten lost in some shuffle between Iowa and Florida and the editor was full of remorse and guilt, as well she should have been. Her letter, so warm, apologetic and complimentary, praised my essay. It took me a few days to realize that her letter was a rejection letter. I was angry and for five years rejected the rejecter. Today, I know this is not a helpful reaction to rejection, but then, when I was young, I believed in knee-jerk response.
Lately, I have avoided doing my own writing by pouring my energy into teaching. Teaching is the exact opposite of writing: You get instant feedback, usually from a crowd of appreciative, smiling folks.

Sometimes I think I must be mad to go on writing, when I could spend all my time teaching, but after a drought of 10-14 days, the image I confront in the mirror says Nu? And I know what I must do. I spruce up a piece for the umpteenth time and send it across the ocean to be read by some intern born in 1985.

When the rejection letter comes, I know I am supposed to send off the same piece immediately to another journal, but I usually can’t. First I have to curse the intern and the editor (if my piece got that far) who rejected me. That takes a week or so. Then I have to remind myself that I can write and have published, another two weeks. Then, if I’m not too busy teaching, weeding, planting, dancing, singing, polishing the silver, ironing, trekking, meditating, sleeping, reading, eating, scrubbing the windows, peeling Jerusalem artichokes, listening to friends, children, partner, writers, and cleaning each floor tile with a separate Scotch Brite until the whole floor shines, then, and only then, am I fortified to send out the writing again.

Hurray for writing that enables us all to learn how to deal with rejection!

Wishing you all a year of acceptance, joy, and good health,
Judy

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