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The Writers’ Journal On-Line
For the Jewish Woman Reader and Writer
Issue One: September 2008
Letter from the Editor
Since May 2008 I have been receiving a flow of wonderfully positive and encouraging emails, letters, phone calls and stop-in-the-street compliments in response to this year’s Writers’ Journal and the accompanying promotional website at www.lifework.co.il All this very exciting activity and feedback – which has been received with much joy and appreciation – motivated me to issue an On-line Writers’ Journal to keep us in touch.
The Writers’ Journal is currently an annual publication that I self-publish in honor of The Writer’s Journey Seminar, a one-day instructional and inspirational event for aspiring and experienced writers that is held after Pesach each year in Jerusalem. The Writers’ Journal was created to offer readers the opportunity to enjoy the work of aspiring and popular writers who are enthusiastic about sharing their lives, creativity and vision through fiction, non fiction, memoir and prose. The Writer’s Journal is also for women like me who love to write. Each year I invite book and magazine editors, publishers, writing teachers and both new and experienced writers to share material to help a woman on her writer’s journey whether it be personal or for the reading public.
The Writers’ Journal On-Line will allow me to bring to you the spirit of the annual Writers’ Journal until enough funding is gathered to publish a print version of The Writers’ Journal on a more regular basis.
Enjoy this first issue; share with me constructive feedback and let me know your needs at lifework@012.net.il so that I, together with the writers I know who live across the globe, can bring to the reader what she needs and hopes for from a writer.
Wishing you a good year with much blessing and happiness. I await your letters with anticipation.
Leah Kotkes
Jerusalem, Israel
September 2008
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Contents of Issue One: September 2008
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Short Personal Essay: My Writer’s Journey
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Reflections on the Writing Process
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Memoir Writing Lesson
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Life as a Writer
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Book Publisher’s Advice
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The Writers’ Journal Author Interview
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Reviews & News
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Our Place: Services & Information for Jewish women
The Writers’ Journal On-Line welcomes submissions. Email text (in the body of your message and not as an attachment) to lifework@012.net.il
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Short Personal Essay
My Writer’s Journey by Leah Kotkes
Oceanous - Laguna Beach, CA: Cole Thompson Photography
May 2005 was the year I arranged the first Writer’s Journey Seminar, a one-day event designed for women seeking instruction and inspiration for their writer’s life. Four years later I have hosted three annual seminars, two summer writing sessions and one winter writing session and I’ve also welcomed writers to my writer’s club and to my home for private mentoring consultations.
It still amazes me what can materialize from one simple visionary idea and a lot of prayer. Never underestimate the power of your aspirations and the effect of your prayers. Listen to your bina yeseira - intuition – and invest time and effort in actualizing your hopes. There is only one me in the world and there is only one you; each person is a world of unique ideas and potential. Enjoy the discovery and the opportunity that awaits you.
I feel life is about traveling through the days of our life with purpose and joyous anticipation. One question we can ask ourselves each day is: Am I doing the best I can with the resources G-d gave me? Time and time again I meet women who are not aware of the innate resources and ideas that reside inside their being. A role model, a life coach, a counselor, a teacher, a wise friend and even a stranger who may serve as a messenger from G-d - all these people exist in the landscape of life ready to help you on your way if you choose to seek their expertise and listen to their advice.
Humility and a willingness to accept constructive feedback in the name of personal and professional growth, are worthy traits to nurture; life cannot be traversed with ego alone. There is much a person can achieve in a lifetime and seeking appropriate guidance, support and instruction to advance in the direction of your dreams is one way to achieve personal fulfillment and satisfaction.
Self-assurance originates from believing you are worth it and you are capable of acquiring what you need to make it happen in your life.
Although I dreamed about being a writer since I was eight years old I believed the odds were against me until I finally realized that I could make this happen if I believed in myself. I became a full-time published writer when I was thirty-eight years old, nearly seven years ago – as well as a features editor two years ago. I haven’t looked back since, but now while I pen these words to you I cannot fathom why I believed completely in other people’s opinions and advice - which was based on limited knowledge and understanding of myself when I should have believed first and foremost in myself and just done what I absolutely knew was right for me so many years ago. At reflective moments like this I have to remember to be kind to myself; I cannot rewind the clock but I can make the most of what I have now.
My message to you today is: Don’t wait for tomorrow to live the life you want to live. Start the process of preparation and change today, for today is the best day to start becoming who you truly want to be – and can be with care, enthusiasm and prayer.
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Reflections on the Writing Process
New Vistas by Mindy Aber Barad
When I first heard Leah Kotkes speak about the writing process, I thought, “Hmm…” Until then, my process had consisted of instant inspiration; I lived with pen and paper at hand waiting for Hashem to send me a gift of creativity because it was a miracle each time - I certainly never davened for it.
But over time Leah’s words began to sink in: “Randomly open a Sefer Tehillim, read the kapitel facing you on the page and see where the inspiration takes you with your writing – and your life.” After this balmy and enlightening exercise – which Leah does at the opening of her writing seminars - I started to take up Tehillim and read what G-d wanted to offer me that moment. This invariably afforded me a double result: I got inspired to write, and I also realized a number of story ideas after reading Dovid Hamelech’s writings. Tehillim became a springboard for my creative writing.
I then tried the same insightful process with the Parasha and discovered there was more to the seventy levels of understanding that Chazal teach us about. I’m not a genius, but Hashem’s words spoke to me every time in an exciting new way. Then I felt Hashem prompting me further: Read the Parasha a month in advance, submit something appropriate to a publication in a timely fashion. This I did, to the delight of certain editors.
My writing has developed in workshops with the loving critique of other writers. Teachers have taught me style, which I experiment with as I try to write like this and like that; imitating the styles of successful writers or following strict forms of poetry and more. All of this develops my ear, my voice – my senses for writing - more genuinely. And then new ideas come and I go with the flow and see where they take me as a source of story writing.
Portrait of Heat, was a poem I scribed while sitting outside on a scorching day. Now when I re-read the poem I find myself going outside to seek that same temperature to re-experience the writing process I had when I wrote the piece. I wouldn’t have been able to create such a piece sitting inside amidst cold air-conditioning.
Many writers have directed my writing efforts. On my writer’s journey I have learned to appreciate life unfolding around me, that my feelings and frustrations are legitimate and can be written down. Everything I go through, the good and the bad, teaches me something that enthuses my writer’s life. Some of the things I write I transform into poems, articles, stories. Others remain on paper to be developed much later - or not at all; not everything is fit to print, but sometimes, with hindsight my writing may be edited for a specific audience.
Several years ago I participated behind the scenes on a rewarding volunteer project that I didn’t feel would make a particularly good story. As I told my mother, “All the happened was…” surmising that although the project had been exciting to me it must have sounded mundane as I re-told the story. “I couldn’t see a story in the project; yet the news covered it.” I complained wishing I had grabbed the opportunity before someone else did.
“Why don’t you write what you just told me,” said my mother. “I think it’s very interesting,” she said. So did the editor of a Jewish newspaper abroad that bought the story that affirmed to me this: one never really knows where a story will come from and where it can go until we, the writer, create the potential for it ourselves.
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Memoir Writing Lesson
How to Start Writing About Memories &
The Opportunity to give Fresh Meaning to the Past
by Vera Schwarcz
Writing about the past is not always a memoir. It is a conscious effort to recall events from the past that are familiar and to give them new meaning. Like all good writing, this craft depends on: vivid details, unexpected turns of narrative and revision, revision, revision.
As Jewish women writers we come to this challenge well prepared. We are most often the guardians of family photos, family stories, old recipes and nagging questions about what remains untold. We know that there is a Torah commandment to remember. Parashat Haazinu even gives us concrete direction: “Go ask you father, interrogate your elders.”
Writing Assignments
Start with an old photograph. Find someone that you do not know well. Research her or his life as much as you can: dates of birth, children, home setting. Then try to give that person a voice. Your writing is, quite literally, a way to make the dead speak again. This is not ventriloquism; it is a writer’s challenge and opportunity.
Another approach is to interview a person in the photograph. It is toughest (and may be most important) to interview a person you did not like. This will force you to dig deeper into your language bag, to find new words, fresh expressions for the emotions of the person who you usually see only from your own point of view. Dislodge yourself. Move away from your own comfort zone, from habitual ways of seeing, describing the world. Trying to give voice to a person in your life who might have hurt you can be hard - and also healing. This is a technique used not only for therapy but for good writing.
Another assignment: Interview yourself in the 3rd person. Again step out from the flow of ready words, the often-repeated stories of your life. Imagine a keen, hound-dog interviewer who manages to dig into corners where there may lie dormant utterly new answers to how things turned out in your life, and why. Here, again, good memoir writing should occasion a genuine surprise for you, and your reader.
Stay away from the “public past.” Go ahead and research events around the people you are trying to weave into your narrative: wars, cemeteries, birth records, shul records—all useful.
Then comes the leap into the un-rehearsed events. With enough careful preparation, you will find that suddenly a door opens to the genuinely personal past: the one that you never knew about, the one that will be like a brand new mirror to you and your subject as well. This does not mean giving into the contemporary delight of unwholesome stories with wanton display of intimate matters where they should not be seen. There is tzniut – modesty - in memory writing. The challenge is to honor this middah, while searching for fresh and untold surprises. As in the rest of our lives, we are seeking a balance and we pray for insight to crave out a meaningful middle path.
Prepare your own mind for fresh discoveries. The most famous 20th century writer about memory, Marcel Proust (if you have time & patience dig into the first 70 pages of his Remembrance of Things Past, preferably in French so you can grasp why he called his masterwork A la Re-cherche du Temps Perdu—“Re-seeking the times that have been lost”) knew the value of struggling to get memories to reveal themselves. He sat for hours trying to recall his childhood. For a long time, nothing came. Then, the taste of one little, ordinary French cookie brought back a whole lost world, including the “weather” of the lives he sought to recall.
Even when we seem to fail in the memory search, the mind, and the language is being readied for discovery. Trust the process. It takes time. Patiently, prayerfully make yourself into a kli (a vessel) of language to come alive in you and through you. Poet Sam Hamill put it well when he wrote:
Thoughts rise from the heart
on
breezes, and language
finds its speaker.
Memory writing is precisely that: thoughts from the heart. How to capture those “breezes” in good, strong, vivid language is our daily challenge. Trust that what you have to say is important—that is the first step.
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Life as a Writer
Excerpt from
Inside Secrets to the Craft of Writing
by Shifrah Devorah Witt
Chapter One
Thoughts on Fear or Who am I to Write?
Most new writers, and often more seasoned ones as well, continually struggle with the same question. “Who am I to write?” Different people will use different language to express it, but essentially the question is the same: Who am I to want to do this? What makes me feel like I could ever be a writer? I’m not that good anyway. Writing is what people who got good grades in English do. I hated writing essays in school. What’s the point? I’ll never make any money at it anyway. I’ll never be as good as X, or Y, or Z.
Every student who comes to me with this question gets a variation of the same answer: “Kill the inner critic!” Not because it is a rote answer, but because it is always the right answer for such questions.
The inner critic is the nagging voice inside of you that tells you that you aren’t enough. I’m here to set the record straight. You are plenty, and if there is a desire inside of you to write, then go for it. The inner critic is not real. It is an unfortunate aspect of self that most of us pick up at some point in our lives because of an experience we probably wish had never happened.
I have come to understand that, more often than not, writers who struggle with these issues have often had some experience in childhood with a peer, an adult, or often a parent, that is still being re-enacted in the writer’s head to this very day, though probably in a subconscious manner.
The inner critic doesn’t have to continue to be a part of your life. Today is the day to change all of that.
Writing Exercises
Try This …
Start out by telling your inner critic that it’s time to go.
First …
Try to pinpoint an experience in your life where someone told you that
you couldn’t do something — an experience that until this day you
remember and carry with you.
Now …
Jot down everything you remember of the experience. What were you
wearing? How old were you? Who were the characters in the scene? What
was said? How did you react?
Finally …
Rewrite the scene the way you would have liked it to occur. Remember,
this is your story, and you can rewrite it and edit it to your heart’s
content. Rewrite this scene, and create it the way you would have
wanted to experience it then or want to experience it now.
Another option:
If the person who discouraged you was a parent, this is a wonderful opportunity to re-parent yourself.
Use the same steps as described above but choose an experience with one of your parents to re-write.
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Book Publisher’s Advice
Ten Tips for Improving Your Writing
by Esther Heller, Targum Press
1. State the theme of what you are writing in one sentence. Is it clear in your story or article? If not, look for ways to highlight it.
2. “Show” whenever possible. “Tell” only for a good reason, such as to change pace or impart information not important enough to have its own scene.
3. Make sure your adjectives add something to the sentence and are not redundant.
4. Eliminate clichés. These often turn up in similes or as idioms or expressions.
5. Show your work to a friend. Do they understand what it’s about? If they miss something important, see if you can clarify it better.
6. Go over your opening. Is it compelling? Does it give the reader a taste of what follows?
7. Stay away from generalities. Make your descriptions as specific as possible.
8. Have you checked if your facts and historical details are accurate?
9. Is your ending satisfying? Is it too trite? Does it go “full circle” i.e. relate back to the beginning? Or does it leave the reader with a new thought, direction or insight?
10. Take yourself seriously. You are a writer. Seek ways to develop your creativity and technique.
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How to get Published
by Aviva Rappaport,
Jerusalem Publications
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Write about what you know.
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Write about what you know best.
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Write about what you care about.
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Write about what you care passionately about.
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Write passionately about what you care about.
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Believe in yourself.
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Get it all down. Let it flow. You may never show that sentence to anyone, but if you don’t write it, you’ll keep yourself from writing the next sentence, which is the one you want to show.
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Let yourself sing your song. Everyone has a song to sing, but no one else can sing your song.
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When you’ve got it down on screen, email it to me at Jerusalem Publications. You may just have a book.
Aviva Rappaport
Jerusalem Publications
972-2-5022302
rapaport@netvision.net.il
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The Writers’ Journal On-Line Author Interview
The Writers’ Journal On-Line talks to
Miriam Millhauser Castle
This summer saw the release of Miriam Millhauser Castle’s third book – Walking Mom Home (Targum Press). As the jacket text tells us; this book is a daughter’s poignant account of the time she spent with her mother in the last year of her mother’s life.
The Writers’ Journal On-Line interviewed Mrs. Castle to give readers and writers a-like insight into the life of a writer who is deeply connected and dedicated to Jewish women and their needs through her work as a healer, educator, public speaker, conflict resolution specialist, lawyer – and published author.
Mazel Tov on this new book; may the words you have scribed be a comfort to your mother’s a”h’s soul. How did you manage emotionally during the process of writing this book which I understand was written some years after your mother’s petira?
My mother a”h and I actually conceived this book together when she was dying of esophageal cancer and I was taking care of her. Our experiences during that time were so profound, so enlivening and so heart-stretching that we wanted to share them with others who would one day walk the same road after us. As it turned out, my mother died before the book could be written. So the task of completing the project fell to me.
This made it much easier for me emotionally than it otherwise might have been. I very much felt my mother with me as I tried to convey both of our realities. Because we had originally intended the book to be written in two distinct voices and from two perspectives, I felt I needed to stand both in my mother’s shoes and my own in writing this book. That helped me to appreciate our two worlds even more and, I think, to understand them even better than I might have otherwise. And that, of course, was very emotionally gratifying.
At the same time, in reliving what happened I once again touched many of the emotions of that period - the sadness, the fear, the joy, the love and the loss. There were times I had to stop and cry. And other times, I wanted to stop - and just savor the memory of all the sweetness.
Can you share some thoughts about your writing process for this book in comparison to your other two books – Inner Torah and Practical Inner Torah, books that offer insight and options to the reader about the potential of a woman and her capacity in healing intervention?
All three books were written from a deep inner place. In Walking Mom Home, I told a story interspersed with teachings that came to us from our experiences. In my Inner Torah books, I share teachings about coming into wholeness and holiness, interspersed with stories from the lives of the many women I work with.
In one sense, Walking Mom Home can be described as Inner Torah in action. By weaving back and forth between outer events and the inner experience, I was able to show, rather than tell, how Inner Torah deepens and enriches all of life. And in that sense, there were a lot of similarities in the writing process. One difference was that in Walking Mom Home, I related a lot of factual details about what happened. The stories in my Inner Torah books are much shorter and more summary. That presented a different kind of challenge.
What inspired you to become a writer after an active and satisfying career as a lawyer and conflict resolution specialist? How does writing fulfill your needs as a Jewish woman?
Book writing really grew out of my healing work which - for me - was a natural next step after my career in law and conflict resolution.
I was drawn to law by my interest in truth and justice. Yet after years of practice and becoming a partner in a large law firm, I saw that the adversary system, with each side arguing its own position was not necessarily the surest path to truth.
My response was to introduce alternative means of dispute resolution so that disputants, with the help of a neutral third party, would be able to talk about the problem and develop a creative solution. I did this first at my law firm and then through my own company, Conflict Consulting. During that time, I wrote and published lots of articles exploring different aspects of conflict resolution, including the deeper implications of how we handle conflict in our lives.
Once I was out on my own, I started to get involved in a wide range of disputes including those within organizations. I developed a process that I called Conscious Conflict to help people become more aware of how the conflict lived inside of them - what they were bringing to the table that had nothing to do with the problem but that was making it harder to solve. In other words, I expanded the focus to include the disputant’s inner world as well as the outer problem.
In the meantime, I was developing my own spiritual life and practice that ultimately took me to Israel. I initially brought my conflict resolution work there but soon started to concentrate more on the inner world, both through my energy work and in my Torah studies.
The energy work was something that I had done on the side for many years, even when I was a lawyer. At the time, the world had not yet opened up a space for people to work in that realm. But by this time, there was more of an opening to talk about and work with energy. So slowly but surely that’s what I did. I opened an energy healing clinic for women. And while I used a lot of my conflict resolution skills in this work too, the emphasis now was on healing and growth.
After a number of years of doing healing work, I sensed that the individual efforts of the many women I was seeing were combining to bring an aspect of Torah into the world that had yet to be articulated. I set out to discover what it was, and, with Hashem’s help, to give it words. That’s what motivated me to start writing.
Writing itself then became an important part of my life. It helps me to reach deeper levels of understanding and integration. And it gives me a medium for sharing what I learn with others and providing an opening for people to talk about subjects that otherwise might not be as easily broached. It’s one way I try to contribute to Klal Yisrael and help create community among the many remarkable women who are doing so much to realize their G-d-given potential.
Memoir writing differs from self-help writing. What writing advice would you give a woman interested in both genres?
Both genres call for a voice of authenticity. Self-help writing is most powerful when the author is speaking from experience, when she knows from the inside what she is writing about and suggesting. There is an old expression about the need to “walk one’s talk.” The words of a writer who talks from the place she walks will reach readers in a way that nothing else can.
In memoir writing, this is perhaps more obvious since one is telling her own story. Yet here too, it is important to write close to the bone, to stay in integrity with oneself and be willing to speak from a place of truth, without embellishing to create an image.
Also, with both genres it is beneficial to write from a place of curiosity and discovery. The author needs to be genuinely interested in what she will learn in the process of writing. And she needs to allow herself to be changed by that process, to know things that she didn’t know when she started. That keeps the writing alive and dynamic. And it takes the reader along on a journey of exploration that she will sense in the reading.
And finally, both genres offer an opportunity for layered writing – words that will speak to the reader on different levels at different times. It’s a chance to write in a way that is enjoyable and interesting to a reader reading on a more superficial level and yet offers those who want to plumb the depths much more.
A significance difference may be in the need for clarity. Readers of self-help books want to be able to apply what they’re reading to their own lives. That asks the author to choose words with a level of accuracy that a memoir writer, who can get by with creating a more general impression, might not need.
Journal writing – documenting day-to-day events, insights and feelings has been the mainstay of people’s lives since pen and ink and paper was created. How have you seen journal writing help a woman manage life’s trials and tribulations and contribute to her success in achieving her aspirations physically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally?
There is something about the process of journal writing - for those who like to do it - that brings a woman to much greater awareness about herself and the events and circumstances of her life than seems to happen through thinking alone. There is something about getting the words on the page and following them to increasingly deeper levels of understanding that takes women to new places.
In my work, I’ve seen women use journal writing to come into relationship with parts of themselves that they’re just getting to know and sometimes to discover parts they didn’t even realize existed. It also helps them to track where they’ve been in their journey of discovery and learning. This sometimes helps to bring patterns to light. Other times it offers testimony to the growth and change that can sometimes seem imperceptible when it’s happening.
There is also the sheer comfort of having a place to communicate openly with herself. A woman’s journal can be her trusted friend – ready to hear her out whenever she needs. It can also be home to her explorations into creativity, to the wonder of words and the powerful feelings they can evoke.
Miriam, with anticipation The Writer’s Journal On-Line readers look forward to hearing about your future projects and publications and take this opportunity to wish you much hatzlachah in your important and holy work for the women of Klal Yisroel.
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News
The Writers’ Journal 2009, the annual publication for Jewish women writers released for sale at the annual Writer’s Journey Seminar after Pesach each year is accepting submissions in all genres. Deadline date December 1st 2008 for all submissions including pieces on the topic of writing; production for the journal will take place post-Purim. If you wish to be in this year’s journal, please send your submissions in as soon as possible. The articles on the topic of writing should be inspiring, practical and insightful, and can cover associated expertise i.e., editing, publishing, public relations and marketing. Material of all genres should be no longer than 2400 words (3 pages/A4). Send material in a word document attachment. Put your name, home phone number and email on the top page and page number the material. If you wish to print under a pseudonym please include this detail in the heading. There is no payment for published submissions. Writers can include promotional details and their contact information.
The Writers’ Journal is a collective non-profit initiative which is marketed on behalf of Jewish women writers on-line at www.lifework.co.il, in the hamisher press and local Jerusalem publications. The Writers’ Journal is sold in selected Jerusalem bookshops and in English-speaking neighborhoods via home sales by hamisher women.
The Annual Writers’ Journey Seminar, a one-day event of writing workshops held in Jerusalem - for new and experienced writers and editors and women who love to write - will take place with, Hashem’s help, on Tuesday 5th May 2009 at The Reich Hotel in Jerusalem. The day’s schedule and reservation details will be posted in early January 2009.
The Second Annual 2009 Writer’s Journey Writing Contest this year will be for best story in the genres of fiction, non-fiction and memoir. Submission length: 2500 word maximum. Deadline date: December 1st 2008. Send material in a word attachment to lifework@012.net.il. Please put name and email of writer on first page. Text should be double spaced and spell checked. Material over 2500 words will not be read. 1st prize: $250 2nd prize: $175 3rd Prize $100. Every effort will be made to have the winning stories placed in a publication of the writer’s choice.
The Writers’ Journal On-Line provides mentoring sessions, on-line writing courses and a referral service to writing teachers as well as a reputable selection of experienced writers and editors to suit specific needs and requirements. Contact: lifework@012.net
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Our Place: Services & Information for Jewish women
Our Place On-Line
Services & Information for Jewish Women
A new initiative was introduced in the print version of The Writers’ Journal 2008; a section called Our Place, which featured adverts and notices of services and information that may be helpful to a Jewish woman. The categories for advertising were Lifestyle, Editorial Services and Self-Care. This section is open for bookings in The Writers’ Journal 2009; contact lifework@012.net.il for details and to view Our Place 2008 on PDF. The advertising revenue from Our Place is transferred to the production fund for the journal, a non-profit initiative to promote the talent and expertise of Jewish women writers the world over.
Our Place is now available in The Writers’ Journal On-line for a donation fee towards the 2009 print version production fund. Please contact lifework@012.net.il to place your advert and receive mailing information for a donation of your choice.
Our Place On-Line
Services & Information for Jewish Women
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Thank you for reading The Writers’ Journal On-Line; please kindly forward it to someone who appreciates reading or has an interest in writing.