We seek inspiration for living from morning to night, day in and day out, from one chapter of life to the next. A Jewish woman can seek inspiration from external sources but mostly she looks within; if she is wise she selects from the external what is appropriate and worthy to safeguard inside until the time she needs to draw from the treasure chest of her being.

The Lone Man image in this newsletter taken by Cole Thompson, one of America’s finest black and white photographers, captures how I feel about inspiration. The image reflects the essence of who I am striving to become as a person; I simply want to bask in G-d’s glory and be inspired by His light. I feel Esther Leah Avner’s words in this issue of The Writers’ Journal On-Line captures perfectly in words the inspiration I derive from this image.

The Writers’ Journey On-Line Issue Two is devoted to the topic of inspiration. Tell me if it did its job: Did it inspire you to write? To live a more inspired life? Did it inspire you to be more true to yourself, so others can appreciate what you have to say, write, and give to the world?

May the inspiration from your prayers and the sparkling Chanukah lights brighten your world and bring you and your family much bracha and hatzlachah.

I await your letters with anticipation.

With appreciation for your readership.

Leah Kotkes
Jerusalem, Israel
www.lifework.co.il

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Issue Two: Contents

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You are walking through an art gallery; a painting attracts your attention. The colors are exquisite, the scene enchanting. You draw closer to examine the brush work, the color blends, the texture, the essence of the image. The creation is an intricate design that you find simply beautiful and relaxing to look at. You take a step back, moving slowly away until suddenly a whole new vista comes into view and the painting takes on a whole different story. This is life; up close it offers one impression, from a distance — another.

In October 2008 I took some time out of my regular schedule to refresh my life. In France – first Paris and then Giverny, the home town of the artist Claude Monet, the father of the Impressionist Movement. I inhaled the artistic aroma of city and country life and what it had to offer me.

Alone at 7:40 a.m. I walked along the bank of the L’Epte River. The mist was rising on the water, a stunning sun heralding a new day of potential, was dawning.

L’Epte River
Giverny, France October 2008/Photograph by Leah Kotkes

In Claude Monet’s Water Lily Garden I stood before the scene that has inspired some of Monet’s finest and most popular paintings and I too was terrifically inspired. G-d’s natural world is indeed a glorious explosion of beauty and color, truly worthy to record on canvas and also in words.

The Water Lily Pond and Japanese Bridge at the home of Claude Monet
Giverny, France October 2008/Photograph by Leah Kotkes

I had the opportunity to travel overseas to replenish my inspiration reserves, but a person doesn’t have to go that far to be inspired by the world around us and the world within us.

Only last week I took a two-hour walk on Netanya’s beach, located one-and-half-hour bus ride from Jerusalem. After a reflective stroll I found a chair and sat and scribbled some thoughts in a notebook, and then watched the sun set over the ocean. Those few hours being alone with Hashem was just what I needed to return refreshed to my family and my work schedule.

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My Writer’s Journey

On Re-Finding Myself by Gila Arnold

When I was young, I loved getting new notebooks. There was something so exciting about contemplating a fresh book with empty sheets of paper just waiting to be filled.  And they could be filled with anything — that was the kicker.  A story, a poem, a song, a sketch – anything and everything that was there crouching in my young, fertile mind, just waiting to spring into the air, ended up in one of my notebooks. With the simple aid of a pen and paper, I pretended I was a famous novelist, a great songwriter, or a renowned artist. 

And then life caught up with me; I no longer could afford the luxury of whiling away fantasy hours at my desk or lying on a sofa with open notebook and twirling pen and dreamy eyes. Instead there was studying for tests, chatting with friends, dorming with roommates, dealing with shidduchim and finally, Baruch Hashem establishing my own family took precedence. Who had time for solitary reflection, much less putting pen to fresh paper, when there were meals to cook, laundry to fold, and bath time to oversee?

But every now and then, that old dream would spark. Maybe it was Purim time when a creative idea for a costume prompted a surprised compliment from my son’s playgroup Morah: “I didn’t know you were so artistic.”

Or, every now and then - at bedtime - when, giving into my children’s entreaties, I made up a story rather than simply reading one I’d suddenly remember, as I watched my children’s rapt faces, how much I used to enjoy inventing tales.

And then one autumn day two years ago, when I saw the flyer in a local store for a women’s writing workshop, I decided to give it a try. After all, the worst that could happen was that the other ladies would raise their ‘literary’ eyebrows and strongly encourage me not to give up my day job. Other than a shattered self-image and a couple hundred bucks, what did I have to lose?  

So I went – and something inside me reawakened. Once again, my senses remembered what it was to revel in the promise of a fresh sheet of paper only this time it was a blank computer screen. I recalled the joy of sitting in solitude, inventing characters and their life stories in my head and of losing myself for hours at a time in a world of my own creation. I recovered the inspiration of my childhood self - and haven’t looked back since.

Today I often find it hard to transition from one world to the next, from the internal world of my imagination to the external world of dirty dishes and bedtimes. But although I often emerge from the internal world trancelike, blinking from the light, as I hear my kids running in the front door from school now that I have reclaimed that once–-lost part of myself, I wouldn’t let go of it for the world.

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A Writer’s Life

Search for Inspiration by Ricky Katz

I’m passing up pearls in my quest for a diamond.

I’m hurrying my daughter’s crawl, eager for her first tentative step.

I’m shoving aside small accomplishments in the hopes of a great achievement.

I’m gliding past glistening streams in search of the powerful falls.

I’m pushing away lush grass in an effort to find a flower.

I’m impatiently wishing the sun away in anticipation of a glowing sunset.

I’m brushing away teardrops in pursuit of bliss.

I’m skimming past the main plot, curious for the grand finale.

In my inattentiveness, I’m tripping over incidents, over nature, over life, in a desperate search for inspiration.

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Our Lives: A Resource for Inspiration

Your Light by Esther Leah Avner

We experience all sorts of days. There are days when we sing “Whoopee, Baruch Hashem I got so much accomplished.” There are days when we are happy just to get through them. And then there are those days when we are tempted to sink into darkness and desolation. Then we remember that it was the light that Hashem called day.

I read in the Chidushei Harim that at the beginning of creation Hashem invested in every day a certain spiritual potential for each individual. It is this potential - this spiritual light- that He called - day. It is up to each of us to reveal that light in every day that He grants us.

Then today in Tehilim (36) I read “In Your Light we will see Light.” And I was filled with a great happiness. For I knew that no matter what transpires in our day, with the right attitude we can transform it into a day of His Light. Perhaps we shall be aided to even write about it.            

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Personal Insight 

Flash of Lightning by Rafaella Levine

Based on the teachings of the Rambam, as elucidated by Rabbi Akiva Tatz shlita

Lightning in the darkened forest. The boughs of the gnarled trees shine yellow for a prolonged moment before they are thrust back into the blackness. The overgrown path is again obscured; memory alone must suffice.

Right foot, left foot, right, left, treading carefully. The terrain is unpredictable: sharp stones jut out, unseen branches hang too low, and the earth has turned to mud, slick and sticky. The barriers are unforeseen in the dark.

But that memory of clarity's vision is the guide. The light glows from within, and the measured steps continue forward. Right, left, right, left.

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A Story is Born

Divine Breakthrough by Miriam Aker

It’s sharp in my mind, that afternoon I lit on ‘Divine Gifts’ an article exploring the gifts of writing by Leah Kotkes in Hamodia Magazine dated Dec. 6, 2002.

I gulped down the sentences, a thrill, like sparkling diamonds, exploding inside me. That’s what I want to do – write.

‘Through the divine gift of writing we can connect with our inner selves,’ wrote Leah.

‘Anything can trigger you,’ she quoted Sarah Shapiro.

Suddenly my husband’s transmitter - he is a Hatzalah volunteer - crackled, alerting him to an emergency.

I’ll write about life as an EMT’s wife, I thought excitedly.

And thus, my first article was born.

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News from Lifework: Endeavors for Jewish Women Writers  

• Note Tuesday 5th May 2009 in your diary for The Writer’s Journey Annual Seminar at The Reich Hotel in Jerusalem; a day of writing workshops for new, aspiring and experienced writers and women involved in the publishing world. This year the price for the day remains the same as 2008 at 240 shekels which includes a gratis copy of The Writers’ Journal 2009. Please kindly consider putting aside a few shekels a day to save for this event since this year scholarships are minimal. For schedule details and reservations contact Michelle at mborinstein@013.net

• This is the last call for submissions for The Writers’ Journal 2009. Send material in a word document to lifework@012.net.il by January 1st 2009. No submissions will be accepted after this date.

• If you would like to order or reserve a copy of The Writers’ Journal 2009 please do so at lifework@012.net.il. This year there is a facility for reservation before print. Please take advantage of this service so your order can be mailed the day after the release date on Tuesday 5th May 2009. Baruch Hashem, five hundred journal orders were dispatched within three months of the May 2008 release date and a further two hundred and fifty by the end of the summer; orders are being received weekly for the journal as I pen this news to you. This year I hope The Writers’ Journal we will reach a greater distribution than 1000 copies so that more women around the world will be reading it and sharing it with their family and friends. I thank every woman that is involved with this initiative to share the talent of Jewish women with the reader. 

• If you would like to be featured in The Writers’ Journal On-Line Issue Three; send a piece no longer than 100 words on a topic of your choice related to writing and life inspiration to lifework@012.net.il. The deadline for submissions for Issue Three is mid-February 2009.

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The Writers’ Journal On-Line Interview  

Miriam Aker talks to acclaimed author Sarah Shapiro.

“Mrs. Sarah Shapiro is a masterful surgeon of words,” Harav Zelig Pliskin, shlita lauds his gifted editor in his inspiring book My Father, My King.

Three years ago, wishing to upgrade my writing, I joined Sarah Shapiro’s writing workshop. I, and many others, are still amazed at the thoughtful, witty and insightful manner in which she guides the group in transforming their often mediocre articles into masterpieces, all the while instilling confidence in those who doubt their as yet untapped literary abilities and potential.

About Sarah’s own writings, there’s an honest, soul-stirring silkiness that caresses the heart of the reader.

The Writers’ Journal On-Line spoke to Sarah Shapiro about writing challenges and solutions.

It’s hard to imagine that acclaimed authors receive rejection letters for their first writings.

Sarah: As far as articles go, I felt terrible, because everything was rejected. I imagined (alas mistakenly) that if I could only get something published somewhere, then I would suddenly acquire self-respect and confidence.

The acceptance by Targum Press, of Growing With My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary, in 1990, was a milestone in my life, especially because it was not only my writing that they considered publishable, but my real life, my actual innermost self, that was exposed in this book. It made me feel accepted personally. It was only after the publication of that book, that an editor apparently looked in a new light on poems of mine, which I had submitted a few years earlier and suddenly published them. I was thrilled.

What inspired you to start writing?

Sarah:  My earliest association with the art of writing is from first grade. My teacher, Mrs. Sleight, used to write a different poem on the blackboard each morning, which we were supposed to copy and illustrate, however we wished. I loved doing this, and there was never any criticism or grading involved. She was a very strict teacher, but somehow conveyed great caring, and I can see now that I associated that sincere love with poetry and drawing.

It was my mother whose enthusiasm, encouragement and praise, from first-grade on, planted the idea in my mind that I would be a writer.

After your first article was published, did it encourage you to continue writing?

Sarah: Definitely. I think that’s the biggest advantage in being published, that it encourages a person to write more.

It can often take days of painstaking rewriting until I’m satisfied with the outcome of an article of mine. Does writing get easier with time and practice?

Sarah: No, at least not for me.

Do you find writing inspires your life?

Sarah: Definitely. It’s a vicious circle, but minus the vicious. Writing heightens my awareness of whatever it is I’m trying to put into words, and the words, in turn, heighten awareness. I’m much more sensitive to life, and more appreciative, when I’m in a writing period.

How would you advise writers who use pseudonyms out of fear of being revealed?

Sarah: I wouldn’t go so far as to encourage anyone to violate his or her sense of privacy, because that desire to conceal oneself can have deep roots, and there are all kind of good reasons to honor that instinct. It’s not a feeling that should simply be ignored.

All I would say is that for me, writing under my own name has strengthened me immeasurably.

 There’s something about writing about my real life, under my real name, that has built my courage, untied one mental knot after another, neutralized so-called “bad” experiences and in my own mind, turned the floss of daily existence into gold.

Rejection is a sore point in many a writer’s life. How can a writer learn to accept criticism and rejection in a productive manner, without feeling like a failure?

Sarah:

1. Continue writing. To get right back on the horse that’s thrown you.

2. To arrive at the understanding that people’s reactions are subjective. There’s absolutely no such thing as an objective measure when it comes to writing. What one reader hates another will love.

What suggestions do you have for tackling writer’s-block?

Sarah: What we think of as “writer’s block” is sometimes simply a natural, necessary silence. Twentieth-century artist Kathe Kollwitz said in regard to a long period during which she couldn’t paint: ‘The land has to lie fallow sometimes.’”

During a non-creative period, engage in other types of writing for the time being, that don’t require digging into the depths of one self – which is usually the kind of writing that goes underground and becomes inaccessible. Continue with your habitual writing ritual which (it is to be hoped) you have established. For example, if you have a particular desk or room for writing, go sit down there at the regular hours, even if you spend time reading instead of writing.

Is it only beginners who experience writer’s block?

Sarah: I wish.

Do you feel a story comes out better if one is writing about one’s own experience than another’s?

Sarah: Everything a writer writes is based on his own experience, even when he’s writing about someone else’s.

Writing fast has become many an editor’s demand. It increases the flow of reading material. And publications, especially ‘weeklies’, need loads of articles to fill their magazines. Do you think it a virtue?

Sarah: We have to acknowledge that ‘weeklies’ require fast writing. Nonetheless we must bear in mind that the world bombards us with half-true, insincere words – fast food for the mind. The soul cannot grow and thrive on that kind of synthetic diet. For a writer, thinking deeply is what’s called for, and the patience and persistence to rewrite, as many times as necessary. Words are important in this world. If they come from a real source in the person, then they’re alive.

How does one know if they’re cut out for writing?

Sarah: It has been my experience from teaching writing that people who harbor an irrepressible desire to write are usually in possession of a gift that can be developed.

Is the quality and quantity of writing material improving in the Orthodox market, compared to what it was years ago?

Sarah: Yes. When I was collecting for the first Our Lives Anthology, in 1990, it took a great deal of digging to come up with enough good stuff for one volume. Now for Volume IV, which is coming out this winter, be’H, I received an avalanche of submissions. It’s a lovely problem to have. I love reading people’s writing.

Do you feel there are specific genres not addressed enough in the Orthodox community?

Sarah: The issues that come to mind immediately in this category are mental illness, causes of divorce, and difficulties with emunah.

Do you feel that nowadays, Orthodox-Jewish readers are more open to reading the truth or would rather still have issues sugar-coated?

Sarah: It’s risky to generalize, but Orthodox magazines do err, I think, when they insist on happy endings. Life itself abounds with unhappy endings, and it’s dealing with what we lack that can refine and enlarge us, and enable us to understand other people. Personally speaking, I prefer literature that reflects this reality.

In your articles on “delicate subjects,” are you ever nervous about exposing bare facts and signing your name too?

Sarah: I find that when I believe in the rightness of discussing something, I don’t care so much if there are those who disagree. If a respected Rav were to criticize it, however, that would be quite different.

Now that you’re considered an acclaimed author, if you look back to your beginning stages, what encouraging words can you give to beginners and writers in general?

Sarah: Believe in the validity and value to others of your experiences, your way of perceiving things. Have the courage to share your unique version of the world.

Thank you Sarah for your writing insights and words of encouragement. May your upcoming anthology and all your future writings be a success and inspiration for all readers.

Sarah Shapiro is author of - Growing With My Children (Targum Press/CIS), Don’t You Know It’s a Perfect World  (Targum Press/Feldheim) A Gift Passed Along (Shaar Press/Artscroll) and I Wish I Were Here (Shaar Press/Artscroll). She is the editor of The Our Lives Anthology of Jewish writers (Targum Press), of which Volume III in the series, The Mother In Our Lives, was published in 2005, and the forthcoming Volume IV, Stories From Our Lives, is scheduled for publication in 2009.

She has been giving writing workshops since 1992 in Israel and America, and may be reached at sarahkit@netvision.net.il

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Writing Courses

Gila Green will be offering two ten-week writing workshops, one in memoir writing and the other in fiction writing at the Touro College Jerusalem facilities in Givat Shaul. Both courses will be offered in a workshop format that incorporates weekly writing exercises, as well as peer and teacher feedback.

Course Description

This introductory workshop uses writing exercises, and peer and instructor feedback to help you master the memoir writing basics. Together we will explore the fundamentals of memoir writing through recommended readings, and students’ own work with a view to creating a strong foundation for your memoir.

Course Description

Through in-class exercises and classmate and instructor feedback we will delve into the fundamentals of short fiction with a view to publishable work.  We will explore a variety of craft elements including:  character, plot, point of view, description, dialogue, setting, pacing, voice and theme.

Gila’s short fiction and non-fiction articles have been published in dozens of publications in the USA, Canada, Israel, Hong Kong, and Australia. Her short stories have been published in Fiction Magazine, The Saranac Review, The Dalhousie Review, Quality Women’s Fiction and other literary magazines and anthologies.  Three of her stories have been short-listed for awards:  The Walrus Literary Award (Judge:  Margaret Atwood, 2006 and 2007) and the Best New Writing Eric Hoffer Award (2008).  She can be contacted at:  greens@netvision.net.il or (02) 999-9717. For more information about Gila please see her blog:  http://gilatal.blogspot.com

Memoir Writing:  Mondays 9:30 – 11:30 am

Fiction Writing:  Wednesday 9:30-11:30 am

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Publishing News

The Totally Unrealistic Idea by Esther Heller

It started with the desire to create. Then characters and ideas kept showing up. I started to write them down. But unlike the short stories I had written, this story just kept on going. I did not plan to write a novel. It was a totally unrealistic idea. So I just kept making the story longer and longer. At some point I realized it would become a novel and I tried to not let that stop me. Now that the book is published I feel an inner calm; a sense of completion. I hope everyone who reads it will be inspired.