A radio host read my essay on they as a singular pronoun, so I got to advocate for this usage on KGO ‘s Maureen Langan Show in San Francisco. I explained that in order to know for sure what pronouns someone uses, you need to ask. “That’s a lot of pressure on me,” Maureen objected. She wanted to know why she should go out of her way to use this pronoun in such a weird, awkward way, so I told her. It was a nice opportunity to evangelize a bit. Language is embedded deep in our brains, so even political progressives[…]
Read moreCategory: writing
Let your unconscious solve your writing problems
I’m a writing mentor for a teenage girl, so I’m always looking for ways to help her dive beneath the surface level of her writing and connect with her own creativity. Often this means retrieving various lessons I absorbed from my own mentors over the years. Here’s one that solves a lot of writing problems: go to sleep and let your unconscious do the work.
Read moreMore trumpery, and questions of “meaning”
I didn’t intend to do another “found” poem from a Trump speech, but the following passage, sent by my friend Sallie Reynolds, was irresistible. It’s one single sentence. You choose: read it first, or read the two poems below it first: by me and Winkie Ma, a high-school senior whom I mentor in a writing program. Found poetry was one of our assignments. I brought the passage to a mentoring session and each of us tackled it. Here goes, hold on to your rational mind:
Read moreMore poems found in unlikely places
Two more poems from nonpoetic sources. I put the source of the first one after the poem itself, because I’m curious how easily you can tell what it’s about. Please leave a comment letting me know.
Read more“Found” Trump poem
This month’s assignment for my Girls Write Now mentoring program was “found poetry.” There are several ways to “find” a poem, but our assignment was an “erasure poem,” where you take an existing text and black out lines and words. The poem is what’s left, rather like Michaelangelo and the block of marble. I was in a stream-of-consciousness sort of mood, so I downloaded a transcript of a Trump campaign speech, and to my surprise—since I’m in no way a poet—produced something that I rather like. (WordPress doesn’t let me reproduce the line breaks nicely, so I turned it into[…]
Read moreMy Girls Write Now mentee in Newsweek!
Every June, Girls Write Now, where I volunteer as a writing mentor for a teenager, publishes an anthology of specially polished pieces by that year’s group of girls. This year Newsweek ran a big story on the GWN program, featuring six selections from the anthology. And one was by my own mentee, Winkie Ma! I am beyond thrilled. Her piece came out of one of GWN’s monthly genre workshops: Dystopian Flash Fiction. I had vaguely heard of flash fiction but had never met it, so to speak. I haven’t written fiction since my 20s, so a fiction workshop is a[…]
Read moreA Jewish fable for adults
Kelev’s Journey: A Jewish Dog Wanders Home, by my client David Hammerstein, is about to be published, and I’m just thrilled. I knew Kelev when he was first coming into the world. David is a retired investment advisor who took up creative writing during a difficult time in his life. He found himself producing stories about Kelev, a black Lab who lives in Pittsburgh with an orthodox Jewish family. When Kelev learns about his Jewish heritage from his beagle buddy Schmalzie, he embarks on a spiritual journey as God’s mitzvah macher. Nosing through a thicket of thorny questions about Judaism[…]
Read moreWriting—and paying attention
This fall I became a volunteer mentor for Girls Write Now, an organization that pairs New York City public high school girls who have a passion for writing with professional women writers who pass on their craft. I find myself going back to basics, trying different writing styles and genres; it’s a little like being a baby writer again. My mentee and I began with exercises in the building blocks of writing: interviewing, note-taking, description. Last week, we did character description. We sat on a bench in a plaza outside a mall and picked out a man sitting a couple[…]
Read morePreserve net neutrality!
Without equal access to high internet speeds, blogs like this one would sink into total obscurity. So I’m lending this space today to the campaign to preserve the internet for everyone. Wait for the bar to load:
Read moreWhere does writing come from? (part 3)
In the early 1990s I had the wonderful fortune of spending time with Jean Klein, a teacher in the Hindu Advaita tradition. Klein grew up in Czechoslovakia and Vienna between the wars, studied medicine and music in Berlin, then when the Nazis came to power fled to France and Algeria. He left Europe in the early 1950s for India, where he met a teacher and experienced a complete awakening. He returned to Europe and began to teach himself. At the time I encountered him, I had little experience or intellectual knowledge of Advaita, Buddhism, or meditation, so my reaction was[…]
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