Learning How to Be a Kind Person Takes a Whole Lifetime. This thought – “Learning how to be a kind person takes a whole lifetime” – popped into my head, although I don’t know what triggered the thought. Yet the more I pondered it, the more I wanted to write about it. My first reflection was that my parents taught …
Recently an interviewer asked me how I thought the pandemic had changed me. I don’t remember how I answered, although afterwards I thought about this question both as applying to individuals and to writers. As individuals we probably have many different answers, perhaps ranging from becoming more aware of our actions (wearing masks) to what we can do by ourselves …
As writers we know that sometimes things in our writing can interrupt the “fictive dream” as John Gardner discusses in his classic book THE ART OF FICTION. For example, this can be an unfamiliar word rather than a familiar one, the deciphering of which pulls readers’ concentration from the story. For me, the most upsetting instances of interrupting the “fictive …
I learned from the Beverly Hills Courier on February 11, 2021, about National Kindness Week (February 15-21), of which I had not been previously aware. Yet I had already been contemplating my March guest post on the topic of the kindness of strangers, encouraged even more so by Bob Greene’s February 12, 2021, Wall Street Journal article “The Kindness of …
Talking about finding our balance in life in 2021 can be quite a daunting topic. So, no, I’m not going to talk about balancing the myriad important tasks such as protecting ourselves and others from COVID or working from home with multiple distractions or any of the other huge topics. I’m going to be talking about a very narrow topic …
As writers we want people to think of us when they have a project for which they want to hire a particular kind of writer or when they want to read a particular kind of book. And we want people to think of us in specific formats – fiction books, nonfiction books, screenplays, playwriting. Yet branding ourselves as a specific …
Some of you may know of my free nonfiction Holocaust theater project THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE to combat anti-Semitism and hate. The project has been developed to educate teens about the past (the Holocaust) and to encourage these teens to speak up for what is right today. Thus I was very excited when I came across an article on …
I don’t write on political topics – I’m not going to write here about why you should vote for the Presidential candidate for whom I’m voting. I am going to ask you to behave considerately towards people with different political views than your own. (This considerate behavior was not on display in the first Presidential debate this evening that I …
September Reflections on the Jewish New Year in the Time of COVID While many of you reading this guest post will not be celebrating the fall Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), I feel strongly that all of us can learn from these meaningful holidays during this very stressful time of COVID. For …
Writers Modeling Behavior On and Off the Page On July 17, 2020, The Wall Street Journal published humor columnist Jason Gay’s article “Please Wear a Mask So I Can Shut Up About Wearing Face Masks.” The subhead was: “I’m as tired of this discussion as anyone else. So let’s mask up and make progress.” Now why would I choose to …
Can Writers Authentically Write About Cultures Other Than Their Own Cultures? I do not intend this blog post as a political essay. Rather the post is a jumping-off point for a discussion about this especially relevant question now. On a Hollywood Reporter roundtable of screenwriters (available on YouTube), Kasi Lemmons – the African-American screenwriter of the 2019 film HARRIET about …
In the online world that most of us have been “living in” for the last several weeks — the updates on social media have become a main source of interaction. And yet many people do not realize the possible harm that can result from their fired-off tweets, Facebook comments, etc. First, there is the ease with which we share tweets …