You know what I find particularly ironic about the myth of originality? It’s a myth that refuses to reinvent itself. I don’t know what it is about the idea that artists should strive to do something that’s never been done before that persists in insinuating itself into our … [Read more...]

It’s been an interesting year for the world of words – an interesting few years. The role the media plays in shaping our collective and private thinking has never been more hotly debated, and the way we speak to and about each other is rumbling beneath all this, thrumming to the … [Read more...]

It took me a while to figure out what to write in this log today. Once again, the daily news is filled with sucker punches of devastating information. How, I thought, can I write about writing, given everything else that’s going on in the world? And then I remembered: I write … [Read more...]

I recently read Anne Tyler’s Vinegar Girl, a delightful if glossy reimagining of The Taming of the Shrew.  Watching Tyler reposition these sixteenth century characters into a 21st century story made me stop and think about many things, not least of which is the difficulty of … [Read more...]

  What, exactly, is writer’s block? When most of us talk about it, we don’t mean that we are literally negotiating a boulder between ourselves and our computer, or stuck under something heavy. I think we’re talking about being at a creative impasse, a terrible no man’s … [Read more...]

Every now and then, I come across a statement from a writer who claims that they only write non-fiction because they are most inspired by the truth. I always find this kind of statement baffling, because it frequently implies that we writers of fiction are primarily interested in … [Read more...]

This weekend, I had great plans. My husband took the kids camping so I could punch out at least 1,000 words a day (maybe more!) and get out ahead from my already ambitious project goals. But unfortunately, despite the fact that I’m confronted almost daily with the hard truth that … [Read more...]

  I don’t know about you, but I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately flitting from one news source to the next, trying to keep up with the what and why and how of our unusually volatile world. But instead of filling me up with context and insight, oftentimes this … [Read more...]

One of the reasons why many people hesitate to write is because they think they “don’t have anything to say.” They have an image of writers as experts, or spewing talent from their fingertips like so much fairy dust. Since most people encounter writing in its final form – as a … [Read more...]

During the first world war, my great-grandfather, Zvi Yehuda Kuselevich, was serving as rabbi of Siemiatycze, Poland, when a Russian general received orders to burn the town to the ground. The general’s soldiers were pouring benzine on all the houses when, by all accounts, my … [Read more...]