Category: scribbles
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5 creative writing lessons I’m taking with me this year
Just one class left of the writing course I started this academic year. I submitted my final piece for workshopping a couple weeks ago; by the time it was my last go at being workshopped, I was able to articulate and act on some of the more important lessons I’ve learned about myself, my process…
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Oh, it’s on.
As I slowly rouse from the last four years of pregnant haze and breastfeeding exhaustion, the world becomes slightly clearer, a little brighter, and just a wee bit more attainable. I decided that I would spend this year investing in myself, dusting off the creative workshops, writing exercises, draft after draft after draft of whatever…
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Binders full of women.
The summer of hot wind: the year a US presidential election takes place. Keeps getting earlier, doesn’t it? Maybe we all need to keep binders of women. Maybe we need to keep binders of fresh air. Nature’s air. The air that hovers over those freshwater brooks they show on the natural bottled water. That air,…
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For one day only.
My fourth time at the Writing Gym and we did a collective character exercise again, this time with two characters. I didn’t include every detail (ran out of time) and it’s pretty rough but below is what I came up with from the following: Andrew, 55-year-old male currently in Sfat, confused about religious affiliation, single,…
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It’s not that I don’t like gum, you see.
The sun was as bright as the boy’s face while he watched his friend’s mother dig something out of the little box in her purse. She handed him a small something and smiled. “Mommy, look!” Mommy turned around and leaned close; her eyes went wide when she saw the familiar pink, hard circle in the…
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My first obit.
In 2001 I started as a reporter-intern for the Staten Island Advance. I had already been freelancing as a teenager, so I knew a bit here and there, but I had never taken a course in journalism. I wasn’t unique. On one of the first days, at our orientation meetings, we reporter-interns were told that…
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Version 1
Larutz. “Alright. Larutz.” “Shalosh… shtayim… echad…” The room collectively sucks in its breath… “Action!” [Footsteps sound outside the metal door. A man dressed as a mifaked bursts in, and then abruptly stops. He is listening to music that will be filled in by the director later. He starts to rock back and forth, in tune…
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Israeli (5) – 2005.
Israeli. And then, he was back. We met for drinks to catch up and somehow, amid the silence of catching up, we sensed where each of us had been in the past two years. “You didn’t think I was going to come b’aliyah, did you?” I said it with my best defense mechanism smirk. “Well……
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Tayelet (4) – 2003.
Tayelet. We’re sitting in the VW Gulf, at the tayelet near Ramat Rachel, me and Shachar. That’s it, he says. His eyes are drawn to me and my eyes are drawn to Jerusalem, dark and naked in front of us. It takes a lot for me to turn my head and look at him; my…
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Modi'in (3) – 2003.
Modi’in. We drove up to the post in Modi’in; it was 2 a.m. and I felt invisible. The road slept and the car’s purr was the only sound along with the crunching of dry leaves under boots. It was like a movie, when the headlights go dim and then dark, the double slam of car…
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Jerusalem (2) – 2003.
Jerusalem. Shachar took me to a part of older Jerusalem one night, after shutting his law books and telling me – “Elizabet – we’re going out.” It was cool air we stepped into from his father’s white VW Gulf and I welcomed the night breeze up my skirt. We held hands as we crossed the…
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Israel (1) – 2003.
Israel. There’s been a ringing in my ears since my arrival here; since I’ve takento people-watching on the Jerusalem buses; since I’ve developed blisters on mydusty feet; since I met Shachar and heard his voice speak the poetry of this place. He doesn’t know it and neither do these men and women, rocking back andforth…