Friday Finds for Writers

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Most Fridays the Practicing Writing blog shares writing and publishing resources, news, and reflections to peruse over the weekend. But it’s been an excruciating week for so many of us. And frankly, I’ve paid next-to-no attention to garden-variety news from the writing and publishing spheres.

On Wednesday, however, I received an email from Facing History and Ourselves, a Boston-based global nonprofit organization that I’ve admired for many years. The email introduced a “mini-lesson” titled “Processing Attacks in Israel and the Outbreak of War in the Region.”

The resource isn’t perfect. (What resource is?) But one of its segments impressed me as something that, though intended for educators and students, could be clarifying for writers as well, in our work and in the rest of our lives. It’s a section titled “Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”

Screenshot of text published beneath "Avoiding Antisemitic and Islamophobic Tropes in Discussing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict." Text taken from the website linked within the post.
  • Lots of food for thought in “When Authors Behave Badly on Twitter” (Rachel Charlene Lewis’s article was evidently published back in November, but I caught it this week via @JoyLanzendorfer)
  • Twitter can be pretty great for us writer types, too. To wit: I have enjoyed perusing the responses to this query from @RowanHLB: “Hello lovely writers & readers. I’m teaching a class on short story endings and I thought I’d do some extra reading to prepare. Do you have any stories that you think have particularly powerful/satisfying endings? (I have my own faves but it’s always good to stretch the brain.)”
  • Also teaching-related: Assay’s Nonfiction Syllabi Bank (which I also discovered via Twitter!).
  • At the end of her blog post “My Must-Have Digital Media Tools: 2020 Edition,” Jane Friedman offers a reminder about her free “Electric Speed” newsletter, which I’ve been subscribed to for a long time. (I’ll never be as digitally savvy as Jane is, but just reading her posts and newsletters builds my confidence.)
  • And of course, you’ll find a new batch of #JewishLit links over on the My Machberet blog.

Have a great weekend!