Finds for Writers
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.”
- First things first: If you haven’t yet checked out the May issue of The Practicing Writer 2.0, please do so! (Part of this plea is selfish, because the clock is ticking for the two [quick! very quick!] polls that are embedded within. One poll is proving to be a lot more popular than the other; I’d really, really appreciate it if, as you continue to scroll through the issue, you pause for a moment at that second poll near the end, because I hope to use the results to inform my work on this very blog! THANK YOU.)
- “So why doesn’t internal thought work as well in Flash as it does in novels?” Tommy Dean asks and answers.
- “A few weeks ago, I had coffee with a writer here in town. Her first book is coming out next year and she wanted to talk about what to expect and how to prepare for it. What she could do to set herself up for success, but also which things were worth worrying about and which things could just be ignored. Honestly where do we start?” Start with the first of two planned newsletters in which Jami Attenberg addresses this very topic!
- “Is Chat GPT Coming for Creative Nonfiction?” Over on the Brevity blog, Lise Funderburg writes about an experiment she and her students conducted.
- And, as always, there’s more literary news (with a particularly Jewish inflection) over on the My Machberet blog.
Have a great weekend.
