Erika Dreifus

It has been a long while since I’ve written one of these posts.

In truth, there are days when I don’t feel as though I can rightfully call myself a practicing writer any longer, days when I seem so far removed from the vitality that I remember characterizing previous eras of my writing practice. I’ve been increasingly weighed down by this sense recently, when so many friends and colleagues have been sharing their 2025 year-end accounts of bylines and accomplishments.

The fact is that with very few exceptions, most of my work this past year has been what might be more correctly called “writing-adjacent” (emphasis on the “adjacent”). Instead of writing new essays, stories, or poems, or book reviews of “my own,” I’ve been engaged in what might best be considered “related activities.” And yes, while those activities include a lot of writing—for assignments, feedback on student work, notes for speeches, copy for emails and websites and press releases and newsletters and blog posts/social media—they can sometimes seem very far from, well, WRITING.

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I summarized some of the past year’s work last week within the specific context of my Jewishly-related efforts, and I’ll take the liberty of cross-posting that content, with a few additions/variations.

• Among my chief personal accomplishments: building and teaching, per request, a brand-new undergraduate Jewish Studies course on Jewish Life Writing. This would have been daunting on its own: a cross-listing (as “Creative Nonfiction”) for the college’s Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions, plus my commitment to keeping the course cost-free insofar as books and materials are concerned (relying on library, open-access, and freely available online materials), made it even more of a challenge. If you’re interested in seeing some of the authors and titles that made their way into the final product, check my very latest list on my Bookshop storefront.
• Speaking of my Bookshop storefront: you’ll find there, on another list, two books published this year in which you can find my byline: Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible edited by Sara Lippmann and Seth Rogoff, for which I was asked to contribute an original short story; and Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage edited by Diane Gottlieb, for which I was invited to write a foreword.
• Other invitations that came my way in 2025 included: participation in a keynote conversation titled “Writing Jewish in a Changing World: Challenges and Opportunities Facing Jewish Authors Today,” for the virtual Jewish Authors Summit convened by 70 Faces Media in October. An appearance on The Jewish Lens podcast. And an online conversation with the Israel Association of Writers in English.
• Even as I didn’t produce a whole lot of new work this year, “old” pieces received renewed attention. I detailed this when, within a very short span, Jewish Fiction Journal spotlighted “Rio, 1940,” and Judith Magazine shared several poems from Birthright. Then, thanks to Google Scholar, I discovered a deeply meaningful analysis of another poem. And I did manage to continue supporting Sefaria and The Blue Card via royalties for their associated books. (Exception: Quiet Americans didn’t sell/earn enough this past quarter to make a payment to The Blue Card practicable, but I hope that by the end of Q1 2026, I’ll be able to resume those royalty-based contributions.)
• Throughout the year, I continued a number of ongoing Jewish-literary efforts and commitments, some very quietly and privately, others—including maintaining the My Machberet blog for another year—more outward-facing. Also among the latter: As part of a planning committee, I helped organize the inaugural Artists Against Antisemitism (AAA) Jewish Writers Mifgash, which was facilitated by a grant from UJA Federation-New York and held in Manhattan in September. Photos, and details, can be accessed on the AAA website. (And yes, there’s a related Bookshop list for this, too!)
• Finally, while joining in the celebration of the return of the living hostages, and the more tempered, anguished relief watching most of the dead liberated from Gaza to rest, I’ve remained committed—at least so long as Ran Gvili z”l is still captive—to updating both my “After October 7” and “Writers, Beware” documents. I realize that they’re imperfect, and incomplete. And yet, I feel as though they matter, and that they merit a mention. For their own sake, and maybe also because (sorry to get grim again), because so much of the abuse/harassment that, unfortunately, were also a part of my experience this year seems to be linked to exactly these activities.

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One development that I didn’t mention in last week’s post: 2025 was the year when I finally began monetizing the newsletter that I launched way back at the end of January 2004. (That’s right: 2004.)

As I explained when I announced the change last March, I decided to do this in part due to the encouragement from friends and colleagues who kept telling me that I was undervaluing myself/my efforts (many of them went further and assured me that there would be many among my thousands of free subscribers who would want to pay for this longstanding service). And in part, I needed something to help sustain my own motivation as the work of researching and curating material for the newsletter was becoming increasingly difficult and fraught for me, in no small degree because of the ongoing bias and professional malpractice that I have delineated in the aforementioned “Writers, Beware.”

But taking this step required additional work. I spent a lot of time consulting with support to ensure that I was making all the correct and necessary changes in the platform settings. I pondered and implemented benefits for those very generous subscribers who were opting in to paid subscriptions. Etc.

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If I were still in therapy, I’m sure that I would be spending a lot of time articulating the reasons why I feel as though my own writing practice feels so fragile right now, notwithstanding my attempts to take up efforts like this one to kick-start it.

A couple of days ago, while on a walk with a visiting BFF, I confessed that there are moments when the project I feel most compelled to try tackling is an essay that I would title “The Broken Writer” (iykyk). But whenever I start to focus on that topic, I find it too depressing to continue. (Commissions and deadlines do seem to work wonders for me, so if any editors reading this are interested….)

I do have other ideas. Same BFF—who knows a thing or two, professionally, about motivation and productivity—suggested that the more I talk about them, the more likely I will be to hold myself accountable for following through. But I’m just not prepared to say much about them in this space.

For the moment, then, I’ll return to the resource I featured in the latest newsletter and just do my best to forge on.

After all, the year is young.