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Occasional Notes from a Practicing Writer

by Erika Dreifus on
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If you subscribe to The Practicing Writer 2.0, you should have received the January 2025 issue a little more than two weeks ago. And so you may have caught my re-up, for the new year, of a favorite “featured resource”: Lisa Romeo’s “I Did It!” list.

As Romeo has explained (including in this blog post):

As writers, we are too quick to dismiss our small(er) accomplishments, the small steps or steady strides that carry us forward toward larger goals. Especially at this time of year, we may be tempted to focus on what we didn’t finish, didn’t get done, didn’t accomplish—and then shoot straight to a new MUST-DO list for the coming year, one that too often smacks of recrimination.

First, let’s pause to look back and take note of the ways we’ve already begun moving in the direction of our dreams. The list is a way of noticing ourselves as DO-ERS.

The emphasis on “small steps” and “steady strides” matters: As Romeo also notes: “The list is not (only) about what got published or where, what I earned, what job or gig I nailed. It’s wider, and deeper, or in some cases, shallower than that.” Her list’s more important purpose is “to pause and take note of all the small things, big things, and in-between things I could say I finished, learned, tried, succeeded at, explored, completed, was challenged by, overcame, and took part in over the year.”

I’ve been inclined to return to Lisa’s model this year. I’m not going to disclose my full list, but in this post I’ll share some of what’s on it. Ready?

In 2024, I

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Finds for Writers

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled
Description: closed trunk and text label announcing, "Finds for Writers."
Image of a wooden trunk, with text label that reads, “Finds for Writers” beside it

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.
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