My love of boring first pages in the great-books canon — The literary marketplace is awash in contests for best first pages, first chapters, and even best first lines of a novel. Naturally, oodles of advice is available to help authors make the most of these opportunities. On the whole, this advice boils down to urging writers to open their novels…

Exploring your inner ingredients — passion, persistence, imagination — Writers who toil away at their craft will often roll their eyes the minute someone says, “I’m pretty sure I could write a book if I really wanted to.” Yeah? You think so? I could drive an 18-wheeled semi-truck if I really wanted to. Or pilot a space shuttle. Or…

Once your manuscript is finished, the real work begins — A Logline, Synopsis, and Flap Copy meet up at a writers’ conference (or a bar, if you’re in that mood). The Logline utters two sentences, then shuts up. The Synopsis blabs on and on indiscreetly, and the Flap Copy gets everyone’s attention with some short, pithy observations. These guys each…

The creative act of capturing meanings between silences — The acclaimed writer Eudora Welty once noted that “Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.” Wow. There’s so much for a writer to unpack in this brief but profound observation. How many times have I rushed headlong…

Claiming an identity under duress — This declaration has raged inside me for over a year, but only now am I compelled to share it out loud. I’ll become a Jew only when they come for me. I was born a Jew, but do not consider this fact essential to my identity. All my ancestors are…

Remotely consuming death rituals raises thorny questions — bridging the unbridgeable The video was grainy, the lighting and sound imperfect, and the fixed angle of the high-mounted camera held viewers in place like a stiff neck. Still, this was all I could hope for: My uncle’s funeral service, live-streamed from a synagogue chapel 3,000 miles away from where I sat in…

Authors need clear reasons for framing a message As a book coach, one of the first questions I ask prospective and new clients is: Why do you want to write this book? Such a simple question that seems to answer itself. By the time you decide to write a book…

Looping swirls of past and present — Tears roll off my cheek, splattering the ancient paper and setting the blue ink free to wander across the page like a lost insect. I turn blurred eyes to Grandmother, worried the stain will upset her. But this isn’t my fault. It’s all Colonel Johnston’s fault. And Matilda’s. And the…

A prose poem of Italy — May the legion of Madonnas forever embedded in the high salmon walls and crumbling grotto recesses looking out over the azure Mediterranean coast spare a moment from tending the infant Son to shed a holy tear for the body prostrate on cool sheets, legs straight, arms spread, the unintentional cross…