Month: January 2016

Fan mail: the way to make an author’s heart go pitter-patter

beccakinla inyan magazine, review, writer, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I haven’t been posting much this month because I’ve been very, very busy. Thank G-d, in a good way. After failing to write any fiction for a couple months, I wrote three short stories – bang! bang! bang! – and a few teensy other projects besides.

I had the kids home with me on Friday because of the Mid-Winter Vacation many Jewish schools stick between semesters. I was a bit under the weather and had to shop AND cook for Shabbos because I’d been too tired after painting with the kids and taking them to a museum on Thursday to do the grocery shopping then, as I usually do.

The exhaustion! The squabbles! The noise! It was ugly.

And then I opened up Inyan magazine and saw this:

Fan mail for The Perfect Shabbos

Instantly, all was better.

The first week of 2016: goal setting and keeping on track

beccakinla advice, goals, Uncategorized, writing, writing exercise Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

As I mentioned in my last post, I saw quite a bit I didn’t like when I looked back on my writing accomplishments for 2015. A colleague “happened” to reach out to me right around then to ask if we could be writing buddies. Basically, we touch base once a week to confess how much writing we did or didn’t do during the week, as well as swap a bit of writing we did. We’re hoping this will keep us accountable and help us reach our goals. Today was the second Sunday my new partner and I swapped our accountability emails. So far, so good. Last week, I got a great critique out of it, as well as some insights about how I’ve been spending my time.

All of this means I had to pin down some goals. Continue reading →