A possible student for my workshop?
Audience: Ladies ages 15 and up are welcome to participate.
Date:May 25th
Time:10 am – 1 pm
Location:Private home in L.A.
Cost:$25, $18 if you refer a friend and they also commit
To sign up: Please fill out the form below.
I’m very excited to be visiting one of the local day schools tomorrow. For a change, I won’t be doing a read-aloud of Raizy. Raizy may not even come up, due to the age of the kids involved. Instead I’ll be talking about “Storytelling,” to coincide with the current unit the students are studying in school.
Fishing for a few stories on this fine morning
Breaking down storytelling in forty-five minutes will be challenging, especially at the upper-elementary school level. After a little intro, I plan on making an extended metaphor connecting storytellers to fishermen. I’m hoping it will be both instructive and age-appropriate. I’ve spent quite a bit of time preparing and concocted a whole series of visuals, and the like.
The truth is, everyone is a storyteller. Continue reading
So, now that the kitchen is all ready for Passover, I’m on to the cooking. The funny thing I just noticed is that I’ve finished making all the desserts, and even the charoset (also sweet), but have not cooked one main dish, side dish, kugel, soup, or salad.
My Passover desserts tend to freeze easily. If I make them ahead and freeze them, they’ll taste just as good. They tend to have few ingredients, and — with the exception of meringues — take very little time to prepare. Also, my kids were home on Thursday and Friday, and they get more of a kick from making granita or fudge than baking a chicken or boiling meatballs — especially if I let them lick a spoon or two.
It’s like a warm-up for the main event. If I get into the cooking groove with a few relatively painless, simple, and fun desserts, then preparing more complicated, time-consuming, and savory dishes suddenly seems more appealing.
When you’re having trouble getting motivated to write, pick something fun and easy. A poem, a short essay, a journal entry, and email, the inside of your grandmother’s birthday card. Choose the project you want to do, rather than the thing that you have to do. If time is a concern, you can always set an alarm.
After you’ve got a few sweet little morsels under your belt, it’ll feel good to hit the main dish: that article or essay or web copy that is initially less appealing, but will bring in the paycheck.
-sigh-
So there I was, patting myself on the back for having a completely kosher for Passover kitchen a full 5 days before the holiday, when I sat down to dinner with the kids for their first dinner cooked in that kitchen.
I’m not so into convenience foods at any time of year, let alone at Pesach, but this year, I decided to get on box of kosher for Passover fish-stick-thingies and one bag of frozen fries. Add some broccoli, and there’s a great pre-Passover dinner, right?
Dinner went over okay. But after dinner… Continue reading
While completing any major project — whether it’s a writing project or Pesach cleaning — it’s very tempting to burn the midnight oil. Sometimes it’s not the threat of missing the deadline that keeps you going until the wee hours; it’s the simple excitement of the flow state.
Just say no. The writing you do late at night is probably not your best, anyway. It reminds me of being around drunks or people high on marijuana: they think they’re being witty and hilarious, when really they just sound like idiots. Lack of sleep will leave you stoned.
You might insist that it’s worth it: you’re a night owl or you’re being courted by the muse. Okay. Maybe if you are truly a night owl, you can handle this. But then you better wake up after ten a.m.
So, in the Klempner household, preparations for Pesach — Passover — are in full swing. We’re vacuuming and scrubbing the house, the car, and the van like crazy. I’m muttering things like, “Why do I let them eat in carpool?” and “How do you get cookie crumbs in sock drawers?” under my breath.
Photo by Pptudela and available through Wikipedia Commons
One of my favorite parts of Pesach cleaning is finding things you’ve lost: the missing token from a game you’ve been wanting to play on rainy days, spare change, receipts for purchases you’ve been meaning to return, missing socks.
I’m not suggesting you pull out the 409 and start scrubbing down your file cabinets (although, if a toddler has access to its drawers, it might be a good idea). I’m suggesting that you flip through some old stories — ones you discarded incomplete, or complete but not yet ready for prime time viewing — and revisit them.
Rebecca Klempner 