A month or so ago, I published a post about how writers — and everyone else — could benefit from building empathy. I’d like to share another strategy about which I’ve gotten a positive feedback about. This exercise in particular will build you as a writer, and as a person.
For this exercise you can do one of two things: Continue reading
So, I was having one of those days when it’s not yet 10 a.m., and I was already having a pity party for myself. There was something I’d really wanted to get…and I didn’t get it. I was dragging myself down the street, and I realized that I was fixating on all the things that I wanted out of life. And the truth was that what I didn’t get…maybe I wanted it, but I didn’t really need it. I thought about the things that other people wanted and how often what they didn’t have was a need. Or something that I personally did have. And that I should basically stop feeling sorry for myself.
How I Emerged from the Fog
As I mentioned, as this mental inventory was taking place, I was walking down the street. Continue reading
The incomparable Zora Neale Hurston
Earlier this week, Google celebrated the 125th birthday of Zora Neale Hurston. Best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching G-d (which has one of the most suspenseful and gut-wrenching scenes I’ve ever read), Hurston was also an trained anthropologist. Much of her non-fiction work consists of the retold folktales she uncovered during interviews in the deep south during the Great Depression.
This got me thinking about the whole issue of writers with training in anthropology. While I never actually “practiced anthropology” professionally, I have a Master’s in Applied Anthropology and feel that the reading, classwork, and fieldwork I did during my training has had a deep and lasting influence on my writing (and teaching and pretty much everything else I do, by the way).
Hurston and I are in good company. Continue reading
I’m not usually the type to post an hour before Shabbos starts, but this news item (first heard this morning during the break between some Mozart and some Corelli on KUSC) is just too wonderful to wait.
In case you feel defensive because you still think high-quality literature belongs in schools, or you’re trying to encourage quality over quantity in your own writing (thus spending way more time on each piece than seems wise), a new study indicates that reading literary fiction (Jane Austen, Don DiLillo, Chekov, or Alice Munro) temporarily enhances a reader’s emotional intelligence.
For more, read the study’s abstract here and a New York Times piece about it here.
Rebecca Klempner 