nina badzin

Writing ethics: Defining your voice by what you don’t write about as much as what you do

beccakinla advice, art, beauty, Jewish, truth, writer, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Okay, so last week I mentioned how much I admired Nina Badzin’s article for TC Jew Folk, “Things I Don’t Write about on the Internet.”  

I pretty much agreed with her on all points, although I will occasionally get political. (This is pretty much conditioning on my part: no meal shared with my family during the 1980s did not involve bashing of the Republican Party, so far as I can remember. But my memory might be faulty. Not that I’m a Democrat. Currently, my party membership is officially “decline to state.” You can do that in California.) 

Anyway, there was one thing not on Nina’s list I kept thinking about while reading it, and it has haunted me ever since:

I DON’T TELL OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES.

What are “other people’s stories?” Continue reading →

Stopgap measure: 4 (okay, it’s really 5) totally awesome literary links

beccakinla Israel, Jewish, Jewish writing, literature, magazines, optimism Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Sorry for the recent lack of posts. Camp was out, day school was still out, kids were home, and Mr. K. started his school year the second week of August. As you can imagine, I’ve been a little busy…the only significant writing I’ve done in the last several week has been a few episodes of my serial.

I’ve got kids home from school for one more day, but recently I’ve been seen some really interesting stuff out there on the web which I believe will be of interest to followers of this blog. So I’m posting those links in lieu of a truly original post by yours truly (although I’ve got an idea about what I want to post next).

Top 4 Cool Things I’ve Seen on the Internet Recently:

  1. If you haven’t seen it yet, this is the best analysis of Israel media coverage ever, with fascinating insider details.
  2. Hevria is the new project of Elad Nehorai from PopChassid. He’s brought together an amazing range of writers to solve problems in the Jewish community through positive action and creativity.
  3. The L.A. Times periodically publishes poetic op-eds. Here’s the latest bunch.
  4. And finally, the geektastic interview with Rabbi Goldfeder about how truly intelligent robots MIGHT actually count in a minyan. I’ve actually had an idea for a SF story for a while with robots, and Rabbi Goldfeder’s research will definitely come in handy.

Hopefully, I’ll be ready to publish the aforementioned post later this week. As a teaser, I’ll tell you that it is partly based on Nina Badzin’s essay from earlier this summer about the things she doesn’t write about. So I guess that’s link #5.

Have you read any of those articles? What did you think? Share your opinions in the comments.