My words--and my heart--feel frozen

My words--and my heart--feel frozen.

They froze this past month as I watched multiple videos of Americans shooting Americans on American soil. Not just shooting but murdering, execution-style, as if I was watching a scene from some Hollywood movie about the mob or the invasion of an alien army. Only it wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t an alien army.

My stomach tightened in horror at the sound of gunshots and the sight of weapons raised and fired by Americans on innocent Americans, and my stomach is still clenched, still mourning Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, two Americans who stepped forward to observe and protect immigrants, those among us who are the least safe and the least protected.

This morning, feeling the weight of grief, I didn’t want to write anything. Not a word. What could I say that would change anything? How could I write anything about the writing process when the act of writing itself seemed so futile, such a small act, compared to people being gunned down on the street for simply raising their voices or for offering help to those beside them who might have fallen down?

I pulled up a chair, anyway. I needed some way of overcoming the weight of this sadness and grief, this despair that has come with the murders and with the failure of anyone in this administration to hold the murderers accountable.

The journal page in front of me was blank. I stared at it, not thinking I had any words to offer. Not thinking I had anything to say. But I realized this: if I didn’t keep writing, one more voice would be silenced. Not by a bullet but by my own fear. By my own cowardice. By my own inability to stand up to forces that want to silence anyone who dares take a stand against this administration’s endless stream of propaganda.

And so I lifted my pen and started writing, and with each word I began to understand how important it is to keep writing through the sadness and despair, through the doubts and the fears, to keep writing in order to keep alive the dream of America, the America that I believe in, the America that Good and Pretti gave their lives to preserve, an America that offers freedom to all.

I can still feel my stomach clench in horror at the public executions of people who had the courage and compassion to join so many others and stand up for human rights and for democracy—for an America they believed in and which so many of us believe in, even as the boots of those carrying out the orders -- sent from the desk in the White House occupied by a man who imagines himself king -- try to stamp out the American dream, as if the dream itself is nothing more than a figment of our imagination, a fantasy, a tiny candle flame, rather than an unquenchable idea that over the centuries has forged a nation of immigrants into a beacon of light for the rest of the world.

The America that I know and believe in is a country that welcomes refugees regardless of skin color, religious belief, or country of origin. It welcomes those who need a home and provides a sanctuary to build a life, gain an education, raise a family, create the space to make art, build a business, or do the research that might lead to a new scientific discovery. It’s an America where we can join hands and together fulfill our hopes and dreams, our longing for liberty, our desire for freedom from oppression, our belief in love not hate, our trust in democracy not totalitarianism.

Maybe all I’m trying to say is thank you to all the demonstrators in Minnesota and elsewhere who have stood in frigid temperatures for days to remind us of where we live and what our country stands for. Maybe all I’m trying to say is thank you to Renee Good and Alex Pretti for your willingness to take a stand, for showing us how and why we all need to take a stand.

We owe so much to everyone taking a stand, for insisting that words matter, for demanding that all lives matters, for letting us know that stories and poems and songs matter.

The sound of your voices in the streets of Minneapolis and other American cities inspires us to keep looking for the good in people, to keep believing in the future, to keep writing to unfreeze our hearts and our words.

The power of a determined voice

When Sarah Aronson was a nine-year-old girl growing up in Pennsylvania, she writes in the Author's Note to her new book, Abzuglutely: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug (Calkins Creek, 2025), she learned about a woman named Bella with a strong New York accent and a powerful voice that let people know what she believed. 

Years later Aronson decided to write a picture book about her childhood heroine. 

Bella grew up as a young Jewish girl in the Bronx, the daughter of immigrants, Aronson tells us, and she was "never a sugar-and-spice gal." 

From her parents Bella learned about Tikkun olam--a Jewish value that means repairing the world and eliminating injustice and inequality. Determined to make a difference in the world, to make the world a better place, she devoted her life to bringing justice into the world for everyone, not just for Jews. 

With her big hats and loud voice, Bella could be seen as a strident example of how a woman should not behave. But for many Bella was leading the way to help make the world a better place, just as she'd hoped to do as a child. 

Bella's voice made a difference in the world, Aronson tells us. Bella became a lawyer. She raised money for causes and organizations that she believed deserved support. She led protests and fought for the rights of women and equal rights and education for everyone. She organized large rallies against the Vietnam War.

She stood up to one of the most despicable senators in American history--Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. She believed in protecting the environment. She believed in racial equality. She believed in social justice. 

As Aronson writes, "Bella was a trailblazer." She became the second Jewish woman to serve in Congress, and her victory was proof, as Aronson explains, that the voices of young girls and women matter in the world. 

If you speak like Bella with courage and passion for what matters to you, Aronson suggests, you can make a difference in people's lives.

In the end, Bella's story is a story about the courage to stand out and be yourself, to use your voice to call out injustice, to believe in yourself as a woman who has the power to change things and not submit to society's expectations of women as weak or subservient. It's a story about speaking your truth to the world.

But Bella's story is also a story about love--not just about Bella's love of justice and fairness for all but of Aronson's love for Bella, a woman who showed the author when she was a young Jewish girl growing up in Pennsylvania that she could be a girl with a strong voice who didn't have to be someone she wasn't, and that she could grow up to become a woman with a strong voice of her own... speaking and writing her own truth. 

Bravo, Bella, and bravo, Sarah Aronson, for inspiring young people--both girls and boys--to be themselves, to make the world a fair place for all, and to not shy away from speaking and writing the truth.

For more information about Abzuglutely, take a look at these reviews:

School Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

The Horn Book

And for more information about Sarah Aronson, visit her website: 

https://saraharonson.com/

They say if you want to write

They say if you want to write

you need to write about

what hurts the most,

so you ask yourself

what's causing you the most pain,

and then you wait

to see what your heart reveals.

But what if they're wrong

and you don't need to write

about what hurts the most?

What if you need to write about

what you love most? About life?

About what you're most grateful for?

What if you need to write about

what you notice in the world

around you--the beauty

of a cardinal's red feathers

flashing in the morning light,

the sound of the wind riffling

the leaves on a spring day,

the pleasure you feel when

you stretch and open your eyes 

to wake up each morning?

What if you feel pain on some days,

love and gratitude on others, and 

you let your pen take you

wherever you need to go each day,

creating a path as you go?

What if you give your heart a chance

to reveal what it feels,

give yourself a chance to hear

what you need to hear and

write what you need 

to write?

It's like dreaming

Each morning I listen to the silence

and hope to hear a voice and words

I've never heard before.

I listen with my ears

but, really, it's a different

kind of listening

that requires you to open

your heart, to hear

what you're afraid to say

or what you don't yet know

you need to say.

It's your voice and not your voice,

it's your hand holding the pen

and writing down the words

on the page and not your hand.

You hear something, a voice

beyond words. (Are there even 

words to describe it?)

It's like being bathed in light

or immersed in water

and you feel like you're floating

on the page as words 

emerge from your pen

and you see the letters

taking shape and the words

forming on the page

even before the words form

in your mind--as if

you are witnessing your thoughts

coming into being,

what you think and feel

unknown until you can

see the words floating 

in front of you.

It's like dreaming,

and when you open

your eyes the dream vanishes,

and you see instead

a page filled with the words 

you collected from a world

before it disappeared.

The Magic of Writing with a Fountain Pen

“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course.” — Graham Greene

It may seem foolish, even a bit self-indulgent, to write about fountain pens when so many pressing issues threaten our world. 

But a fountain pen has not only helped me put aside my worries about the world for the brief time that I take each morning to write with one, it has also rekindled my pleasure in the process of writing by hand. 

The immediacy of writing with a fountain pen surprised me the moment the nib first touched the page and the ink seeped out of the pen, seeming to bleed onto the paper.

It felt like the pen was alive, a newly discovered part of my hand connecting me in some mysterious and supernatural way to my heart, and as I wrote, my hand moving across the page, it felt like the ink was coming straight from my veins.

Until a few months ago, I hadn’t used a fountain pen since high school. 

Remember how messy those fountain pens were to use back then? Often, I’d end up with more ink on my hands than on the page.

I’d write and the pen would leak and the ink would leave stains on my fingers and smudges on the pages and messy ink spots on my palms. 

For years afterward I preferred writing with ballpoint pens. I would buy cheap pens that I could throw away easily after they ran out of ink or dried up or broke in my backpack. Best of all, they didn’t drain my wallet of the little cash that was in it. 

But a few months ago my cousin wrote wanting to know if I’d ever thought about using a fountain pen. He had found one that he liked, a Pilot Metropolitan, which was supposed to be a good introductory pen at a reasonable price (under $15 at Amazon), and the thought of writing with a fountain pen intrigued me. 

I decided that I’d try one, just to find out if fountain pens were the same as I remembered or if they’d changed much since my high school days, and, after quickly searching Google, I discovered just how many fountain pens there are to choose from these days. 

There are pens made in Japan, pens made in Germany, and pens made in the United States and elsewhere. There are pens with cartridges and pens with converters, and there are so many choices for ink, more colors than in a rainbow, it seems. There are so many colors and pens, in fact, that it’s hard to keep track of them all. 

So, I started reading reviews, and I found a pen in my price range ($10) made by Pilot called Kakuno (which means “to write” in Japanese), and I ordered one, along with some extra cartridges.

After it arrived, I opened the packaging—surprised to find that the instructions were printed in Japanese—and, after figuring out how to insert the cartridge, I started writing. And … wow! 

It’s a pen, but it’s so much more than a pen!

I mean, looking at it, you’d think it’s just another writing instrument. The Kakuno shell is made of plastic, but it’s a perfect size that fits nicely in the palm of my hand, and holding it takes very little effort because it’s so light that when it’s in my hand and I'm writing, I hardly feel it unless I grip it too tightly. 

The moment I begin to write, it’s like magic: the ink flows onto the page, the blank page reaches up to embrace the pen, my hand moves effortlessly across the paper. It’s a moment of becoming, a moment of (please, excuse my enthusiasm) unexpected oneness with the universe, a zen-like immersion in the present.

It can take a while to feel comfortable using a fountain pen. But after experimenting a little with different angles and using it in different journals, I can say that writing with a fountain pen feels as natural (and effortless) as breathing. 

Why not add a little variety to your writing practice and try a fountain pen? It doesn’t have to be an expensive one. (You can find the Kakuno online for as little as $10 if you don’t mind  the color….and a plastic shell.) 

You might be surprised at how your writing—and your feelings about your writing—will change when you begin using one.

If you’re still undecided about whether to use a fountain pen, or just curious and want to read more about them and the people who find them attractive, here are a few links that you might enjoy: 

https://www.penheaven.co.uk/blog/top-5-reasons-to-use-fountain-pen/

https://blog.gouletpens.com/2018/09/6-writers-on-why-they-use-fountain-pens

https://luxipens.com/18-famous-authors-and-their-fountain-pens/

https://www.countrylife.co.uk/luxury/style/unparalleled-joy-writing-fountain-pen-five-beautiful-examples-175439

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-joy-of-fountain-pens

https://medium.com/@lancelotkirby/on-the-pleasures-of-writing-with-a-fountain-pen-3d95e8495550

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/style/fountain-pens.html

The Ten Truths of Writing

The first truth of writing:
You don't know anything.

The second truth of writing:
You know more than you think.

The third truth of writing:
Your fear of not knowing is an illusion.

The fourth truth of writing:
Unless you learn to push through the illusion,
you'll never write anything.

The fifth truth of writing:
Everything you need to know is already inside you.

The sixth truth of writing:
Touch your pen to the page and begin.

The seventh truth of writing:
Write until there is no more ink left in your heart.

The eighth truth of writing:
Let the well refill itself.

The ninth truth of writing:
Begin again.

The tenth truth of writing:
And again.

Connecting

As long as your pen or pencil is moving across the page, your fingers typing at the keyboard, your words flowing onto the screen or onto a piece of paper, you are connecting with a part of yourself that is hidden until the moment you tease it out with words.

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing poetry or prose, it’s the act of writing that matters, the challenge of opening your heart to the world so you (and others, if you decide to share what you’ve written) can know what’s there and can make a connection.

Call what’s in your heart the treasure beneath the sea or the pearls hidden within a shell that only you can find if you have the patience to dive deeply enough and pry the shell open with a stroke of your pen, a tap of the next key.

Whether you’re writing every day in a journal, starting a new project, or returning to a work-in-progress, you come to the page each day, if you’re like me, in the hope of connecting with the deepest part of your self, each word offering a chance to discover something new about yourself or your life that will help you understand how to live fully in each moment.

If you’re writing, you are connecting with the air you breathe, the sound of leaves rustling overhead, the taste of a peach on a warm summer day.

You are connecting with memories and with the people around you, with the feel of sea spray on your skin, with rain falling against your eyelids, with snowflakes tickling your lips and nose.

You are connecting with those you love who are no longer alive and with the person you once were and the person you are becoming.

No matter what you are writing, you’re connecting with each moment of life and with yourself as you experience life in all its mystery and beauty.

What’s so strange and wonderful about writing is the way the process reveals thoughts and emotions that you don’t always know you have until you see the thoughts and emotions expressed in the words that you write and which appear on the page in front of you like gifts from the sea.

Whatever you’re writing this morning or tomorrow or later this week, I hope you’ll persist and keep writing so you can find whatever you’re looking for.

I hope that you’ll make the connection with the deepest part of your heart so that you keep coming back to the page and learn more.

I hope you’ll keep writing and searching and exploring, and, after you’ve spent time writing, I hope you’ll look down at whatever you’ve written and discover what is most important to you.

Mostly, I hope you’ll take that first step… even if it feels like you're stepping into thin air... and find the treasure waiting for you.  

x

Swimming Past Doubts

It's so easy to become disheartened in this business.

Even if you're amazingly talented and prolific and have won national awards, and even if you've got an agent pitching new projects, you can still feel like an impostor on some days because you haven't published anything lately.

If you or your agent haven't sold your manuscripts after a year or more, you can start to feel as if you've entered publishing limbo. Then it's only a matter of time before you start doubting yourself and wondering if you can make a living from writing. And before long you start asking yourself if you should keep writing.

These are feelings and questions that every writer (with or without an agent) has to grapple with at times. The feelings aren’t easy to face because facing them means facing the prospect of failure and disappointment, and, even worse, acknowledging there’s the possibility that you may not be able to spend your life doing what you love to do.

But what if you understand the writing process as an activity that's separate from the publishing process? (I'm not suggesting that you stop expecting to publish or earn a living from your work. But I am suggesting that you may have to put aside those expectations in order to keep your writing process alive.)

What if, ironically, the way to avoid becoming disheartened in this business is to look into your heart?

That's because when you view the writing process as a distinctly different enterprise from the publishing process, you become aware that at the heart of the writing process (and a writer's life) is one simple fact: you must possess an insatiable need to write. Not for publication (though publication is always exciting). Not for readers (though readers, too, are helpful). Not for any reason other than needing to put words on the page, to tell yourself the stories that you need to hear.

A writer who needs to write will always find a way to keep writing, despite economic or emotional setbacks, because the need comes from some deep part of the writer’s soul which makes it impossible not to write.

For a writer, writing is as essential to life as breathing, and life's meaning (and pleasure) are derived from the daily act of exploring the world through words and language, and from discovering something about the world and one’s self as a result of a daily writing practice.

Deep and true writing isn’t about pursuing trends or markets. It's not about trying to figure out what sells or what’s “hot” or what agents or editors want. It’s about ignoring these things.

To write deep and true, you must go into your heart to discover what you need to write. That’s the key to writing through the storms of uncertainty and doubt, and to overcoming the vicissitudes of this business.

You must learn how to unlock your heart.

For more on writing from your heart, visit:
http://tahlianewland.com/2011/04/18/tips-on-writing-from-the-heart/
http://www.aliventures.com/voice-and-heart/
http://www.smalladdictions.com/Skateboard/articles/NFW-015.htm
http://forewisdom.com/creative-writing/top-10-tips-to-complete-a-creative-writing-proj.html
http://www.writefromtheheart.us/