Annette Gendler's Blog, page 10

The Story Behind the Story: How to Finally Get an Essay Published

Parc Montsouris, Paris, September 2017

I have a new essay published in Bella Grace Issue 19, which hits newsstands today! I can’t even begin to tell you how thrilled I am that this essay “A Day on a Bench in Paris” finally got published.

For years I have been trying to find a home for this essay.

Literally, years! Its first draft dates back to 2005. I kept submitting it to literary magazines; I kept revising it. In fact, come to think of it, this essay is one example of work I never succeeded...

The Little Black Notebook and the Daily Bucket List Fix to Time Management

It seems to me that a good part of life is spent trying to figure out how to best manage yourself.

At least that’s the case for me. Every New Year, publications are full of advice on “how to slow down,” or “how to have a stress-free year.” My sister had a copy of the German Flow laying about when I was visiting. In an article titled “Mein Leben Verlangsamen” (“Slowing Down my Life”) Anne Otto mentioned a Hurry Slowly podcast episode in which Julie Zhou, VP of Product Design at Facebook, talk...

Annette and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

I was driving to my cousin’s house for dinner last week when two warning lights came on in the car. Then the instrument panel went dead. When I put on the indicator to make a turn, the clicking sound was gone. Was it working?

Still, I drove on along the icy, snowy roads of Lansing, Michigan. We made it to my cousin’s house. When we parked, my daughter checked while I flipped the indicator. Yes, it was blinking! At least I hadn’t been the idiot on the road.

Later, we made it back to our hotel...

In the Footsteps of a Book – A Walk Through the Jerusalem Neighborhood of Musrara

The actual House of Windows as far as we could tell

Have you ever traveled in the footsteps of a book?

Visited the location where a character lived? Tried to retrace his or her steps? I’ve done this several times, such as on a trip to London when my kids and I visited where Hercule Poirot “lived” in the BBC series we love.

I got to do this again in Jerusalem a month ago, when my friend Rivka Levy took my husband and me around the neighborhood of Musrara, where she herself lived until recently...

The Benefit of a Traveler’s Daily WhatsApp Messages to a Friend: Boosting Mindfulness and Creating a Travel Diary

The WhatsApp message that began the daily ritual: “Here a photo for you, view from our hotel, you also sent me such nice photos of the big wide world when I was bedridden.”

I usually don’t keep a travel diary.

On a trip, when days are jammed with activities, I simply don’t have the time. Plus I’m exhausted at the end of the day. And yet, precisely because on a trip days are so big, so way more full than they are in everyday life, it would be good to keep a diary. Not just a log of what I did...

Stumbling Upon Oskar Schindler’s Grave in Jerusalem

One of the things I love about Jerusalem is that you stumble upon historically significant sites all the time.

Such was the case last weekend, when my husband and I set out to walk to the Kotel (Western Wall) in the Old City. This was a solid 45 minute walk from our rented apartment, but of course we stopped here and there to look at stuff, such as enjoying this view of Mount Zion from above the Jerusalem Cinematheque, with the Kidron Valley in between.

Our path took us along the road you se...

How to Evaluate Your Social Media Use and Free Up Time

I just lived without my main email for almost two weeks, and that turned out to be quite nice. Just before I left on a longer trip, I messed up my Microsoft Office suite (don’t ask, I don’t quite know how that happened). My Outlook was uninstalled. I could only access my email through my Internet provider’s nasty webmail interface.

My Outlook inbox with its accumulated emails is my main lifeline in terms of work and writing. But you know what? I could live without it for a while. What needed...

Writer’s Workbook 2019

The new edition of the Writer’s Workbook is here! All you gotta do to receive it is subscribe to my newsletter. If you are a subscriber, you will have received already.

I wish you good fun reviewing the old year and planning for the new, as well as all the best for the New Year, especially good success with your writing!

The post Writer’s Workbook 2019 appeared first on Annette Gendler.

Giving Up Christmas

Christmas at the Hemingway Birthplace Home where I was fortunate to have been writer-in-residence four years ago!

Giving up Christmas is one of the advantages of converting to Judaism, at least in my experience. When people hear that I converted, the first question is often, “Don’t you miss Christmas?” And when I reply that I don’t, they usually look at me in disbelief. “Really? How could you not miss Christmas?”

My story about how all that happened appeared in Tablet a few years ago, see Giv...

Easy Cut-Out Cookies for Chanukah or Christmas

I baked cookies for Chanukah on Monday, all by myself. It was odd to cut out cookies without my kids, but I missed nibbling on our traditional cookies when my husband and I lit our first Chanukah candle on Sunday. It has also felt weird to light the Chanukah candles without a child present. Alas, they have all flown the nest. Since Chanukah came early this year, they aren’t home yet for winter break from college. I did package some cookies and shipped them off to their college addresses as a...