Uvi’s Comments (group member since Apr 09, 2012)

Uvi’s comments from the The Creative Spark with Uvi Poznansky group.

Here is a short excerpt from my book Apart From Love:

"I touch my skin right under my breasts, which is where the little one’s curled, and where he kicks, ‘cause he has to. Like, he don’t feel so cosy no more. Here, can you feel it? I reckon he wants me to talk to him. He can hear me inside, for sure. He can hear every note of this silvery music.
It ripples all around him, wave after wave. I can tell that it’s starting to sooth him. It’s so full of joy, of delight, even if to him, it’s coming across somewhat muffled. Like a dream in a dream, it’s floating inside, into his soft, tender ear.
I close my eyes and hold myself, wrapping my arms real soft—around me around him—and I rock ever so gently, back and forth, back and forth, with every note of this silvery marvel. You can barely hear me—but here I am, singing along. I’m whispering words into myself, into him."

Doesn't it have a rhythm close to the name Embracing You, Embracing Me?

Congrats, Michelle! So happy for you. Love the title, it has a great rhythm to it, almost like a dance. Just my impression. While your book is set in the 90's, mine is set in the 80's. (still, I call it contemporary fiction.)

I have just gone to read your book description on Amazon. It would be interesting to do a comparison in the character development between your female protagonist and mine. Are you game? (Take a look at Apart From Love)

Hi Dave, good to meet you. I noticed you added Apart From Love to your 'currently reading' shelf, and would love to hear what you think of it, even before you finish it.

btw I happened to think there is a lot of creativity and problem solving skills in sports.

Hi James! If you have a particular question I'll try to answer, but I see you're learning the ropes all right. I'm new to the scene myself, so can easily relate. Welcome to this group!

Hi Christine, so nice to meet you! I have just looked at your questions and insightful comments in the other discussion threads. It is such a great thing you are doing, a mission really, both your help for handicapped kids and the bracelets you make for the make a wish foundation. I truly admire you for that. Not going to ask about the medical problem, even though I wonder if that lead you to your calling in life.

Hi Christine, a great question. I write contemporary fiction, because I like rooting the characters in the here and now in which I live, which allows the descriptions to become all the more detailed, real and vivid. I appreciate the notion that contemporary fiction builds on the shoulders of the fiction giants of previous eras.

Now when a say 'contemporary' fiction, I mean it in a somewhat broad way. Sometimes I take an old, well-known story, even a biblical one such as the story of Jacob and Esau, and retell it as if it is happening right here and now. Other times I take a family story and define its time not right now, but perhaps twenty, thirty years ago, because I like the 'aged' feel of things. This is the case with my recently published book, Apart From Love.

So do I, Christine! For me, nothing compares to the feel of the book cover in my hands.
But do you read on a reading device at all? If so, how does the reading experience change for you?

Hi everyone! I wonder, are your reading habits changing because of the new generation of eBook devices? Do you find yourself hindered, as you try to immerse in reading, by their multi-purpose design, which offers a multitude of ways for your concentration to stray away? The original Kindle was not designed as a multi-purpose device, specifically so that readers could focus on reading and nothing else. But in a competitive market, newer designs offer more and more functionality--and more ways to shorten our attention span.

Is this a question of concern to you? It is to the writer of this New York Times article, called Finding Your Book Interrupted ... By the Tablet You Read It On. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/bus...

That's so amazing, Sheila. I enjoy using photoshop, for example the back cover of my book was done in photoshop, while the front cover is an image based on my oil painting. Which book was it, and what was the style of your drawings for it?

lol...

Over a year ago I wrote a short story about a twelve years old boy coming face to face, for the first time in his life, with the sad spectacle of death in the family. The title of the story is Only An Empty Dress. In it, Ben watches his father trying to revive his frail grandma, and later he attempts the same technique on the fish tilting upside down in his new aquarium.
“I cannot allow myself to weep. No, not now. So I wipe the corner of my eye. Now if you watch closely, right here, you can see that the tail is still crinkling. I gasp, and blow again. I blow and blow, and with a last-gasp effort I go on blowing until all is lost, until I don’t care anymore, I mean it, I don’t care but the tears, the tears come, they are starting to flow, and there is nothing, nothing more I can do—”

To read more, click the link
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/02/ov...

NYKen wrote: "Hello Uvi. It's a pleasure to visit your group page here once more. I have a question regarding Writing.

In your book, does your protagonist pretty much reflect your own view of the world and how ..."

So here is a short excerpt from a dialog between Ben and his father Lenny, where Lenny explains his thoughts about writing:

“What I wish to open up is not me, but my characters—all of whom are parts of who I am—giving her the opportunity to know them, to come live in their skin, to see, hear, touch everything they do. Just, be there, inside my head for a while, which I admit, may be rather uneasy at times. If—if she cared to listen, which I doubt, she would allow me to pull her inside—so deep, so close to the core, that it would be hard to escape, hard to wake up.”
“And what if she wouldn’t?”
“Then, who cares? She might as well drift off, which is what she does, lately. If the story were written about her—which maybe it is!—she would not even be present to realize it! But you—you, I hope, would be interested in it. You would not close the book on me. My writing, you see, is no longer an attempt at fiction. It has changed. It has become more akin to collecting.”
“Collecting what?”
“That which is here, in front of us. That which will not remain. You. Me. That which is said between us. Our voices. This moment.”

Great question NYKen! Each one of the characters has certain features of who I am but not one of them is 'me'. The protagonist, Ben, is at this point of his life a young drifter, who dropped out of medical school; someone who resents his father for betraying his mother. So his story and where he comes from is entirely different from mine. But he was speaking in my mind, chattering really, for a whole year, and 'borrowed' some of my thoughts and sensitivities. Most of all, he has a very 'artistic' way of looking at the world and painting the scenes he sees visually, in words. This part of him is truly just like me.

His father Lenny on the other hand borrowed other aspects of my 'view of the world'. In particular, being a would-be-writer, he voices certain opinions about the process of writing, about the frustrations and the joy of weaving a story, opinions that he 'stole' from me.

So glad you came back here to talk to me!

I take book cover design with the utmost seriousness. It gives a face to the story, and must express it faithfully, in graphical terms. In my mind, when you take my book into your arms, you must be rewarded by holding a work of art. This reward starts with the cover, which opens the door--literally and figuratively--and sweeps you, page after page, into a different world. It continues with an appealing layout of the interior pages, and culminates with the story...

To see the back cover, and to read more, click the link:
http://uviart.blogspot.com/2012/05/fa...

This thread is about the writing process. Your writing process. It does not matter what genre, please share reflections about how you put pen to paper; how you express yourself. Feel free to post a short poem or an excerpt, and share a post from your blog (if you have one) so we can engage in conversation about it.

Hi Everyone! So here is a great way for me to introduce myself. Listen to my conversation about writing and art with the host of Conversations Live Radio, Cyrus Webb! http://www.blogtalkradio.com/breakfas...

I figured it was 'watered down', and understood why.

It is a good question NYKen. I did not write an ongoing journal, but at one point I had a need, suddenly, to write a memoir, and spent a few months sketching my life on paper. It helped me to cast certain doubts away, and to put my life and relationships with my family in perspective.

Oh NYKen, I so love the use of dialogue! It brings the listener, ever so cleverly, directly into the lives of these people. I can start sensing the tensions and cross-purposes between all three of them. Very observant of you!

And I appreciate that you 'masked' their names, to protect the innocent... Indeed this is what a novel writer would sometimes do: invent characters and let them carry out actions, reveal secrets that should be left unspoken in the author's 'real' life.

Thank you so much for sharing!

Hi Ken. I admire the consistency of writing. It must be so revealing for you to glance at your handwriting from two decades ago, and to be transported magically to that place! I would love it it you chose a brief segment of your writing and posted it right here, it will tell me a lot about you!

Hi Sheila! I noticed that your debut novel, Divide by Zero, will be released in July, and its name made me chuckle, because I took a lot of math courses over the years. I am always fascinated by cross-polination between art, writing, music and science. Would you mind telling me about the novel and how your math background enriches your writing.

Also, I would like to know what tool do you use for drawing on the computer (Photoshop?) and why you prefer it to drawing with paper and pencil.