The Writer Laid Bare

‘I am, at heart, a gentleman,’ drawled the iconic German movie star. A century ago, Marlene Dietrich was taking liberties: she wore well-cut men’s suits when this was considered insolent. She took lovers, of both sexes. She was disobliged, and …

I discovered creative nonfiction only at 31, accidentally, and first as a writer rather than a reader. This was Writers Victoria’s fault. I had been in Australia four years by then. I had three fiction books published in Israel, but …

The novel The Hot Guy started out as a joke. My co-author Mel Campbell and I are both film reviewers, and we often go together to preview screenings as part of our job. One day we started talking, jokingly, about …

Last month I blogged about the importance of failure for writers arguing that failure is (unfortunately…) an intrinsic, and healthy, part of the writing process. In my experience at least, feeling like I was a failure while I wrote my …

I write about dead people.

Not ghosts. At least, not so far. I write fiction set in the past. It’s not the smartest career move, to be honest, but apparently I can’t help it. Historical fiction requires years of meticulous …

Recently I came across an intriguing quote about the nature of artistic process by William Bailey, a notable visual artist. Apparently he said: ‘I believe that every painter is in a state of continual failure.’ At first I was puzzled, …