My Essay for New Year's Resolutions Posted on Psychology Today

Enjoy!!!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/201012/boo-all-rochelle-jewel-shapiro

Me at one of the Xmas parties I went to.

Gosh, I thought I looked way hotter in this dress that it appears in the picture. Oh, well. I'm here!!!

Register now for my online class, Emotions into Art

Plenty of TLC and personal attention given. Plus, the guest speaker is a literary agent.

https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/Course.aspx?reg=W1106

Blizzard Report

The night sky is seething with snow moving in a crisscross current and casting smoky shadows on the snowbanks. Every few minutes, the wind slams white loaves of snow out of the trees as if the spirits are having a snowball fight. Ah, the joys of a blizzard when lentil soup is aboil in your chrockpot and you don't have to drive anywhere for at least two days!!

Merry Xmas

This year let there be peace in our hearts and in all the world.

Get him/her back!!

WRITING REVENGE: Don’t Get Mad, Get Even. Seeking poems, stories, essays, and memoir, serious or otherwise, about anyone who’s pissed you off so much you had to shame them by writing about them, for anthology to propose to publishers. Send attachments and/or questions to Carl Jenkinson and Stephen Powers: writingrevenge@gmail.com.

Sign up now for my winter class, Emotions into Art: Jan. 12th-Feb. 16th

Emotions Into Art (online) How do writers make you laugh and cry? Designed for beginners and for those who would like to spike up their writing and gain mastery, this course begins by exploring emotion-packed fiction, short prose, and poems, to discover tips, tricks, and strategies for making the reader ache, cheer characters on, reach for the Kleenex, or hold their sides with laughter. You’ll learn about tone, hyperbole, understatement, pacing, implication, and more. Through stimulating writing exercises and short reading assignments, you are encouraged to find your own voice to create short writing (prose or poems) about yourself /and or fictional characters that grab the attention of both readers and editors. Guest Lecturer will be literary agent, Claire Gerus

What do you think of BLACK SWAN?

Forgive the pun, but this movie will keep you on your toes. There were moments I thought it was too Steven King-ish, not that I don't love his work as well, but I had liked it as a regular psychological thriller. But then I accepted it all, screaming covering my eyes, but spreading my fingers to peek so I wouldn't miss a thing. What we writers can learn from this is the art of reversals, that is, letting the reader think one thing is going to happen and then giving them something completely different. It's how you keep the pages being turned.

Dog Lovers: You must see this video of a dog who can do all sorts of household tasks

What a cutie this dog is. Where can I get one?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9Fyey4D5hg&feature=player_embedded

Guys You Just Have to Hug

The guy with the glasses is my husband, Bernie, the other is Evens Cange whom he's worked with for a number of years. They both are the kind of guys that tree huggers hug, dog lovers love, the understood and misunderstood love, and I love.

Little Italy in Boston

There I am, wearing a mauve sweater set and a butterfly belt. My husband is not the guy in the blue shirt leaning toward me, but the man in the blue shirt standing upright and apart. A body language expert could really dig into this. Actually, one of my best friends, Ann (wearing the scarf) was leaning on me and to get in the picture, her husband tilted too. Sounds like baloney with parmasagne, but please believe me.

At the Guggenheim today, I saw kids lying on the floor on their stomachs, squinting up at Marc Chagall's , Paris Through the Window, their brows furrowed with concentration, their tongues flucking over their lips as they tried to make copies. A little girl held up a blue colored pencil for her parents' scrutiny. "Do you think this color is right for that dark blue in the sky?" she asked in a voice squeaky from worry. Kids were craning their necks to check out other kids' drawings. "Do you think mine is better than Will's?" I heard a boy ask his dad. To think of how hard Chagall must have worked to get at this playful child's vicion and now these kids have to leave their own creativity to copy his painting. I say, "Kids, fling your Tupperware containers of colored pencils that your parents' paid the museum who knows what to loan you? and hop on the spiral railing, swirl down to the lobby and out that door. Run, run!"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR0OrgKtgsM&feature=related

This editor wants poems of 50 words or less for an anthology

Email the poems to Katerina Klemer:

katerina.klemer@gmail.com

HALLOWEEN GRAVEYARD ACTIVITY

I cannot tell you how often I've tried to post this. My friend, Fran, and I went to an upstate graveyard just before Halloween. Let me tell you, neither of us know a thing about photoshop or any way to do trick effects. But just let me loose in a graveyard and anything can happen....

Here's is the picture with the ghost activity

This is the scene from the graveyard in Upstate New York a couple of weeks before Halloween. As I said, my friend, Fran, and I have no idea how to photoshop, etc. I can't do one fancy thing on the computer, but just let me loose in a graveyard and...

CELEBRITY SIGHTING

In Viande, an downscale eatery barely wide enough for my hips, I heard a familiar, rough voice call out, "Sunday the food is free here." It was Joan Rivers. Since I'd recently seen the documentary about her, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, I felt as if I knew her. Without thinking, I called out, "Hi, Joan." I braced myself, half-expecting her to say, "You idiot!" Instead, she flashed me a charming veneered smile.

What a tribute to Jona Rivers and to the film makers who could get so comically and tragically present her history and the quirks of her dailiness.

FAIR GAME

I am too worked up to go to bed. I knew all the facts. Valerie Plane was outed because her husband, Joe Wilson, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times saying that Iraq didn't buy uranium from Niger. As a result, his wife was outed from the CIA right in the middle of a number of crucial missions, one of which was to rescue some Iraqi scientists. But to this movie is to feel the facts, have them hammered into your psyche. Aside from being a great film, think of the implications for us as writers. We can take a story everyone knows, whether a biography or a fairy tale, a news story, a historical incident, and breathe life into it, make it our own and the readers' own as well.

Blog about what you love and eventually reap emotional AND financial rewards

Gregory Robson shows up at a film with a legal pad and a pen and takes notes as he watches a film. (I notice he can do it without taking his eyes off the screen.) Then he goes to his blog and writes everything you, the reader, would want to know about the film, and writes it with the kind of depth that is missing in most blogs. As a result, he gets 7,000 hits a week and has gotten some advertisers on board. Advertising on a blog is where the money comes from. Sure, he's just beginning, a great beginning, but when his readership grows, so will the advertising opportunities. But think of it. He's getting an audience for doing just what he loves and isn't this a hope that all of you have when you sign up for a class at UCLA Extension?

Check out his blog for intelligent film discussion and inspiration.
http://residentmediapundit.com/

Charity with A Little Night Music

Went to see A Little Night Music last night and grinned my way through it. Ah, Sondheim! The play had all the magic of A Midsummer's Night Dream, alas without Puck. (Ever see the old movie version of M.N.D where Mickey Rooney plays Puck?) Anyway, at the end of the play, Bernadette Peterson offered to sell her earrings straight from her lobes on behalf of Actors Equity's charity. I didn't see any takers. Elaine Stritch offered to sell her hankie. Didn't see any takers either. How much courage actors have to face donation-rejection. It's probably nearly as hard as waiting for the reviews.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

These pictures were taken in an upstate New York cemetary that is alive with spirits. The guy, Spencer,

who looks respectfully horrified and really cute, is my friend, Fran Capo's son. Let me assure you that neither Fran nor I know enough about photography and zilch about photo-shopping to have faked these shots.

Miss Abigails Guide to Dating, Mating, and Marriage

My publicist friend gets free tickets to shows which is how I ended up here today. Since I didn't pay for my ticket, I managed to enjoy it all. The theater has a bar and the a stepped platform lined with chairs for the audience. One woman in an aisle seat laughed so hard that she and her chair toppled over and crashed to the floor. She must have been taking her Calcium and Vitamin D3 because she arighted herself and laughed harder than ever.

http://www.broadway.com/shows/miss-abigails-guide-dating-mating-and-marriage/buzz/154039/miss-abigail-star-eve-plumb-on-stunt-casting-new-york-living-and-making-peace-with-being-a-brady/

Friday night at the Diner

I had hardly seen my husband all week and we were eager to talk. Unfortunately, so was the waiter. While he took our orders, he told us that his girlfriend took off with his best guy friend and now he can't afford the rent on his own. When he brought out dinner, he stayed to tell us about his mother's relationship with his stepfather and about Salt being the coolest movie ever because he wants to meet a woman who looks like Angelina Jolie.

After we left, my husband said, "I'm beginning to think the greatest invention was the dumb waiter."

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

I just came home from seeing Waiting for Superman. I'm overcome with feeling. See it to understand our current non-educational public school system. The amount of money it takes per year to keep people in prison, a direct result of poor education, is at least four times it would be to send an inner city youth to the finest private school. Check out www.waitingforsuperman.com

Fiction Contest: A Legitimate One

Fiction Contest
The 2011 Willow Springs Fiction Prize is now accepting submissions. Domestic authors can submit a short story for $15, and international submissions are $20. Authors can submit as many entries as they like, but each submission can contain only one story. The winner receives $2,000 and publication in Willow Springs; every author who participates will receive a free one year subscription to the magazine. Postmark deadline for submissions to the 2011 prize is March 1, 2011. More guidelines are available on the Willow Springs website.

Art and Life

Just came home from seeing The Pittmen Painters at The Manhattan Theater Club about a group of miners from a small town in England who discovered themselves through painting. I saw it on the day the LAST Chilean miner was freed from his long captivity in the mine. The actors dedicated the show to those miners and, in thick English accents, said that they would be learning Spanish so they could try out for what will be the inevitable movie coming from this miracle.

Tomorrow, one day late, I'm going to Strawberry Fields

Forever.

Smokey and Me

Smokey is my friend, Robin's cockateil, but I wish he were mine. He whispers sweet nothings in my ear and his crest rises when I bill and coo at him.

What a Book!

David Eggers nonfiction account of a family dealing with Hurricane Katrina is a great American tragedy. Zeitoun is the surname of the father of the family, a Syrian who owns a thriving construction company and a sizeable amount of real estate. His wife, Kathy, born Christian, had converted to Islam before she met her husband because she was impressed with the transformation of her childhood friend, Yuko, and disenchanted with her Evangelical church. Reading this book is not only an opportunity to learn about what happened during Katrina in a way that no one else could tell it, but also a look into what we can learn from the Koran. Long after I finish the book, this quote from the Koran will remain with me. I'll try not to use it on my daughter. "Heaven lies at the feet of the mother."

To edit, switch it up.

I've been working on something long, a novel, novel-ini? I'll let it find it's own form. But I had it all in a piece in a file and was getting nowhere. Now I'm just writing parts of whatever comes to me on new pages and I'll see how it all fits together. Hope it will.

One of my HOMIES

I belong to a women's networking group, SIBLING. We meet once a month at a member's home. Each of us inspires the other and we've really bonded. One of our members, Carol Blake, a songwriter, produced this video of her song, FOOD IS BETTER THAN SEX.

Enjoyj both, I hope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW97We6rGKo

The Humility of Insomnia

When people complained to me that they couldn't sleep, I said, "So, read a book or bake bread." Until the last couple of years when I began to experience occasional sleepless nights myself, I never realized how useless you are without sleep. You're just too tired to concentrate, but when you lie down in your bed, energy goes through you like fire ants. Anyone have any cures that are non-pharmaceutical?

After a great drama, I have to put my fingers in my ears

Today I went to see Laura Linney in Time Stands Still, a fascinating play about a couple who are war photographers and how sharing those experiences brings them closer together and tears them apart. It's also wrestles with the question: Is it moral for a photographer to be snapping shots of people who are being massacred, set on fire, dying, instead of putting down your camera and trying to help them. As soon as the show was over, members of the audience started complaining, "That was depressing," "That was a downer." Why didn't they go see Lend Me a Tenor or La Cages aux Folles? This happens each time I see a serious play. Next time I'm bringing post-theater earplugs.

The Rapture of Being a Noticer

Went to see Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, at the Roundabout Theater. I was blown away by the sets, the acting, especially Cherry Jones' rendition of Mrs. Warren. But during intermission while I was on line at the Ladies', I saw another show just as memorable. A tall, bony, older women with orthopedic sandals (I wear them, too), and a large, chisel-cut nose, was at the sink, looking in the mirror. She took the hairpins out of her white hair. It hair fell down to her mid-back. When she combed it, I could swear I saw tiny stars glinting in its sheen. As continued to comb her hair, her body swayed gracefully forward and back. She was unaware of me watching her private ritual, but I couldn't have looked away. She was a young woman again, perhaps imagining herself getting ready to see her fiance. Finally, she wound her hair back into a topknot, pinned it with the long bobby pins I hadn't seen since my grandmother died, and returned to her public self, an gaunt older woman with a chiseled face and an overly bright green jacket and orthopedic shoes.

Layering

Tiger Rising, by Kate DiCamillo, (Candlewick Press) a children's book, is top-notch to read if you want to learn about layering, that is, having elements that weave through the story, giving it depth. See how she uses Blake's Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright to enhance the magic of this story about a boy who was whalloped by his father for crying at his mother's funeral, the grief that he kept in unopened suitcases of the mind, causing a rash so severe on his legs that the principal barred him from school. Read how this boy, with the help of a girl named Sistine, as in the Sistine Chapel, heals his heart through friendship and love.

This recipe is from my friend, Kim Ballerini, a English professor and the best cook I know.

This recipe and the Ostriker poem was sent to me by my friend, Kim Ballerini, for Rosh Hashonnah. Enjoy with me:

Pot Roast Brisket for slow cooker

3-4 lb beef brisket
2-3 Tbs flour1
2 Tbs herbs de Provence4-
5 carrots cut into circles2 big onions sliced1
14 ounce can of beef broth or beef stock
1 cup luscious red wine (optional) but it is a great option2
2 Tbs olive oil
2 cloves of sliced garlic
Salt and Pepper

Put flour, herbs, and salt and pepper in a large bowl or large Ziploc bag. Toss brisket in flour mixture and then place it in the slow cooker. If there is flour left over pour it over the meat. Layer the carrots and onions on the top. Add the beef broth and optional red wine and and cook on high for approximately 4 1/2 to 5 hours. Do not add potatoes--it just muddies it and I have no idea what those brussel sprouts were about—say no to such things. Let the ingredients be what they are. Serve the meat and sauce over "No Yolks" brand dumplings. They are in a clear bag and look like noodles but they call them dumplings. I don't know why. Serve the food and let the wine flow in deep red jewelled bliss. And all is well.

Opportunities to express yourself creatively are endless and can come at any time

When I was an art major in college, the head of the department made it seem that there were a few annointed souls who would become artists and the rest of us could forget it. True, one of their choices did show at the Whitney Biennial and has a lot of success, but the rest of us found our way as well. I became a writer; a friend a caligrapher, someone else a sculptor who teaches at a fine university, etc. So if you're creative, never let anyone tell you that you won't find your way to express it in the world.

My friend, Cara, a psychotherapist, is taking up acting in her middle years. She's already landed a few things and here she is in a pilot for the Discovery Channel...hold your breath...as a therapist running a support group for people who believe they have been abducted by aliens.


http://zeropointzero.wistia.com/activate/c89438b029

PLACES TO PUBLISH

Deadline: 9/17/2010 Submit to: Creative Nonfiction, Attn: Immortality, 5501 Walnut St., Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15232 Theme: Immortality Type: Essays (5,000 words MAX) Publisher: See website URL: Anthology sponsored by Creative Nonfiction

Deadline: 1/31/2011 Submit to: Dream of Things. Submission Link Theme: Various topics based on one of 15 themes. See http://dreamofthings.com/workshop-2 for more details. Type: Personal essays (500-5,000 words MAX) Publisher: See website URL: Dream of Things

Deadline: 3/1/2011 Submit to: Slipstream, Dept. W-1, Box 2071, Niagara Falls, NY 14301. Theme: Sex-Food-Death Type: Poetry Publisher: See website URL: Slipstream

For All Memoir Fans

I recommend Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle.(Scribner.) It's been on the bestseller list for three years and you'll see why. This is a story of surviving a childhood that has to be read to believed, and prospering, and loving.

What I'd like you to be aware of it the motif that runs through this book of Jeanette's father's interest in quantum physics and see how that weaves through the book and makes for a socko ending.

My Third Grandchild, Eden

Frued's Last Session

There was nothing little about this play by Mark Germaine in the Little Theater at the West Side Y, Manhattan. Imagine Sigmund Freud who believed God was a fantasy having a session with C.W. Lewis who had just had a conversion experience. What a dramatic clash.
What we can learn from the play as writers is:
1. The importance of dramatic contrast, characters pitted against each other by education, class, philosophy....
2. This play was based upon another book, which means that we don't have to unearth all our own ideas. They are out there waiting for us, like fish leaping to our hook. Just follow your interest and you'll find the right books to help you create your own work of art.
3. The inescapable histories of the characters, both personal and what is going on in their environment. Imagine Freud and C.S. Lewis confronting a bomb threat during London's blitz.
How different it is to be in the audience when you're a writer!

If you're in or around Hamilton, New Jersey

Grounds for Sculpture is an enchantment. Go through an arbor and find yet another startling contemporary sculture. The garden itself is lush and don't forget to eat at Rats. Yes, Rats, one of the most romantic restaurant I've ever been to.

http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/

Motivation to Send Out Your Work!!!

So, you send out your work, get it back published in a magazine, an anthology, possibly without pay. Is that the end of that? Never!!! Once your work is published, any good thing can happen with it at any time. I just got a Facebook request from an editor for permission to use my poem, Friends for Life, that had been published in an anthology at least five years ago, in a dramatic reading. The editor's last dramatic reading (the subject is a friend's bout with cancer) raised $1500 for cancer research. Who knows what this reading will raise? For all kinds of reasons, get your work out there.
Here's my poem that an actor will read for the fundraiser:

Friends for Life


You’re 34, a year younger than the age your doctor believed
a woman should be tested.
Like malicious gossip, the cancer spread
from your breast to your lymph nodes.
Instead of 2 pert breasts, your chest now sports a mediport
to pump chemo in. Every 4 weeks for 6 more months,
you’ll be filled like your SUV at Amoco.

Listless, cake-lipped, nauseated, you lie in bed,
resting for hours to have the strength to read
a few pages of Harry Potter to your daughters—5 and 7.
The oldest hears the scream beneath your soft voice,
pulls herself back as if she’s happened upon a wicked sorcerer.
Her friend’s mother died last year even though the “C” word
was never said in her house either.

The doorbell. A flood of friends and neighbors
bringing self-help tapes, macrobiotic cookbooks,
the names of shamans and Rolphers, a brochure from a healing spa
in Romania, a gift certificate for you to fax your prayers
to the Wailing Wall, a subscription to Prevention.
I see your eyes blaze.

After you make your excuses,
we go back to your room.
“It’s always the healthy,” you say,
“who are expert at getting well.”

The phone rings. It’s your husband.
“He’s staying late at the office again,” you tell me
as you have each night since you’ve been home.

I lie in your bed beside you, running my hand over your scalp.
You look naked without your long blonde hair.
What can I do? What can I do?
I get up and make you soup.
I run the water for your children’s’ bath.

(P.S. Lisa survived and her fifth year checkup turned out fine!)

Call for Submissions

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
Ohio Childhood Poems. Send via DOC attachment AND pasted-in text. Email Address
Theme:
Ohio Childhood Poems. MUST HAVE spent at least five years of your childhood in Ohio.
Type:
Poetry (4 poems MAX)
URL:
Ohio Childhood Poems

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
Pockets. Lynn W. Gilliam, Editor. PO Box 340004, Nashville, TN 37203-0004
Theme:
Jealousy. MUST BE appropriate for 8- to 12-year-old Christians.
Type:
Poetry (20 lines MAX), short stories (1,000 words MAX), and essays (1,000 words MAX)
URL:
Pockets

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
Rattle. Send via email attachment (1 file) or pasted-in text. Email Address
Theme:
Mental Health Professionals
Type:
Poetry and essays (5,000 words MAX)
URL:
Rattle

Deadline:
8/1/2010
Submit to:
The First Line. Send via MS Word or WordPerfect attachment. Email Address
Theme:
Every story starts out the same: Three thousand habitable planets in the known universe, and I'm stuck on the only one without ______________. [Fill in the blank.]
Type:
Short stories (3,000 words MAX)
URL:
The First Line

Deadline:
8/6/2010
Submit to:
Creative Nonfiction, Attn: Immortality, 5501 Walnut Street, Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15232
Theme:
Immortality
Type:
Essay (5,000 words MAX)
URL:
Immortality


Deadline:
1/31/2011
Submit to:
Dream of Things. Submission Link
Theme:
Various topics based on one of 15 themes. See http://dreamofthings.com/workshop-2 for more details.
Type:
Personal essays (500-5,000 words MAX)
URL:
Dream of Things

Deadline:
1/31/2011
Submit to:
Hunger Mountain, Vermont College of Fine Arts, 36 College Street, Montpelier, VT 05602
Theme:
Responses to stage and screen
Type:
Manuscripts (10,000 words MAX) or a video submission
URL:
Hunger Mountain

Deadline:
3/1/2011
Submit to:
Slipstream, Dept. W-1, Box 2071, Niagara Falls, NY 14301.
Theme:
Sex-Food-Death
Type:
Poetry
URL:
Slipstream

More audience craziness

Yesterday, I went to a matinee of the Tony-award winning play, Red, about the relationship between the abstract expressionist, Mark Rothko, and his apprentice. A woman three rows in front of me was crinkling a candy wrapper for twenty minutes. If I shushed her, I'd be disturbing everyone else, so I had to try to push her out of my consciousness during a play where every word felt key. Suddenly, the guy next to me stood up. He was wiry and at least 6/7." Bent at the waist, he leaned across the two rows ahead of us, his head moving side to side like a snake after a mouse. Then he got very still. His ears pricked. He'd located the candy wrap crinkler and said, "shhhh" in her ear, scaring the bejeezus out of her. I wished I could take him with me to every show.

Places to send your work

Anthologies: Calls For Submission

Deadline:	6/30/2010
Submit to:	Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Pasted-in e-mail submissions. Email Address
Theme:	Poems celebrating the legacy of Langston Hughes. Poet MUST live or work in DC, MD, VA, WV, or DE.
Type:	Poetry (5 poems MAX)
URL:	Beltway Poetry Quarterly

Featured Listing

Deadline:	8/1/2010
Submit to:	Rattle. Send via email attachment (1 file) or pasted-in text. Email Address
Theme:	Mental Health Professionals
Type:	Poetry and essays (5,000 words MAX)
URL:	Rattl

Deadline:	8/1/2010
Submit to:	The First Line. Send via MS Word or WordPerfect attachment. Email Address
Theme:	Every story starts out the same: Three thousand habitable planets in the known universe, and I'm stuck on the only one without ______________. [Fill in the blank.]
Type:	Short stories (3,000 words MAX)
URL:	The First Line

Deadline:	8/6/2010
Submit to:	Creative Nonfiction, Attn: Immortality, 5501 Walnut Street, Suite 202, Pittsburgh, PA 15232
Theme:	Immortality
Type:	Essay (5,000 words MAX)
URL:	Immortality

Deadline:	8/15/2010
Submit to:	Ruminate Magazine. Submission Link
Theme:	Sounds and silence. MUST BE quality work that reveals the nature of Christ, in whatever form this may look like.
Type:	Poetry (3 poems, 40 lines MAX) and prose (6,000 words MAX)
URL:	Ruminate Magazine

Deadline:	9/1/2010
Submit to:	Workers Write! Blue Cubicle Press, PO Box 250382, Plano, TX 75025-0382, or send via email. Email Address
Theme:	Tales from the Courtroom.
Type:	Short stories (5,000 words MAX)
URL:	Workers Write

Deadline:	1/31/2011
Submit to:	Dream of Things. Submission Link
Theme:	Various topics based on one of 15 themes. See http://dreamofthings.com/workshop-2 for more details.
Type:	Personal essays (500-5,000 words MAX)
URL:	Dream of Things

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