The loneliness of writing, the book that did not see the light of day and the launch that was canceled, the insights from the days of closure and life in Zoom • Eight writers share in the shaky year that has passed
The challenges and difficulties provided to us by the events of the past year did not go unnoticed by those writing: books whose publication date was delayed, others that were published but did not receive the promotion needed to reach a wide audience of readers, writing workshops and ventures canceled, and inspiration - something elusive - Often frequents the desk on days of worrying health and livelihood issues.
On the other hand, an excess of time for contemplation and an intense need to write, some out of an escape to an escapist world that gives a break from everyday reality and some out of a desire to unload the thousands of thoughts and feelings and put them on paper.
Eight writers and poets shared with us last year about them.
Hadas Gilad - to give a blow forever
The first closure caught me unprepared.
I was in the middle of a lot of things, like most people around me.
Two weeks earlier I had opened two writing workshops.
The diary was full of spring ahead.
And suddenly a stop.
Intense creaking.
nausea.
It all had to be digested.
It was impossible to digest all this.
For such times invented meditation.
I went back to breathing.
Step by step, in and out.
Priorities, only what is necessary.
First of all, I realized that I would have to find a technical solution for the workshops.
The word zoom was new.
An online meeting seemed to me a pale possibility in the face of an actual meeting.
I upgraded my delicate paper boat.
I quickly learned about the new steering system - and sailed the other sea into the virtual dimension.
It was not easy at first.
Mostly I felt I missed the eye contact.
Gradually I learned to read body language and even lips through the screen, I developed an intuition for it in the sense of adaptation as well.
Something miraculous managed to happen as well and even though - like a small underground, we huddled on Windows Street in zoom and in front of all the rising adversity, turned on a light, touched the essence, a voice found a word.
And what about the writing?
I wrote less this year.
The survival, the strengthening of the foundation, the family, the ties in the immediate community and the special ties that were forged in my work - all of these occupied me very much.
Corona Year was a great time to edit.
It was an incubator time, where I looked in depth at what I had accumulated and saw that I had material for a poetry book.
In the first closure I devoted myself to the process of editing my next book, “Above the Horizon of the Shoulders” which is due out in January 2021 by Locus Publishing.
What has caused this year?
Time is perceived in it differently.
Freedom is perceived in it differently.
The certainties crashed.
Concentration year - only what matters is inside.
The fragility of the body cannot be ignored, with sickness and death statistics in the headlines.
For me it has been a year that pushes into the heart of life, along with some urgency to complete writing processes, to get published, to give a little bump forever.
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Iris Elia Cohen - the five stages of mourning, from the end to the beginning
Oh, 2020. What a horny year!
I think I went through all five stages of Kubler-Ross' grief during this year - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance - just Barbers, that is, from the end to the beginning.
In January I accepted the situation as it is.
They said to be careful, I was careful.
They said a mask, I masked.
They said to sin - I sinned in writing, as they say.
I kept writing.
I do not know how to do anything else.
In fact, the obvious must be said: closure and closure are the way of every writer.
In February-March I became depressed.
All the summers seemed to be gone.
Everyone including everyone, including me, spent their time in front of the TV and no one wanted to read.
Not me either.
And certainly not to write.
At the end of the second closure, in June, I started haggling over the situation: what?
Cancel Book Week?
Why?
What an illogical move!
Two months later I was already angry.
I exploded.
Especially when it became clear that the Ministry of Culture was delaying the transfer of our royalties from the libraries.
And closes the National Library.
And cancels, and denigrates, and corrupts, and outlaws all that is involved and all that his soul involves in books. But what, I kept writing. Even now. I am currently in the denial stage. For me there is no corona. There is no despair in the world, like that sticker. - Two of my new books are coming out soon, and another at work.
Yiftach Ashkenazi - The Disappearance of the Human Dimension in the Practice of Literature
I recently recalled the writing workshop I conducted when the Corona began.
I thought it was amusing to tell participants to write a story based on the places the verified patients visited.
There was one patient, who sat in three different branches of Cafe Rimon in Jerusalem in one day, and we were all very amused by her.
Then there was the stage where the corona stopped being entertaining.
On the face of it, I did not have much to complain about.
I am young (relatively), not in a risk group, I have not lost too much work and I live in the village, so even when there was a closure it was always possible to escape to the mountain outside the house.
But all the changes in life we have taken for granted have accumulated.
It's celebrating a 40th birthday without friends, it's not getting to my cousin's memorial day, it's teaching Zoom and realizing you may have taught people you've never really met and may never meet.
But what most surprised me and in fact also brought the distress, is to realize that the human dimension that there is in the pursuit of literature is almost gone.
To write books you have to be a lot alone.
So, all the writers I know are trying to break that felt a little bit.
Some write in cafes.
Others go to water, meet, gossip.
It is not by chance that writers always have the place or places where they happen to meet other writers.
In the last year, when this option has almost completely disappeared, I have discovered how important social meetings are, which are beyond breaking the routine.
The same world of meetings, conversations about future books and a lot of gossip, is not only a solution to loneliness but also - and perhaps most importantly - the thing that reminds me that literature is mostly a conversation with others.
Thanks to the conversation with the other writers we are also reminded of how important it is to converse with the readers.
(Dedicated to Joshua Kenz, who was a great conversationalist and passed away this year from Corona).
Tamar Verta Zehavi - Insights Watched During the Closure
Looking back, I feel like a blessing from heaven was on the book "Black Panther," the life story of Reuben Abergel, one of the leaders of the Black Panthers.
His writing ended right on the verge of the corona.
If we had lingered it would not have been written, as it is based on dozens of meetings at Marcel and Reuben's house, conversations, or rather monologues, of long hours, in which I pay full attention to Abergel.
Absorbs his words, silences, body language, enthusiasm, power, insult and pain.
And I, Tamar the writer, a good girl in the Rehavia neighborhood, find no resemblance between Abergel's experiences of distress and my world.
After all, I was always full, I had a big room of my own, my parents were academics, my friends and friends were all "from a good home."
It was only when the craft of writing the book was over and the days of the corona closure came that I was flooded with the interfaces between his life and my life.
Here, my late father forbids me to go to the center of Jerusalem because there are burglars, dangerous scoundrels. I do not ask him who they are. The condescending education has already been imprinted in me. "Alone to the city center. But Dad was not wrong, Abergel said that he and his friends would snatch the ice cream cups from the hands of girls from all over, run away and devour them for fun. If a group of boys had snatched the ice cream for me, I would have called them, like Golda Meir." Not nice. "And who was the boy who tanned our roof at 13 Abarbanel Street in the heart of Rehavia? A memory floated in me. We didn't offer him a glass of water either? Maybe it was Abergel, or his younger brother?
Corona's days brought me to write the reflection story of "Black Panther."
Maybe I should call him a "furry cat"?