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Writing Interview with Ilana-Davita

If ever you wondered if you can make a friend online, Ilana-Davita is a true friend. I love visiting her little town in France by visiting her blog, where she shares her thoughts on Judaism, her tales of Europe, her photos, cooking and warmth. I am honored to have her answers to my writing interview.

I was eager to write at school and, at age nine, even asked the teacher when we would start writing short narrative essays (the French term for this school subject is “rédaction”). She acquiesced but obviously was not too happy with what we wrote since she never gave us another writing assignment.

Obviously I then spent years writing essays of all sorts but not always with pleasure. Since I started blogging, however, the pleasure has returned. My blog began as a sort of experiment: I was not quite sure I was doing it and what I was going to write about but it seemed like something I might enjoy. It has brought me more satisfaction and enjoyment that I had anticipated even if writing is a bit tough at the moment.

2) When did you realize that you like to read?
When I turned seven our next door neighbor gave me a Noddy book by Enid Blyton. I was a little awed at the perspective of reading a whole real book by myself but the experience was awesome and I have not stopped reading since.

3) Which authors influenced you in your youth? Which authors or writers influence you now? (influence of style or in life choices or both)
My first influence was Enid Blyton. A year or two after Noddy, I discovered The Secret Seven and above all The Famous Five. I found these series wonderful and read 13 out of the 15 Secret Seven books, all of The Famous Five stories and a lot of other novels she had written. At that time my dream was to become the new Enid Blyton. She has been much criticized for her lack of literary talent but this did not matter to me as a child. I had found an activity I adored, this was enough.

During my adolescence I read extensively but can’t remember being influenced by one author in particular.

After high school graduation, I spent a year in England and discovered English (and American) literature. I then went to college in France where I studied English (language, literature and civilization). I read the Brontes, which I loved, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. My favorite however was Jane Austen. I thus read Pride and Prejudice overnight. I liked her style and her wit. I still do. Her fine dialogues have few equals in English literature.

At present one of my favorite novelists is Chaim Potok and, as some of my regular readers may know, I have named my blog after one of his characters. I love how he conveys his love of Judaism while presenting his readers with some of the issues observant Jews are confronted with. His characters experience religious dilemmas but, in the end, manage to remain faithful Jews in a manner I find honest and coherent.

As far as life choices are concerned, my main influence is Rabbi Joseph Telushkin and his emphasis on Jewish ethics. To anyone intersted in what he has written on the subject I’d recommend first: The Book of Jewish Values and then A Code of Jewish Ethics, volumes 1 and 2. I also find Rabbi Jonathan Sacks inspiring.

4) Have you ever taken a creative writing course?
No, this existed neither when I was at school nor at college. Unfortunately French education encourages formal learning rather than creativity.

5) Have you ever studied journalism?
No, there again I wished I had. Interestingly enough, my mom studied journalism but never practiced her trade.

6) Do you find writing or talking an easier way to express yourself, or are both writing and talking similar vehicles of self-expression for you?
I suppose it depends on the circumstances and what I have to say. I find talking easy in a meeting when the topics discussed are professional rather than personal. When the issue is closer to home I find it harder and would never share with my colleagues or even acquaintance the thoughts and ideas I share on my blog. Things are of course a bit different with the people that are very close.

7) Have you written short stories or poetry (or would you like to do so)?
Apart from the little stories I wrote when I was 8 or 9 and a few poems when I was in my early twenties, I have not written anything creative. I have some regrets but also believe I am better at expressing thoughts than emotions.

Please add a favorite quote.

הַֽעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת־הָאָרֶץ הַֽחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה וּבָֽחַרְתָּ בַּֽחַיִּים לְמַעַן תִּֽחְיֶה אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶֽךָ

I call this day heaven and earth as my witness: See, I set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Now, choose life so that you and your children may live. -Deuteronomy 30:19
(in memory of RivkA, z”l)

For more interviews:

• Writing Interview with Lorri
• Writing Interview with Shimshonit

I have one more writing interview coming up next week.

A few of the many posts in memory of RivkA:

• Baila: In honor of Coffee and Chemo
• Hannah: Memories of RivkA bat Yishaya z”l
• Frume Sarah: Across Time and Space
• IsraMom: What Women CAN do!
• Ruti Mizrachi: Our Lives are Filled With Choices.
• CosmicX: A Couple of Minutes With RivkA

JPiX Early Fall Reminder

Robin of Around the Island will be posting the upcoming JPIX (Jewish Photo Bloggers Blog Carnival) on November 14. Please send in your JPIX submissions by November 11.

Robin wrote on a recent post in memory of RivkA, z”l (may her blessing be a memory): ‘One of the things RivkA used to say that always made me smile was how even though she wasn’t “a photography person” she loved looking at my photography.’ To learn more about RivkA, who died last week after a long battle with breast cancer, visit her blog Coffee and Chemo.

Interview with Shimshonit on Writing

Second in my series of interviews with bloggers on writing (see interview with Lorri of Jew Wishes), Shimshonit kindly responded to my questions with revealing and thoughtful answers. Shimshonit lives in Israel and blogs about family life, Israeli politics, books, Jewish topics, food (I think every Jew must blog about food – no?). She used to live in my childhood home town of Newton (she said we met once, but I don’t remember the meeting, which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen – but neither of us were bloggers at the time; blogging didn’t exist yet).

1) When did you realize that you like to write?

I’ve loved writing ever since I learned to write. Even as a child, I used to write letters to friends and relatives. Writing has been almost as big an obsession for me as reading. In high school, when I was learning to write expository essays, I found it incredibly frustrating to have my writing picked apart and critiqued by very hard teachers. But I emerged in the end a much more confident writer, more aware of grammar, of words, of voice.

2) When did you realize that you like to read?

Again, when I first learned to read. I’ve always loved stories, and to be able to read them myself gave me an independence from relying on others to tell them to me.

3) Which authors influenced you in your youth? Which authors or writers influence you now? (influence of style or in life choices or both)

I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s stories of her pioneer family. Her family’s courage, self-sufficiency, warmth and love appealed to me. In junior high school I discovered J.R.R. Tolkien, whose love of poetry and epic storytelling fed my love of adventure, languages, and travel, and spoke to my Anglo-Saxon soul. It was Tolkien who, in one of his very few women characters, gave me Éowyn, perhaps my favorite character of all time, whose restlessness and rebellion led to one of the pivotal acts which saved the people of her world from destruction. (Photo at right is Miranda Otto as Éowyn in the Peter Jackson films).

Charles Dickens

As an adult, I’ve always admired Charles Dickens for his quirky characters and brutal honesty about the good and bad in people. I think Great Expectations may be my favorite novel of all time. My second favorite is probably a tie between George Eliot’s sweeping, intelligent, sensitive Middlemarch and Jane Austen’s quieter, subtler novel Persuasion. For a little humor, I love Pride and Prejudice and anything by P.G. Wodehouse. I could go on forever, but I’ll spare you.

4) Have you ever taken a creative writing course?

I took a year-long college course on the American short story in my early 20s, reading the likes of Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Gardner, studying their craft carefully, writing my own stories, and working with the rest of the class as a critique group. We continued on our own for three years after that class. It was marvelous. While I don’t write fiction nowadays, that experience has given a distinctive flavor to my nonfiction writing, and has given me much sharper skills as a reader besides.

5) Have you ever studied journalism?

No.

6) Do you find writing or talking an easier way to express yourself, or are both writing and talking similar vehicles of self-expression for you?

I prefer writing to talking. I don’t think at all well on my feet. I like writing for the opportunity to compose and edit my words carefully, and avoid saying anything I don’t mean or might regret later. I also like writing because it allows me to think on paper (or, more accurately these days, on screen). I’ve heard it said that you know what you think about something once you’ve written about it. I share that sentiment.

7) Have you written short stories or poetry (or would you like to do so)?

Yes, but nothing I would care to show anyone now. Disappointment (in employment, in love) make for great poetic inspiration, but very dull reading. And I don’t think I was a very good fiction writer. I write nonfiction when I’m content, and that’s what I’ve been writing for a long time now.

Please add a favorite quote.

The last lines of Middlemarch, which often make me think of my own life:

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

I enjoyed these thought-provoking questions. Thank you!

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