Archives for September 2012

 Well, I told myself, if a medical doctor could write The Kite Runner, then surely you could write a novel as well. After all, weren’t lawyers trained to write? I knew I had the seed for a story, but that was all. I decided that I would completely fictionalize the story. I chose to write […]

 I began to write my story in first person in the voice of Ichmad because it felt natural. Yes, I know that it is somewhat strange that a Jewish American woman felt most comfortable writing in the voice of a Palestinian Muslim. Believe it or not, out of all the characters I created, I felt […]

 When I initially wrote the novel, I began with Ichmad on a bus to visit his father in prison. Ichmad had already helped the refugee bury arms and he was on his way to confess his crime to his father. During one of the writing courses I took, another student asked why should he sympathize […]

 Many months ago, Michelle Cohen-Corasanti enrolled in one of my Writer’s Digest creative writing courses on story beginnings. The novel she worked on in class was The Almond Tree. It was clear immediately that this was a writer of uncommon talent and promise. The problem—for me—was her subject material. She was writing what seemed to […]

 Through the Gotham Writers’ Workshop,  I was assigned the successful and extremely talented novelist Marcy Dermansky to be my writing coach.  I was leery when I found out that Marcy was Jewish. All the Jews I knew had the Berlin Wall mentality. I knew my novel was pro-peace, but I wasn’t sure she’d see it […]

 My intention was to write a book about an Israeli and a Palestinian who rise above religion, race and politics and together achieve greatness. Somewhere along the way, the story began to take on a life of its own and all I could do was to go with it. Nora’s role shrunk and Abbas’ grew. […]