Nothing to Write About: Finding Inspiration in Writer’s Block

with Hila Ratzabi

Thursday, November 15, 2018, 10:30 – 14:30

Every writer experiences writer’s block at some point, even the most prolific. It is easy to imagine that we must have dramatic lives in order to tell interesting stories. Or sometimes we do have dramatic lives but imagine that our story has been told before. Regardless of why we have become stuck in our writing, it is possible to return to the simple joy of putting words on the page. We can even invite our demons to the table, by using writer’s block as a source of inspiration.

In this workshop we will come together in community to examine our writing struggles. We will then make use of our obstacles to generate new writing. We will engage in writing exercises that churn our resistance into something we can work with. We will share our rough drafts, laugh at our fumbles, and find renewed vitality in the act of putting pen to page. Writers of all genres and experience are welcome. 

Details: advance payment required of 390nis (drinks and kosher vegetarian lunch included); non-refundable if you cancel within one week of the workshop and your place cannot be filled.

Hila Ratzabi is a writing coach, freelance editor, poet, and essayist. She is the Editor of Ritualwell.org. Her essays have appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward, MyJewishLearning, Drunken Boat, Zeek, Kveller, Alma, The Wisdom Daily, MUTHA Magazine, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review. Her poetry has been published in Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, Linebreak, and other journals, and in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry. Ratzabi is the former Editor in Chief of Storyscape. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and founded the Red Sofa Salon & Poetry Workshop in Philadelphia, where she taught writing workshops and ran a poetry reading series. She currently lives in Rehovot with her husband and two sons. Learn more at http://www.hilaratzabi.com/.