Night of Writing Dangerously sponsorship goal met!

Hooray,

I raised my $200 for the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)’s Night of Writing Dangerously, and I’ve booked my ticket to San Francisco for November 22. G-d bless SouthWest airlines – el cheapo dealo. I really wanted to fly Virgin America but their prices were high-in-the-sky. So bye-bye Virgin, for now at least.

Great thanks to my mum (aw shucks), Tania Hershman, James Tumminia, Eddie and Melissa Rabin, Etan Lerner (well his parents Paul and Michelle), Fred Kramer, and Susan Meadows for raising the funds for the Office of Letters and Light. You all rock! And thanks to Lisa Alcalay Klug for offering to host me in SF.

My mum was visiting from Israel in November last year and we went to San Francisco for a few days and I came down with the world’s worst flu – but NOT H1N1 (it hadn’t occurred yet). So it will be great to spend a day in SF and do all the things I didn’t get to do last time (after the six hours of writing for NaNoWriMo), because I was stuck in my hotel room bed.

Of course, this does mean I DO have to write my 50,000 words in one month, and I’ve still yet to come up with a concrete idea. Oh well, I have a couple of weeks. I’ve been checking out all the NaNoWriMo posts on Twitter and it’s all a little daunting. There’s almost 40,000 people signed up for NaNoWriMo and it makes you realise how many writers are actually out there – a lot! It’s also fun to know that others will attempt this deranged, insane, activity.

In the meantime, I’m working on three separate stories. Just sent to my editor an article on an Israeli fashion designer in LA who almost lost her hand in a car accident as a teenager and still is managing to pursue her dream. Pretty inspiring stuff. And I just interviewed a former Israeli soccer player who is now the hair extension guru to Hollywood stars (Zohan, anyone?). And I spoke with Hilary Helstein about her moving documentary As Seen Through These Eyes – a decades in the making film about Holocaust survivors who documented their experiences through their art. Narrated by Maya Angelou it’s extraordinary. If you’re in LA – go see it!

All three articles will be written, and up in in the coming weeks – will keep you posted on the links. And of course there is more wonderful work up at Scribblers on the Roof. Go check it out.