The Search for Structure

            I can’t seem to settle on a writing schedule, or even stick to one particular writing project for more than a few days at a time, and the chaos of that has started to undermine even my blog writing, which is usually my reliable safe space each week. Usually, I know I’ll get a blog post done in time, even if I’m four drafts in and still not sure what I’m trying to say by Friday night. Every once in a while, an essay crashes and burns after weeks of effort, but even then, there’s always been another essay in the pipeline, ready to take its place. But lately, I feel like I’m speeding around in circles, starting and stopping each idea without rhythm or consistency, and losing the feeling of structure and safety the blog has always created for me, no matter what else was going on in my life.

            I’ve been spiraling through memoir and fiction, mystery and romance, essays and poems, even English and Hebrew, and nothing feels right, nothing feels like a structure I can rely on to help organize all of the different parts of who I am into one consistent whole.

            I remember, years ago, when I took a class in how to teach the twice exceptional child (gifted and autistic were the two exceptions they were looking at, for the most part), and I found a drawing that I loved. Some anonymous teacher had drawn a child (huge, filling the whole page) with a scaffolding on either side where the teacher could climb up and add supports as unobtrusively as possible, and ever since then I’ve imagined this scaffolding around me, helping me stay upright, intervening when I start to lose my way. I can almost see it, like I’m a building constantly under repair, supported and in process to something better.

            But lately I’ve been struggling to find the right supports, the right structures and schedules and goals to keep me growing instead of spiraling off into the ether. I know I’ll find it eventually, but these moments, where I’m spinning and spinning and can’t find the ground, and my scaffolding is nowhere to be seen, are really scary.  

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?