I have always had a fondness for the personal literary analysis. The kind you see in novels. Someone is talking about a work of literature, but they’re really talking about themselves. In my opinion, all literary analysis is personal. Nobody picks a subject of study unless they’re not just interested but invested in it. Yes,…
Category: Another World Within
Rebirth: The Day I Became a Writer
We often mark time in our lives with rituals and rites of passage. Moments of birth and rebirth. Baby showers, weddings, funerals. There were a couple of years in junior high school where many weekends were taken up with b’nai mitzvot for friends or family members, followed a few years later by sweet sixteens. We…
Sunday Summary: Waiting for the Flowers
Welcome to the Sunday Summary for the week of 7 February 2022-12 February 2022. We’ve reached the middle of February–that time of year when winter’s chill has worn us down but every day we look around, hoping to be surprised by the sudden appearance of the crocus to remind us that spring is within our…
It’s Caturday and We have Questions: Distractions
So Erika (a.k.a. Human-Mom) was doing some typing the other day with her three cats sitting on her like tiny royalty. Every time she tried to reach the keyboard it seemed like there was a cat’s butt in her way. Distractions, am I right? Such are the tribulations of a writer. And yet. Erika loves…
Watch/Listen/Read: Why I Read
Erika Writes… One of those Weeks I don’t know what’s going on this week. Things just feel unsettled. As I worked on the piece I shared this week, something just felt… off. The weather was cold and yucky, the topic was difficult to write about. Everything was, and has continued to be, a little bit…
An Archaic Concept of Me
Incremental Delivery #2 Editor’s Note: This is the second “Delivery” in the series. If you would like to catch up, you can do so here. The opening: I was young; I was anxious; I was bound to an archaic concept of me. She smoothed my mind and body with her sunny day thoughts and yoga…
The Nazis are Getting Worse
The Sound of Music was my introduction to Nazis. I can remember watching that scene as a small child, and feeling frightened. I can remember asking about what the flag meant and my mother explaining it. Even without seeing the clip I can recall how chilling the anger is in the scene. The only thing…
Peek inside the Rare Book Room
I want to talk for a bit about what was truly magical about being an academic: the rare book room. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I feel a bit dismal about my own PhD journey. Huge swaths of American Academia are a scam. I’m not alone in thinking this. But. But! There…
Sunday Summary: How We Learn
As one week winds into another, once again, we bring you a review of all the things that have happened here at 2 Rules of Writing during the week of 31 January 2022 to 5 February 2022. A lot of this site is devoted to learning THINGS will make us better writers, but this week…
It’s Caturday and We Have Questions: Spoilers!
What constitutes a Spoiler: A Philosophical Dialogue It’s Caturday, and Big Cat and Little Cat have been discussing spoilers while they’re waiting for Middle Cat to get back from that spa with the new hair-barfing cleanse. And what they’re discussing, of course, is spoilers. It all started when Little Cat spoiled a scene in The…