Marilyn's Musings

  I’m often asked when I began writing. I have always been a writer, beginning with my parodies of nursery rhymes when I was about 8. My first nationally published work was a eulogy of John F. Kennedy accepted by Ingénue Magazine when I was 15. I was a publication major in college, concentrating on journalism, and my goal was to be the first woman editor of the New York Times. Despite a bit of a detour, I continued writing, but most pieces were academic or newspaper columns or reports or other forms of nonfiction (although some people consider grant applications to be a form of fiction). Then, during a lull in my paid employment history, I turned my hand to fiction. I’ve been a voracious reader most of my life, and I discovered how much I enjoyed writing as well as reading fiction. I now have 3 fiction books in print, all in the Rabbi Aviva Cohen Mystery series: CHANUKAH GUILT , UNLEAVENED DEAD , and YOM KILLER . I was fortunate enough to find traditional (i.e., roya

The other day, I noticed the name of a salon: [something]’s Kutz. Why, I wondered, would anyone want to get a haircut at a place called Klutz? A while later, I read about the formation of an organization, but I thought the article’s author had written “fornication.”              There are three things going on here. One, I have a very disturbed subconscious. Two, it’s time to go to the optometrist and get my prescription for the reading part of my lenses changed. And, three, we see what we expect to see. It’s because of the last factor that I am completely unable to edit myself. (It’s also because that same pesky subconscious is convinced that every word I write is perfect and should not be changed or cut even if it is misspelled or unnecessary.) Each of my books underwent numerous edits, readings, re-readings, re-edits, re-re … the same as all works by all authors do (or should). Inevitably, though, typos and worse still existed in the final printed copies.