Hila Ratzabi

Category: Uncategorized

  • There Are Still Woods Available Now for Preorder

    I’m happy to share that my debut book of poetry dealing with the climate crisis, THERE ARE STILL WOODS, is forthcoming 9/6/22 from June Road Press, and is available now for preorder. I’m so grateful to my publisher and to share this book with the world. Please feel free to reach out at redsofasalon@gmail.com if…

  • How to Ask for Money as a Poet: A Drama in Ten Parts

    1. Start by actually writing poems. Find that you’re sneaking in writing time wherever you can get it to fit. 2. Realize you have a book inside you. 3. Get really excited you have a book inside you. 4. Apply for artist residencies so that you can have the uninterrupted time and space you need…

  • A Day in the Life: Here’s What a Day of Writing Poetry Looks Like

    In my last post I talked about taking myself on as a client, trying to schedule my own writing time while working as a busy freelance editor––which is easier said than done. In the mean time, I had been wanting to visit The Head and the Hand Press, a local small press that also functions…

  • How Hurricane Sandy Got Me Out of My Writing Rut

    Sometimes it takes a hurricane to get yourself out of a writing rut. For me that’s exactly what happened. I had waited out the hurricane safely in my apartment in West Philadelphia. Though we had prepared by stocking up on bottled water, cans of soup, and a really freaky weather radio, we had power the…

  • The Rhythm of Work and Rest: How the Pomodoro Technique and Keeping Shabbat Have Improved my Editing

    I was recently talking to a computer programmer friend and commiserating about the difficulty of focusing. As an editor who often spends hours and hours in front of a computer screen staring at words, I wanted to be able to focus better and for longer. As a computer programmer, my friend shared the same issue.…

  • Blog Hop: The Next Big Thing

    Thanks so much to Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick for tagging me in the Next Big Thing. Most of the poets tagged in this blog hop have discussed new books or works in progress. While I do have a brand new set of poems that I’m excited to be working on, I don’t think it will be…

  • Marketing Gurus Shmurus

    For this hesitant blogger over here at BlogPhobia, it may be unsurprising to discover that I don’t read blogs all that often. Most of my aversion has to do with general information overload, in addition to trying to squeeze lots of other things into my day (like yoga, exercise, meditation, writing, researching, working on my…

  • On Guest Blogging (the easy way to blog for blogphobics)

    In the near future I will post a link to a guest blog that I wrote for an organization that I deeply admire. It reminded me of that fact that before I started my own blog (a mere few days ago!) I did do some guest blogging on occasion. I realize that part of the…

  • BlogPhobia: A Blog about Fear of Blogging, and Other Random Thoughts

    I have avoided blogging for years. I’m a writer. I think presenting writing quickly on the Internet is the opposite of what writing is about. Writing should be slow, deliberate, well-crafted, edited, revised, and should only be published when it’s really ready. So blogging turned me off immediately. However, over the years, I’ve been invited…