I was thrilled to pass calculus. Years of checking addition with subtraction, of scrutinizing multiplication through division, and of examining functions via the employment of inverse functions successfully guided me to a culmination of being able to verify integration by means of differentiation. Complimentary processes had brought me good outcomes in math.

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Analogously, reciprocal procedures brought me good outcomes in writing.

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Reading chapter books enabled me to write funky fables for my younger sister. Consuming poetry led me to structuring rudimentary verse for my third grade teacher. Perusing nonfiction caused me to create diatribes for the most cherished of my stuffed animals.

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As I passed in age from single to double digits, I read more and wrote more. Eventually, I learned enough to teach college-level literature, composition, communications, philosophy and sociology. My textual contributions became my research as presented at international conferences and my scholarly findings as provided in professional journals.

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Subsequently, my children introduced me to the palpable glop and the denizens of their pretend worlds. Whereas I made drafts of poems and essays and scribbled down a book or two, during those years I allowed and even encouraged my children’s insistence on attending to their ladybugs and gelatinous monsters to distract me from distributing my ideas.

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Later, when my husband and I returned to a religious way of life, moving first to a religious community and then to Israel, my teens wanted a translator, not a nature lover. The local universities wanted a Hebrew-speaking faculty member, not an adept Anglo. Rather than dwell on my role displacement, I wrote.

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First, I documented my acculturation process in The Jerusalem Post and shared spiritual poetry in Poetry Super Highway and The New Vilna Review. Shortly thereafter, I provided content for The Shiur Times, for Hamodia and for Mishpacha. Next, I blogged for Type-A Mom and became a columnist for The Mother Magazine. In short time, I was writing for dozens of venues.

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En route, I adopted a hibernaculum of imaginary hedgehogs. Those sulky muses spurred me to additionally compose speculative and literary fiction, to gyrate new poems, and to engender fresh essays. They insisted that I again habituate myself to ravenous reading, too.

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Consequently, beyond the hours I spent informally eating up essentially anonymous collections, individual bits by named newbies, or the latest and greatest particulars by established authors, I also professionally read fiction for Bewildering Stories, nonfiction for Notes and Grace Notes, and poetry for Sotto Voce. Moreover, I began publishing literary criticism at Tangent and began assessing texts within the auspices of a handful of writers’ circles. This immersion in “reverse rhetoric,” coupled with the feedback I was receiving, on my own work, from other writers and editors, helped me to become more disciplined and introduced me both to new skills and to new levels of old skills.

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I began to organize my raw ideas in electronic files, to keep track of strange, yet succulent words, and to salvage snippets of prose or poetics trimmed from work heading to market. I became more heedful of “describing” instead of “professing,” of differentiating among characters’ voices via both semantic and syntactical devices, and of employing the necessary steps for creating ostensibly seamless narrative. I credit this steeping of myself in the opposite processes of reading and writing for the sprouting of my work in hundreds of places.

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Other benefits I’ve derived from this type of verification include an increase in awards and an upsurge in media opportunities. This mathematics of writing recently generated a fiction honor from Strange Weird and Wonderful and a nomination, from The Shine Journal, for the Pushcart Prize, in the genre of poetry. What’s more, these complimentary operations are increasing the acceptance rate of my book-length projects. The existence of my newest compilation of essays, Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting proves how reliably this rechecking works.

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In the past, inverse operations helped me to succeed with calculus. Today, such processes help me to achieve through my words.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

KJ Hannah Greenberg, Guest Blogger

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Pushcart Prize nominee, KJ Hannah Greenberg's work has appeared in The Jerusalem Post, Mother Magazine and The New Vilna Review, among others. She has been an editor at Bewildering Stories and Sotto Voce and critic at Tangent. She is also the recipient of several writing awards, including a fiction honor from Strange, Weird and Wonderful. She is the author of Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting, which is available at French Creek Press and on Amazon.com. Please contact her at http://kjhannahgreenberg.net  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor