Frum N' Flipping

 All Orthodox Jewish publications are censored. That’s a fact of life I grew up with. Our newspapers were founded by political parties, our magazines are independent, but still establish a ‘rabbinical board’ in order to pass muster. The goal is always to be worthy to be brought into any Frum home, to be left on a coffee table in front of the Shabbos candles, and read by readers of any age and any grade, without raising awkward questions.   My mother is a writer, so from my childhood I was privy to behind the scenes debates between writers and editors and rabbinical boards. One particularly right-wing newspaper made her take out all physical descriptions of women from her serial. “ Golden braid ”. “ Hazel eyes ”. It all had to go. We joked about it around the Shabbos table, the changes each editor and each rabbi asked for, not caring about historical accuracy or craft, their only goal a preset template of modesty. I accepted the censorship as a given, as the way it had to...

  This is the story of how I wrote my novel. Now that I have a (fabulous, wonderful) agent , I feel I can finally say – I did it! I wrote a book! Even though, why should we wait for affirmation from others? If you’ve written a book, and feel satisfied with it, celebrate it now! Even though perhaps I’m being premature, because what if no editor likes my story and it languishes unpublishable on my Google drive? But it is a book. And people (unrelated strangers!) have read and liked it. And heck, I’ll say it, I’ve read and it and been very proud of myself, in that "did I really write that?" way. Anyway, back to the story-   I wrote a novel, and this is the story of that story. 15 years ago, when I was a single serial-Shidduch-dates (think Faye on Jewish Matchmaking style Shidduch dates), I used to blog about girl-going-on-arranged-matches-with-yeshiva-students who balances that with being a woman-software-engineer-in-hi-tech. I flittered between 2 worlds, every day, a...