My writing buddies know that I agonize about writing from the viewpoints of characters that are not me. I constantly question whether I have the right to write about a Jewish character who isn’t Reconstructionist or at least Conservative. But Reconstructionist Judaism is a tiny percent of Jews, who are a tiny percent of the…

One fascinating part of the Enneagram are the “subtypes.” I’ve heard subtypes described as the part of Maslow’s Hierarchy that we are most concerned meeting. (And the numbers are our strategies for meeting them.) There are three subtypes, or instinctual variations: Self-Preservation (Preservers), Sexual (Transmitters), and Social (Navigators). Self-Preservation-focused people are primarily concerned with the…

A friend introduced me to the Enneagram recently as a tool for understanding character development and motivation. I’ve been playing with it since. I find it pretty easy now to assign most characters I read about or see in tv or movies to their numbers. Using it for creation feels a bit backwards though. I…