Diane Helentjaris
Bio
Diane Helentjaris uncovers the overlooked. Her latest book Diaspora is a poetry chapbook of the aftermath of immigration. www.dianehelentjaris.com
Stories (58/0)
How You Can Cheap Out On Your Food Budget and Still Eat Well
My friend’s face scrunched up in anticipation, his eyes crinkled shut. The fingers of my left hand splayed over his deltoid, pulling the skin taut to stabilize my target.With the newly learned choreography of a spiraling motion, I cleansed his arm with an alcohol wipe. Then sucked in a breath.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Lifehack
Writing Prompts - Create Your Own
Blank pages come in myriad forms. Ghostly rectangles on desktop screens. College-lined blue on white cheap paper. Yellow schoolchild tablets. Heavy pebbly stationary with a monogram. Yet they have a commonality: blank pages beg to be filled. With writing.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
How to Organize Your Article Writing
Halloween was coming and I knew a ghost story. Bringing the tale of the priest, the farmer, and the traveler to the readers might seem simple — after all, the exorcism occurred over two hundred years ago. But, writing a compelling article required more than skill with words. There were historians to find and entice into an interview, a sunny village and a caretaker to photograph, a museum director to get on the phone, and old records to mine for information. As usually happens, once all the information became available, the story wasn’t as simple as I had thought. Unimaginable conflicts brewed even in the present day. Only after I pulled the parts together and really thought about things could I write a decent article and get it to my editor in time for a pre-Halloween publication.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
How to Get Started Writing Articles
If you yearn for readers, get busy writing articles. Over 224 million people read more than 7000 American magazines each year. Despite the headshakers predicting their demise, U.S. newspapers command a circulation of over 28 million people. Newsletters, blogs, and online sites devour additional non-fiction work. Approaches to beginning your article writing effort vary, but here are tips to consider:
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
Writing About Real People
Two of my kin show up in the files of the House Un-American Activities Committee. And not in a good way. Another relative claims folk heroine status for running her Old West brothel with audacity, rapacity and charity. These characters glitter irresistibly as potential stars in my writing. Hunched over computers, day in and day out, we writers pack memoires, novels, biographies and tales with real humans. Whether de-identified or presented whole cloth, their reality adds spice and the undeniable ring of authenticity.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
Editing Your Language Quirks
Recently struggling to polish my prose, an outline emerged from the word salad, a problem. I was repeatedly creating sentences which sounded good to me but were lousy English. These bastards finished with all the action, the accent, the “oomph” at their tail ends. My heritage language had stepped on my English; I had been writing with a German word order. Once I understood why I wrote this way, I stopped doing it.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Education
Obliterating Writer’s Block
As a pediatric intern, the term “writer’s block” was missing from my lexicon… The brick San Francisco hospital where I served my apprenticeship huddled in a swale. Down the street the old synagogue Jim Jones had rented as “Peoples’ Temple” before heading off to Guyana bellied up to the sidewalk. A few months after starting my internship in 1978, Jones would orchestrate the Jonestown Massacre. Distraught grandparents soon appeared at our clinic, seeking dental records for their lost kin. Nine days after the Jonestown mass suicide and murders, on November 27, San Francisco’s mayor, George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. Amid the chaos, medical care at the hospital soldiered on, following centuries-old patterns of care. Like our professional forebears, good medicine mandated written recounting of our patients’ medical history, descriptions of their condition, and plans for treatment. These handwritten records were the backbone of coordinating patients’ care, shared with professionals from nurses to respiratory therapists to social workers. My fellow physicians and I wrote them immediately and without fail.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
Get the Most Out of Your Job Interview
Job interviews shine as critical pivot points in our lives, opening and closing doors to new opportunities. Although the process often feels like a passive one, there’s plenty of room for life-changing action by the applicant. With attention, you can accrue better benefits, raise your starting salary, and duck signing up for a miserable job. Here’s a few of the actions I’ve learned as a hiring manager and an applicant:
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
How to Do Your Writing Research from Home
Who needs to know if women wore panties in Colonial America? You might if you’re a writer. Facts. Facts lend credibility. Facts answer reader’s questions. Facts might be the only reason your article is read from beginning to end. And if you parrot information every fifteen-year-old student knows, your writing will be superfluous. Before you heave a sigh and wonder how you’re going to pay for a trip to Williamsburg to study early American clothing, relax. Researching from your home office or even your mother’s kitchen table can be as good and often better than physically traipsing around the planet.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Journal
The Letter
Leggy geraniums splashed their red against the window. Through its panes, May watched streams of students, like bees winging to flowers, crisscross the University green. Ornate sandstone and limestone buildings ringed the oval lawn. Silent, sitting on a hard wooden chair at the end of the professor desk, she waited. With a start, she realized she’d been holding her breath.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Fiction
Escape from the Grassland
Scurrying across the train platform, Lydia glanced over her shoulder. Dark grey clouds stretched from the horizon, barreling her way. An icy prickle of anxiety snaked up the back of her neck. She paused on the platform. What was she forgetting…She’d been so worried they’d catch her as she left.
By Diane Helentjaris2 years ago in Fiction
