Riff by Writers at Large
CONTRIBUTE
Riff by Writers at Large
CONTRIBUTE
The Email

The Email

by | Feb 24, 2021 | Stranger Than Fiction, Walk the Talk | 1 comment

I’ve just gotten an email. Hope fades like a rainbow as I scan to the part where they tell me that my story isn’t a good fit for the magazine and wish me luck on finding a home. This time, they’ve included reviewer feedback. I try downloading the attachment on my iPhone as I’m away from my laptop but it’s painfully slow, so I give up.

I don’t want to read these comments, partly because I dread discovering that I’ve done something really stupid, the recollection of which I’m trying to resist, but mostly because I fear that reading these comments may crush any lingering desire I have to write.

I know, I know—all about the gazillions of rejections Stephen King or J.K. Rowling (not comparing myself to them) got. You just have to persist. Rejection is part of the game. If you aren’t getting rejected, you’re not writing. I’m not trying to be a best-selling novelist, but I would be happier if my stories had a home.

I have been writing for 14 years, and I’m humble enough to know that I still have a lot to learn.

“Rejection is part of the game. If you aren’t getting rejected, you’re not writing.”

 

I have read dozens of books on writing techniques and on story and the hero’s journey—all written by the Greats. I have found the golden nuggets and tried incorporating them into my writing. I have attended writing workshops where we critiqued one another’s writing.

 

The net result of all this training is that I came to a point where I had read so much about writing, I couldn’t write anymore. The creative juice had evaporated. I was trying to be a writer and a censor, which doesn’t work.

 

Walking a thin line

On the one hand, I must write and write and get better at my craft. One great inspiration for just that has been Dorothea Brande’s book Becoming a Writer. Her basic premise is that writers often make the mistake of putting the focus on learning the craft of writing long before we ever become writers—you know those people who sit down and write. I took this to heart and for several months did morning writings just about every day, and after about 100,000 words, proved to myself that I could write. And out of those daily writings, I had quite a few short stories—stories that I polished and sent out to a few literary journals only to get the same message—your story is not a good fit.

 

Becoming a Writer Dorothea Brande
Sometimes I feel that we writers burden ourselves with too much asking for permission. I have started rethinking the route of submitting (pun intended) to literary journals. Do I need a license from them to call myself a writer? A painter paints. She puts her paintings out for display and says, “Here is my art. Take it or leave it.” People don’t typically come along and say, “You know, I think you need to make those trees a deeper green and you have way too many stars in that sky. Revise it.” And so I have asked myself why a writer can’t simply put out a work and say, “Here it is.” To answer a somewhat rhetorical question, it is because a publisher (we are not even talking, a film producer) needs to invest in your writing. Errors don’t fare well with printing presses.

 

It isn’t you simply buying the canvas and producing the whole thing yourself. Now if that painter wants her art hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her works have to be accepted.

It’s the same with a literary magazine. The editors must decide out of hundreds or thousands of submissions what to print. Today we can self-publish, so maybe I’m whining over a moot point.

But more to my point, the critiques and rejections, which I feel authors face far too many of, can inhibit a writer. I once had a story rejected because the main character, who happened to be a woman, hated (and was poor at) math and science. The magazine was willing to publish the story, provided I changed the character to a male. I am a woman writing about a girl who hates math. Is this really sexually biased?

Last night I had a dream. My husband and I were living in a large house with lots of people. We had a shared central living room and all around it, up and down the stairs, our housemates had their bedrooms or sleeping quarters. One day I was walking down a hallway and a woman was getting rid of an old mattress that had been standing up against the wall for ages. The space looked so nice without the mattress that everyone started relooking at their own areas and rearranging things. We all worked on this for several days.

At one point, I walked into the space that had once been the living room and saw that it no longer looked like a room. With all this rearranging, we had destroyed the very part of the house that we loved. Everyone had worked so hard to make the changes that no one wanted to admit that we had gone too far. At one point we were having a house meeting when I stood up and adamantly declared that the previous living room had been wonderful and that we needed to put it back the way it was. Then I woke up.

I’m thankful for this timely dream because it pinpoints the problem with the constant critiquing: the story you wrote can lose its essence. When is enough, enough?  When do you say, “This is it, I have created this work and I am happy with it”?  When—and how—do we stop asking for permission?

Now, I think I’ll go read that email attachment.

Perspectives from Across the Atlantic

Perspectives from Across the Atlantic

by | Nov 4, 2020 | For the Sake of Argument, Stranger Than Fiction | 0 comments

On March 11, the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, announced that Denmark would soon be going into lockdown. In just a few days, I would be celebrating my eleventh year as an American ex-patriot living in Denmark. It felt odd that schools, restaurants, movie theatres and shops would be closing down. It was surreal to see keep-your-distance markings painted on the floors by the grocery check-out lines and to chat with the cashier through a Plexiglas barrier. We watched the horrific footage of Corona virus as it gripped Italy and Spain. Things felt strange in an Orwellian sense and I experienced uncertainty, but not fear.

The Prime Minister had a plan—2.6 billion Danish kroner had been set aside to cover 75% of the salaries of employees from private Danish companies who would otherwise have been fired. The companies would need to pay the remaining 25%. Hourly wage earners who were out of work would receive 90% of their salaries, up to about 4100 in USD, from the Danish government. Small companies could also apply for assistance in the months to come if they showed at least a 30% decrease in income as a result of the pandemic.

My husband and I run two small businesses. The main one is a tutoring practice, where kids come after school for extra help with Danish, Math or English. We also have an editing and translations company. With the kids being out of school and families being told not to visit friends or relatives, we suddenly lost our students and no new students would be signing up for a while. We wanted to avoid asking the government for help, so we tried to focus more on translations and editing while knowing that if we had substantial income loss, we would be helped. This put us at ease.

We took walks around the neighborhood, making sure to observe social distancing protocol. We saw whole families walking together, and we were lucky that the endless rain of the last two months had passed. People seemed to be enjoying the nice weather and using the time to get more fresh air and exercise. Folks seemed mostly concerned about not spreading the virus to others, especially older people. Adults felt badly for the young people, who quickly grew restless. Teens, in particular, were extremely stressed out and disappointed about not being able to see their friends. Parties were cancelled, confirmations were cancelled, weddings were cancelled and so were concerts, festivals and sporting events, but despite these setbacks I sensed a strong feeling of solidarity among the population. It seemed that most people viewed it as their civic duty to keep others safe.

“Folks seemed mostly concerned about not spreading the virus to others…”

In 2007 I got engaged to Hans-Henrik, a Dane who had been working and living in the US for 26 years. We were living in New Rochelle, New York, which we loved, but after many years of working for others, we wanted to become self-employed, preferably from home. Hans-Henrik wanted to become a freelance translator and I wanted to break into language editing and proofreading after years of teaching ESL. I wanted something flexible, something that would allow me to pursue other passions that had always been put on the back burner—writing and singing. I was 45 at the time and Hans–Henrik, 56. To become entrepreneurs so late in life was damned risky.  

I would know. I had previously spent 11 months in LA helping a friend launch a company that got people out of foreclosure. My job was to interview applicants to determine their eligibility. Being eligible meant that the homeowner had 1) a legitimate hardship that prevented them from being able to pay their mortgage, and 2) a solution to the hardship and/or had a way to get caught up with their payments. Our job was to negotiate a realistic payment plan with the bank on behalf of our client.  

During that time, I heard hundreds of stories from people who were losing their homes and the circumstances that had led to it. And while I occasionally spoke to a person who had been irresponsible with their finances, most of the folks I interviewed had simply run into difficult situations that could have happened to anyone. They’d lost a job or a household wage-earner, or maybe they or a family member had become ill and racked up huge hospital bills and therefore insurmountable debt. I saw how easy it was to become destitute and yes, even homeless almost overnight. (This would later become the subject of a screenplay I wrote, but that is another story.) It was against this backdrop that we ventured to start our own business. 

Meanwhile, having never been to Scandinavia or Europe, I suggested holding our wedding in Demark, which we did in May of 2008. On our wedding night while gazing at the stars in a perfectly clear sky, it was my turn to pop a question. I asked Hans-Henrik how he would feel about moving back to Denmark. I think it caught him by surprise, but he seemed happy. His mother had recently turned 90 and though she was in good health, returning to Denmark meant he’d be able to spend time with her.  

When we told members of Hans-Henrik’s family about our idea, they were skeptical. They warned us that this wonderful weather we’d been having was record-breaking. (In Denmark the official weather service counts sunshine hours throughout the year because there are so few of them.) They reminded us that we were on our honeymoon and that perhaps we were viewing Denmark through fairytale eyes. Fairytale eyes or not, I fell in love with Denmark.

After returning to New York, we contacted the Danish Embassy and started an application for me to become a resident. We had to come up with about 10,000 dollars that would stay frozen in a bank account as security that I wouldn’t become a burden on the state should something happen. A year later we relocated to a suburb of Copenhagen, living with Hans–Henrik’s brother while we got established. 

Enjoy life

As soon as we arrived, I registered with the local municipal office. A couple of weeks later I received an insurance card and could enroll in free Danish language lessons. I obtained temporary residence for three years. Permanent residence depended on several things, including passing a Danish language exam and being economically self-sufficient. It was not enough that I was married to a Dane—I needed to demonstrate that I was a contributing member of society and would not become a financial burden to the state. I had to prove that I had full–time work.

Danes are called the happiest people in the world or a bunch of socialists, depending on who is talking.

 Danes are called the happiest people in the world or a bunch of socialists, depending on who is talking. The healthcare, higher education and assistance to those in need are not free. Danes pay a lot of taxes, yet a Gallup poll of 2014 showed that 9 out of 10 Danes were happy to pay taxes, and here I cite why: 

The reason behind the high level of support for the welfare state in Denmark is the awareness of the fact that the welfare model turns our collective wealth into well-being. We are not paying taxes. We are investing in our society. We are purchasing quality of life.

(Source: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2016-01-20/why-danes-happily-pay-high-rates-of-taxes ) 

When a government invests in its people, regardless of their race, sex, religion, or anything else, everyone has a chance to attain a decent quality of life. In terms of finances, anyone who wants an education can get it here, whether it be university, trade school or business school. If you come from a poorer family neither you nor they have to worry about whether they’ll be able to afford your education. The investment we make in the form of taxes is used to create an infrastructure that supports human resources.

Many argue that if you give people a handout, you make them lazy. This is not the case. The government doesn’t just give people handouts. If you lose your job and don’t have unemployment insurance, you can get financial aid under the proviso that you actively seek work. This means applying for jobs, going on interviews, and regularly reporting your progress. If too much time goes by, you may be urged to do some “volunteer work” (which you are already getting paid to do) or settle for work that was not your first choice. This works as an incentive for the person to look harder. I have also seen many people get offered further education to make themselves more employable. I have not even gone into minimum wage here, but suffice it to say, people do not have to work two jobs to have a roof over their heads, food and health care.

I love my life in Denmark and feel it is a privilege to be here. What has made me the happiest is that here I have been able to create a space for my art. Most of my adult life, I have allowed my anxiety about financial survival to overpower my desire to create art. I saw this keenly during the end of my Danish language school when I read a fictionalized diary of Hans Christian Andersen. I had never realized that at the age of 14, he left his home town for Copenhagen to be a performing artist and writer with absolutely no guarantee of any kind. He was a tight rope walker without a net—something I have not been willing to do but deeply admire in others.  

“Rather than making me lazy, that net is what makes me braver and more productive.”

What I discovered, though, is that I like having that net beneath me. Rather than making me lazy, that net is what makes me braver and more productive. As I have had the chance to live in different countries outside of the US—Japan and Denmark—and personally experienced how it is to live in different societal structures, I have seen that it is possible to have a civic set-up that cares for the well-being of all without endangering the wealth and stature of the country.  

I am not saying that our system is perfect. No system really is, but from what I can see, it works.

And I admit that it is unfair to compare a country the size of Denmark to the United States. However, when I sit on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and hear criticism of the “radical left,” I realize how insulated some members of the US population have become. These “radical” changes that people are so afraid of are more the norm in the rest of the developed world, and the US is decades behind.

While political affiliation and racial inequality stand out as prominent issues, I believe that the paradigm shift we need in the US goes even deeper and embraces these elements. It has to do more fundamentally with what people consider to be human rights. I believe that making health care and education available to all people falls under human rights. These are in fact stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Without these basic needs being met, the playing field will never be level, nor will there be human, let alone equal, rights.  

I didn’t want to get political, but it is hard to avoid. The Trump era and now the Corona pandemic have brought about a great deal of hardship to America. Many of us have never been so confused or upset as in these last few years, but behind the turmoil, the noise and the conflict, is the purpose to have a better and more just future for all Americans.  

I have thought a lot about how this change could come about because it’s hard to imagine it happening to a country the size of the US, where there are such divergent viewpoints.

Perhaps the size of Denmark is the key. It is far easier for us to manage ourselves because we live in a country of about 5.8 million people. Is there a way to create change that does not just depend on who is in the Senate or House or in the Oval office? While we are working on change at a wider level, I believe we need to build communities at a grassroots level. Then people can choose the type of society they wish to live in. In the spirit of free competition, could a state, county, city, or even a town work to make itself “the place to be?” In other words, “Come to Maine, where you can have access to affordable health care, education, and financial assistance should you run into hard times.” If such communities were formed, they might attract like-minded people and grow.  

This is worth fighting for and I believe it is within reach.