Silver Linings in a Snowstorm

Posted on January 24, 2024 by dinafried

Yesterday I was supposed to have my book launch reading for Immigrants at the Odyssey Bookshop, but the weather gods had other ideas. The forecast was for snow, sleet, and/or freezing rain starting in the late afternoon and continuing all the way into this morning. While accumulations were not expected to be significant, the roads were expected to be slippery.

While I’m an admitted snowphobe when it comes to driving, I knew I’d likely be able to make it to the bookstore, which is only 5 minutes away from my house. But I also knew that others who were planning to come were driving much longer distances. I didn’t want to ask people to risk their safety. And I didn’t want to risk a low turnout. Even though I’d already bought the snacks and the ingredients for brownie-making, I decided it would be best to postpone.

I don’t know if it’s from being born under the sign of Gemini, but communication has always been huge value for me. My pet peeve is when people don’t return my calls or texts, and it infuriates me when I’m not communicated information I need. So, even though the bookstore was willing to post on social media and notify the people who’d actually signed up to attend the event, I wanted to make sure that people who were thinking about coming, or might have been planning to come and not signed up, didn’t make an unnecessary drive through the slush or ice only to find out the event had been cancelled.

This meant a whole lot of texting, emailing, FB messaging, social media posts, etc. And it meant I ended up connecting with people I hadn’t spoken to directly, which felt really lovely. While my core identity is introvert, I definitely have an extroverted side, and all that communication gave me a surge of energy that kept me going and focused on the task. I was so touched by how many people answered my messages in a warm and personal way who thanked me for making a call on the side of safety. And I was surprised by the number of people who said they had planned to come, or that they couldn’t have come tonight but they could come on the new date. It felt like such an overwhelming bubble of support from my community, this big universal love…

Between all this, I was also using that surge of energy to attend to political issues involving real immigrants, working with my immigration justice affinity group on a short emergency mailing to drive calls to Congress against the potential Senate deal that would trade away current protections and due process for people at the border seeking asylum and expand deportation of people who are already here, all in exchange for more military weapons for the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. You can read more about that here.

So, I guess there are silver linings in a snowstorm–including the beautiful scenery when I woke up on Wednesday morning.

And, I was told by one friend that the new date February 7, has much better numerology–#8, a number which supposedly resonates with self-confidence, inner strength, and inner wisdom, among other things. I don’t know very much about numerology, but I’ll take it.

Hope to see some of you local people at the Odyssey Bookshop on February 7.

Shadowboxing the Spotlight

Posted on January 11, 2024 by dinafried

Last Friday, even though I was thrilled to see this wonderful review/feature story on Immigrants come out in our local newspaper, I found myself facing the familiar discomfort of the spotlight. While I did what I knew I was supposed to do as a good book marketer: posting the link widely on social media and sending it around by email, there was a part of myself that just wanted to crawl into a dark place and hide from the rushing current of accolades. Can’t I just be humble? that small inner part of me whined. Why do I have to call so much attention to myself?

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the spotlight since I was little and wanted to be a Broadway musical star. Then in high school, I think I went for an entire year without raising my hand in class. As an adult, there’s a part of me (who lives with the hider) that loves to perform. I enjoy public speaking (something most people hate) whether I’m reading my work, speaking at a rally, facilitating a gathering or ritual, or presenting in a workshop. I might be a little bit nervous with bigger audiences or unfamiliar contexts, but I’ve been able to quell that by imagining myself *talking to* a body of individuals rather than *speaking at* them. In other words, as I’ve said many times to college students in business communication classes or adult Continuing Ed students in my course, “Public Speaking for the Terrified,” take the “public” out of public speaking and think of the experience as simply speaking to other individuals from your heart on something you care about.

While I certainly care about my writing, and wouldn’t have a problem speaking about it to an audience of 5 or 500, marketing feels like an entirely different animal. For one thing, I’m sending/posting material that people aren’t necessarily asking for and competing with thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing. How can I justify contributing to our daily overwhelm of information overload? And if you ask the marketing gurus of this world, I’m likely not doing nearly enough for my book to make a splash, which is not good news to the perfectionist straight-A schoolgirl who also lives inside me along with the hider and the spotlight-seeker.

But hey, maybe a splash isn’t the goal here. Maybe I can be satisfied with a quiet series of ripples. Really, I just want people to read the book, my way of speaking from the heart on something I care about. If they want to read it, that is. I don’t need or want to be an arm-twister. Life is short. People are busy. We make our choices about what nurtures us.

A friend once told me I should think of all this marketing as an offering or invitation. But when you invite 50 people to a party and only 10 people come, it’s hard not to feel like there’s something wrong with you. Easier not to have the party in the first place, which has often been my fall-back. But with marketing you just have to have the party. And then another party, and another. And some of us just aren’t party-goers no matter how well I might describe the enticing activities or the mouth-watering food.

If there’s a conclusion to all of this, I haven’t found it. Other than to bravely step into the spotlight when it’s shining right beside me, but not worry too much or run too hard when it’s not within my sight or grasp. Hopefully that spotlight’s shining on someone else during those times. Someone who is also speaking from their heart.

TAKING STOCK OF 2023

Posted on December 27, 2023 by dinafried

As the year draws to a close, here’s what I’ve done in the publication/submission universe:

POETRY:

86 rejections
18 journals accepted 22 poems (Including one poem in Rattle!)
1 chapbook accepted–Very excited about Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, which is forthcoming from Querencia Press in 2024. This dedicated and spirited small press has been a dream to work with. Cover reveal is coming soon!
2 Pushcart Prize Nominations: Thank you so much to Gyroscope Review and the River Heron Review for this recognition.
20 submissions still pending

SHORT FICTION:

Since I knew Immigrants was coming out soon, I only sent out one short story that wasn’t in the collection. That story got 12 rejections, with 2 pending.

The more exciting news on this front was that Immigrants did come out just last month and has already gotten some lovely reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. (Of the 13 stories in this book, 8 have been previously published by other journals.)

For those of you playing the submission game, be aware that stories, especially those on the longer side are harder to publish than poems, especially for a print journal that has to deal with space considerations.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION:

Essays I sent out were rejected 11 times, with 6 submissions still pending. One of the rejections made it to a final round and one of the pending submissions is in the final round. Also in this category–2 guest columns submitted to and published by our local newspaper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette: Losing the Light and Let Them Wear Tutus.

LONGER WORK:

I queried 27 agents this year about my music memoir, Imperfect Pitch. Three agents sent actual rejection letters, 3 are still pending (sent within the last three months), and 21 ghosted me. Of those that ghosted, 2 of them first asked to see a proposal and then ghosted when I followed up.

I also sent the book to three small presses and received 2 rejections. One small press submission is still pending.

And finally, I did take another stab at submitting a novel I’d given up on when I found out that Delphinium was considering unagented queries. The editor asked to see the whole book, and rejected it a month later with a letter that began, “Deer Dina…”

All these rejections may sound depressing, but I’m really okay with them. I’m glad to have far exceeded my goal of getting 100 rejections, and as I’ve said to many fellow writers, I make a point of not letting any rejection bother me for more than 10 minutes.

Besides the successes are incredibly sweet, and I’m grateful (and, quite honestly, also terrified) any time some of my words make it past my computer into the big, wide world.

Onward to 2024. Happy New Year!

Immigrants, Centos, and Celebrations

Posted on December 14, 2023 by dinafried

Last night I read at the annual 30 Poems in November reading, an annual event where each writer who participated in the fundraiser is asked to read one poem. Meanwhile, I’ve been overwhelmed by my writing/book-marketing to-do list, at the top of which is wrestling these poems to have something to send to donors by the end of the month, and continuing to spread the word about Immigrants through my web of connected networks while taking the first dips into investigating blogs, podcasts, social media sites, etc. where I don’t have a personal connection. (NOTE: Any suggestions are welcome!!!)

Most moving at last night’s reading was hearing from three of the students at the Center for New Americans who shared heart-felt writing in both English and their native languages, as well as their deep gratitude for the hard-working teachers at CNA who are helping them build their new lives.

As the negative rhetoric around immigrants starts to build again, with Republicans in Congress demanding changes in immigration policy in exchange for aid to the Ukraine that would make it even harder for people threatened by violence to escape to the safety of our country, I’m remembering a writing workshop I co-led for women in the border camp. We introduced the beautiful picture book, Somos Como Los Nubes (We Are Like the Clouds) by Salvadoran poet, Jose Argueta, which talks about the hopes and dreams of Central American children walking thousands of miles in search of safety.

Then we asked the women to write or draw their response to the book. One woman sat and started to cry. “I can’t write,” she told me. Having heard this many times from leading writing workshops for most of my adult life, I mustered up my Spanish to give her a pep talk on writers’ block. But she wasn’t talking about writers’ block. She was talking about illiteracy. I felt so embarrassed as I asked a more fluent Spanish speaker to act as her scribe, but recognized that my embarrassment was nothing compared to hers. And when it was time for her to share, her story, like every story we heard that day about kidnapping, lost livelihoods, rape, threatened or dead children broke our hearts.

While only one of the stories in Immigrants is about the border, I wrote the book to showcase all the ways that immigrants interface in our lives. While some of the stories are more political than others, in all of them, the human story takes center stage. As I worry about all the ways the U.S. is becoming less safe, it feels like an impossible nightmare to think about leaving my home to go somewhere strange and potentially unwelcoming, especially today as the winter sun is slicing a comforting wedge of light through my large porch windows. Yet, that’s what the immigrants coming to this country did–an act of incredible bravery to leave everything you know. And that’s what people displaced in wars have to do, with no opportunity for choice.

But I didn’t read a poem about politics last night. My poem, a cento, was about loving the world despite its difficulties. A cento, which is a collage of lines from other poems, might be a bit of a cheat, but hey, when you have to write 30 poems in a month, sometimes you need to take some shortcuts. And the fun thing about this one was that I only used poems for source material from the prompts that were sent out every day to participating writers.

So next time you’re stuck, leaf through some poems and write down lines that strike you (best if you’re not sure why) and then try to meld them together. I guarantee, this will be fun, even if you’re just tasting other people’s words, whether or not you come up with a poem of your own. Here are the first few lines of my cento. Poetic sources are from Mary Oliver, Dean Young, Mahmoud Darwish, Winnie Lewis Gravitt and Richard Fox.

VOCATION

My work is loving the world.
Because of you, I’m talking to crickets, clouds.
I have a saturated meadow,
where, like plants sprouting where they don’t belong,
sorrow, grief and trouble sit like blackbirds on the fence
scanning the topography of prayer

The Making of a Book Cover

Posted on August 15, 2023 by dinafried

There’s an old adage… you can’t judge a book by its cover, meaning (according to the Brittanica Dictionary) “that you shouldn’t judge someone or something based only on what you see on the outside or only on what you perceive without knowing the full situation.” It’s a good reminder to try not to make snap judgments about people and situations.

However, when it comes to actual reading materials, I think many of us fall into the trap of judging books by their covers.

Let’s face it: So many books, so little time. If I’m in a bookstore with the goal of choosing just one book (even if I might want to buy 20) the cover–as well as the title–WILL play a huge role in my decision, especially if the author is unknown to me, or the book hasn’t been specifically recommended. And I don’t even consider myself a visual person, so I think this may be even more true for others.

That’s why the cover of a book is so important.

My first two books were published by major houses, which meant I had very little say over their covers–or titles, both of which were changed from my originals. I could suggest tweaks but I had no say over the whole concept. I was lucky to love the cover for my first book, Escaping Into the Night, but I never liked the cover for my second book, Playing Dad’s Song. It wasn’t much consolation that the book with the cover I liked did way better than the book with the cover I didn’t like. I couldn’t help but wonder and wish that a stronger cover would have made a difference with this book’s performance in the market.

My third book, Wolf in the Suitcase, was a poetry chapbook published by a small press, and I had a lot of say in the cover design. I chose a painting by my late father-in-law, Michihiro Yoshida, in part to honor him post-mortem. Since poetry is tough to sell to people who don’t know you, I didn’t really think too much about market impacts, though I hoped the bright and engaging colors would evoke interest.

And this brings me to my current short-story collection, Immigrants, coming soon! When the publisher, Creators Press, first asked me for my ideas, I sent a couple of photos I’d taken on my trip to the U.S./Mexico border, but they thought these images were too blatant, especially since most of the stories weren’t about the border. After their team generated a list of different ideas, we followed up on two possibilities: a person at a crossroads, and a half-hidden face. When the designer worked up both images, it was clear to me that the face was the winner.

Still, there were several more iterations. The first face looked too white, the second too young and romantic. In a subsequent draft, the tear in the curtain looked too ill-defined, so the designer came up with the idea of adding barbed wire. This certainly raised the clarity and emotional temperature; however, I was worried about the implied violence in the image, since the emphasis of the book is more about human connections than about politics. So I asked the designer for one draft with the barbed wire and one without, and then asked around 15 people–writers, artists, and activists–to comment on which one they liked better.

While the majority of those I asked seemed to think the barbed wire image was more powerful, those who didn’t like it, felt strongly (as I did) that the implied violence was a turn-off. But one of the people I asked, got her artistic juices flowing. After printing and cutting up different pieces of the image, she came up with a hybrid of the two that had pleats and just a hint of barbed wire, which the designer took as a model for the final draft. While I was a bit worried about being so picky and taking so long, I was happy that the designer (instead of thinking I was a pain in the butt) thanked me and said, “I feel like this has been a very rewarding process so far, and I’m really excited about the final product we can achieve!”

So, there we have it. Who knows what impact the cover will have on the book’s success, but I hope that if Immigrants is judged by its cover, it will be judged favorably.

To subscribe to this blog, sign up at ddinafriedman.substack.com

The Quest for Perfect Words

Posted on February 22, 2023 by dinafried

It’s amazing how many times I can edit the same piece of writing. For the last five days, I’ve hunkered over Ganesh Ascends to Heaven, about a woman who kills an Indian pedestrian in the U.S. and goes to India to try to make sense of the man’s paintings and her own life. It’s one of the stories in my forthcoming collection, Immigrants (Creators Press, Fall 2023).

So I’ve started every morning re-reading the same 14 pages, shifting pieces of paragraphs back and forth–up and down the page, deleting words and putting them back in; deleting commas and putting them back in; going back to a file of an earlier draft to splice in a sentence I’d eliminated, all in the quest of trying to make the story sail more smoothly.

And the dirty truth: I couldn’t tell you with certainty whether what I’ve come up with is better than what I had before. But I think it is! At least–today–I like it a whole lot better!

I will say this: it absolutely helps me to take breaks from my writing, long breaks, where I can return to what I’ve written with my mind in a totally different place and assess the story as if I’m reading it, rather than writing it. I just have to hope that I don’t have too many “What Was I Thinking” moments that Christine Lavin totally nails in her very funny song.

The important thing to remember is that everything is changeable, but also to take care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

What I noticed on the initial read this round, having not looked at the story for a couple of months was a clunkiness to the writing–details that didn’t need to be there that slowed the story down. So, I was able to chop out 300 words, shortening the story by an entire page, with no essence lost.

And I noticed more sloppiness–places where I used the same verb or a weak verb, or too many instances of words like “that” or “just.” (And this was after spending a month last year on micro-editing the entire collection, focusing entirely on sentence structure and word choices.)

And it’s also after two rounds of editing by my publisher, who has been great at flagging larger contextual/developmental questions as well as clunky and ungrammatical phrases.

So the underlying moral of this story–perfection is elusive, like the graph going toward infinity. Yet, I feel energized pursuing it, getting closer and closer to that unreachable axis.