Author: Amy Mittelman

Reentry

I have a list of maybe five or six topics that I was considering for this week’s blog post. As I sit here trying to write, I feel overwhelmed. As you may remember, for three weeks in February I was dealing with COVID. Both my husband and I were sick;  I was really sick, and he got a rebound case after we both had taken Paxil  for five days.

Shortly after he finally tested negative, we went away for two weeks to Florida to visit my aunt. The trip had its stressful moments, but the weather was beautiful and the ocean was gorgeous. We walked on the beach a lot and I swam most days. It was definitely a vacation mixed with familial responsibilities.

The Intercoastal

We have been back a few days and it’s been up and down with how focused I can be. The trip to Florida did restore my energy level which was set strongly depleted by COVID so that’s a good thing. However, life keeps intervening, occupying my brain, leaving less space available for things like blog posts.

Besides blog posts, the main thing I want to make progress on is my book. Since I can’t stand the thought of further revisions of my manuscript, I have decided to focus, once again, on trying to get a publisher. I spent a few days this week working on getting my submission packet in shape to start sending it out to a list of publishers I compiled before we left for Florida..

I intend to include a marketing plan along with my book proposal and CV. That is what I have been working on this week. I have a marketing plan I did after Brewing Battles was published. I developed it because if I had waited for my publisher to do any marketing, I would still be waiting.

I have been trying to use that marketing plan from 15 years ago as a template for a current marketing plan for Dames Dishes and Degrees. It was going okay till I got to the review section. Book publishing and marketing has changed tremendously since Brewing Battles was published. Whether or not a journal or magazine accepts books for review and publishes book reviews is not that easy to find out. My attempts to research that wound up sending me down a rabbit hole that was rather discouraging. I’m going to regroup and figure out how to tackle the reviews section and then move on to the other parts of the marketing plan. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Happy International Women’s Day

I know today is not my regular day to post but I did want to observe International Women’s Day. I would encourage everyone, as part of their celebration of the day, to begin reading Invisible Women, the book I posted about last week.

Another good thing to consider on this day is our own responsibility in dismantling white supremacy and patriarchy. Towards that end, I am linking to today’s post from the Anti-racism Daily which I started reading after George Floyd’s murder. I highly recommend the newsletter.

For a variety of reasons, I will not post again until March  31st. I hope everyone has a great rest of March. Once again Happy International Women’s Day.

Book Review: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

As I wrote in a previous post, I took a five-week class on submission for potential publication from writer’s digest university. One of the books I am using in my revised book proposal as a comparable title is Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez.

Because I had COVID, I had a lot of time on my hands. I watched a lot of television and read Invisible Women in three days. Although it is filled with statistics and analysis of data, it reads like a thriller. Perez is an excellent writer and has a crisp style in presenting the material.

She layers the information, one level of society upon another, so by the end you are left with the firm conviction that misogyny is embedded in every aspect of our lives.  Male is the default for everything ranging from safety net benefits to military armor. Women are at best an afterthought and at worst an aberration.

Invisible Women is a meta-analysis while my manuscript is more micro in its approach because I look at both individual and small groups of women who struggled to define themselves within this misogynistic, patriarchal world.

I highly recommend this book and encourage all of you to read it. It has renewed my commitment to feminism and strengthened my desire for a more equitable world.

COVID

I had COVID. Seeing those words feels strange. After almost 3 years of the pandemic, I felt lucky that neither my husband nor I had had the virus and I became complacent. It is human nature to believe that if something good happens to you that is a reflection of your strength, ability and intelligence. You caused the promotion. Your brilliance got you a book contract.

When bad things happen and they always do, one is less likely to attribute the occurrence to personal shortcomings. A bad thing feels like bad luck. The reality is that life is overwhelmingly random and to a great extent, we can’t control what happens to us, we can only control our reactions.

Having COVID has been one of the worst experiences of my life. I have rarely been so sick. Not only did I  feel terrible – my skin hurt to the touch and I was chilled to the bone – but the virus  put me in a very dark place emotionally and psychologically. I was in a deep hole that I didn’t see any way out of. I could not remember what my “normal” life consisted of. I had no awareness of how I could resume it.

Luckily, as the illness cleared, so did my mood. I am incredibly grateful for that. I am also so glad I had five doses of vaccine and was able to take Paxlovid. I am sure I would have been hospitalized without that.

New Skates

Today I’m going to pick up my new skates. I bought my current skates about ten years ago online. At that time I didn’t skate as much as I do now and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. From my teenage years  to my forties, I had a pair of skates that my parents probably bought for me when I stopped growing. As I have mentioned in other posts, I skated with my father and siblings for many years when I was a child. In my forties I skated with my children and wanted a new pair. I bought them at a local athletic supply store.

Ten years ago, I looked at what size those skates were and then I bought the same size from the online store. Everyone in my club uses the same person for skate sharpening and fitting and buying skates –  George from Skatesport in West Springfield, MA. 10 years ago, my new skates came with the blades unsharpened so I took them to George for sharpening.

The first time  I put them on and started skating, I realized they were probably too big. I bought my shoe size. Skate sizing is usually one size down. I have a size 10 foot, narrow so I should have bought size 9 skates. I unfortunately bought size 10 skates. Because the skates have been sharpened, I couldn’t return them.

Today, looking back on this experience,  I realize one option would have been to try to sell the new skates and buy another pair of skates that fit properly.  However this is where my personality and a big streak of cheapness came in. That possibility didn’t even occur to me. Instead,  I kept the skates, getting George to fix the insoles for a better fit. I’ve skated with them all these years.

About six months ago my coach said she thought that I needed to get a new pair of skates. This made me very nervous, but I have taken the leap or maybe I should say jump  so I have a skating pun in this post. The new skates cost considerably more than that pair I bought 10 years ago online but I have realized that you get what you pay for.

10 years ago when I bought  my current skates and skated on them for the first time, I didn’t have a clue what to do. My feet felt completely different in them and I had to adjust, which took a while. I’m worried about the same thing happening this time and that the adjustment might even be longer because of course I am 10 years older. It is possible if I want to look at this from a glass half full perspective that because these skates will fit so much better – they are a size and a half smaller and in a narrow width –  that the adjustment will take less time.

I will probably skate with them for the first time on Wednesday February 15. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

New Year News, Belatedly

I have been late in posting my plans for the new year – a month late , in fact. My main, overriding goal for 2023 is to get a book contract. In my quest to achieve that, I decided to take a class on Submission that Writer’s Digest University was offering.

I thought the class could help me develop my book proposal, so it is more appealing.  One of the class exercises has been to find books that I could use as “comps”, comparable titles, to convince an agent or publisher that my book has marketability.

The teacher set criteria for our choices which were books published two years ago or earlier and having at least 5,000 ratings on Amazon. That ratings number seems astronomical to me since I have seven ratings for Brewing Battles. Don’t judge.

I did find three books that fit the teachers’ rules and when I revise my book proposal I plan to use them.  One is Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. I am interested in this book because the misogyny that underpins scientific research is the same  misogyny the women I write about faced.

Aside from trying to get Dames, Dishes, and Degrees published, I plan to continue with my other activities – skating, swimming, recorder, and my  Jane Austen book club. I am also trying as hard as possible to stay away from Facebook and Twitter.

If it is not too late to offer, I wish everyone a happy, healthy, New Year!

 

 

U.S. Nationals

January 21, I attended Eastern Sectionals for Synchronized Skating in Norwood, MA. The competition determined who will go to Synchro nationals. I was there rooting for three teams.

My coach competes with the Skating Club of Boston’s adult Excel team. They came in second. She coaches the University of Massachusetts team and they came in 4th. Both teams will be going to nationals which is  in Peoria, March 1-4.

This summer another one of the coaches stated an Open Masters synchro team. I attended the first practice but decided not to participate. That team, River Valley Synchro, came in third, receiving a medal. They are not eligible for nationals.

This week, through Sunday, I am busy  watching  United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) Nationals. This competition determines who will go to Worlds. Since I have been consumed with skating, I haven’t been thinking about much else. As a result, I decided to forgo writing a post for today. I will be back next week with a fully developed piece.

Advice From My Inner Sage

Last Friday I attended a writing retreat sponsored by the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center. The first part of the retreat was a workshop led by Cathy Luna and Serin Houston. As part of the workshop, we did some free writing in response to a few different prompts. The prompt I used was “write a letter to yourself from your wisest inner sage.”

The prompt reminded me of a weekly exercise we did when I was either in 5th or 6th grade. Every week someone had to be the class monitor. At the end of the week, you had to produce minutes that detailed what had gone on during that time. When it was my turn to be monitor, I always tried to find interesting ways to present the minutes. One time I wrote them as if I was on the ceiling looking down. For the exercise last Friday, I wound up writing about publishing.

My wisest inner sage gave me advice about my book. She is positive it will get published. She assured me that there are a variety of ways this could happen. After I began writing, I realized I was about to do a hierarchy of publishing like my younger son Alan’s hierarchies of  M&M’s and French fries.

Here is my hierarchy:

The best outcome would be agent to publisher. This doesn’t seem that realistic, but it is something to strive for.

Next best would be securing a contract from a commercial publisher. This is really an outlier because I am unlikely to get a commercial press without an agent. However, if Cynren  would take it after I send them the second draft that would be a score. If I send it to Algora, the publishers of  Brewing Battles, that will also count as having achieved some degree of commercial success.

Third in line  would be Feminist Press. This is the press I always wanted to publish the book, but I recently found out that they are close to submissions at the current time, so it is a no go.

After Feminist Press would be  any academic press. I have queries and book proposals out to several of them, so we’ll see what happens with that.

The next to last in terms of desirability would be hybrid publication. I think my age gets in the way of my considering hybrid because it sounds like a vanity press to me. My Aunt Ruth’s friend Laura paid a press to publish her book about Shakespeare and politics. It is terrible looking with large font. It just doesn’t look like an actual book. I am afraid of getting scammed.

The last possibility in the hierarchy  would be self-publishing but that feels like a lot of work. I am going to talk to both Levelers Press which is local, and Off the Common which is their self-publishing division. It is my fervent wish that my wisest inner sage is correct, and my book is published.

I have written several other posts about publishing. One is recent, from last year. The other two are from  over ten years ago when I had published Brewing Battle and first started working on Dames, Dishes and Degrees. You can read them here and here.

 

Book Party

Yesterday I helped host a book party for Aaron Berman, author of America’s Arab Nationalists: From the Ottoman Revolution to the Rise of Hitler, (Routledge 2023). Aaron, as some of you know, is my husband. The event was lovely with a mixture of colleagues, family, and friends attending. Aaron read from the book and answered questions.

Here are two pictures from the party:

Here is  how to buy the book. Here is a link to an interview of Aaron by Jadaliyya  as well as a link to his appearance on the podcast, New Books Network, crosslisted in both American Studies and Middle East Studies.

 

Chopped Liver

As has often been the case lately, I find myself not knowing what to write. After a few weeks off, today is the first day of the latest session of Nerissa’s writing group. In the chit chat before the group formally started, one of the participants remarked in response to something someone else said,  “What am I -chopped liver? That quip brought back memories of the dish.

For several months, leading up to Passover, my mother would save both the liver and the fat – schmaltz – from every chicken she cooked. She was following her mother’s practices. My grandmother and grandfather owned a delicatessen in Long Beach, Long Island. As I have written elsewhere, my grandmother was an amazing cook, although she cooked Eastern European dishes and did not really cook American things such as a hamburger.

Once my mother had enough livers and fat, my father took over. He would render the fat; the pieces left over were gribenes. Gribenes, similar to pork cracklings, are one of the best foods in the world. I would love to have some right now.

Using the rendered schmaltz, my father would chop and mix the liver with the fat and some onions. Delicious. Memories of food are all mixed up with memories of the people who made the dishes. Eating gribenes and chopped liver would feed my palate but also my soul. Remembering my father, with his sly humor, cooking with me, a sometimes-sullen teenager is both sad and comforting.

I have my grandmother’s apron from the store. That is what we called Al’s Delicatessen. Whenever I put that on, the memories flood back. Her kind, generous face. Her care for everyone in the family. My mother’s grief when her mother died.

Richard is right; to say “what am I – chopped liver?” when chopped liver carries such precious cargo must be a compliment.

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