A Shove & a Great Landing--Paris! In Search of the American Dream

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This Traveling Writer Got a Shove Out the Door!

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

I was mad as hell at the time, but it turned out to be the best thing that could happen.

Here's the first installment in the story (and pics) of how I ended up in Paris on a creative writing sabbatical for one year. I had never dared to dream of such a thing. In fact, I told myself that I would never go to Paris because the Parisians had an attitude I didn't like and I would not bother with them as a result.

Hah! This is a story of how my Higher Power took me beyond my wildest dreams.

First: the loss

It started with the loss of my job due to a merger. I worked like a stevedore on a crowded dock to come up with another one. But it simply did not happen.

I was living in a Cape Cod cottage in New Jersey at the time. I loved that house. More important, it loved me. I felt so good there, especially when sitting on the screened-in porch on a summer's night, reading with a soft white light and bugs bouncing off the screens. It was the one sign of any sort of success in my life. I had a tiny piece of the American Dream.

As my savings dwindled, I realized I would have to do something that it broke my heart to do: rent out my beloved house and go live with my mother.

To be honest, I cursed my HP for not giving me a job so I could stay in the house. I did NOT want to live with my mother. What a sign of earthly failure. To go back to my parent's house at my age really annoyed me. All I needed was a job, but HP didn't bring me one.

I cleaned every nook and cranny of my house--to prepare it for SOMEONE ELSE. I cried a lot and stomped around a lot. It was one of the hardest times of my life. My fiance and I had broken up not long before, my 84-year-old mother wasn't well, and now the one thing I wanted most--to live in my adorable cottage--was slipping away from me. My decades-long search for the American dream felt more thwarted than ever.

I cursed as I packed my "must-haves" into boxes and dragged them out to a big rental van. I drove to my mother's house in Mystic, Connecticut one night and limped to bed, mightily P.O.'d.

Then the gains

I woke up the next morning and felt my mother's love drifting up from her bedroom directly below mine. I said, Thank you, HP, this is exactly where I need to be.

I took care of her in hopes of keeping her going for years more. But after just six weeks there, she suddenly took a turn for much worse. But just before that happened I found a book. To be continued!

How did the triple tragedy of losing my fiance, my mother and my house bring me to Paris? Stay tuned! Next week, more of the story.

It seemed like every vista in Paris had something beautiful and graceful.

I'm especially enamored of the scalloped pattern of the cobbles. Crowds tore these up during the French Revolution and the German occupation to create barricades.

Quirky Stories and Photos While in Search of the American Dream

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What Does a Quirky New York City Moment Look Like?

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

If you wanted to boil New York City down to its essence (of course, you can't, but if you wanted to try), this may be the quintessential moment: Dinner. At a top restaurant. At the Museum of Modern Art. Overlooking the famous courtyard with its sculpture garden.

I got to do this recently as part of my job. Whoever said the best things in life are free was so very correct!

As part of a professional networking dinner, we were served by Chef Abram Bissell's kitchen in MoMA. Our tables overlooked the sculpture garden, where twilight was giving everything that lovely blue glow.

In a quirk of fate, I sat next to someone who, in her private life, manages the business side of her husband's writing and publishing. We talked non-stop as the wait-staff did great work whisking plates away and bringing delicious food.

We talked about book marketing, how time consuming and involved it is. She recommended Lisa DeSpain, whom I immediately contacted. After doing due diligence, I officially hired her yesterday! We're going to launch my romantic suspense novel, Why Spy? She'll teach me how to do the digital marketing so that I can do it for the two prequels to the novel I've already written. 

So not only did I get a delicious dinner and professional networking time that night, I also enjoyed a serendipitous meeting of the minds. I got help for the way my digital skills were overwhelmed by the labyrinth of techie things that needed to be done -- and all the techie things I don't even know need to be done. 

So I enjoyed a New York City evening in a great location, with great food, great company, and a great solution to an impossible challenge. 

Free. 

Thank you, HP!

The courtyard at MoMA. The vivid blue rectangles at the top are the twilight sky. I love the quirky black sculpture. Looked up the artist's name but couldn't find it.

Our table.

Dinner. It was delicious!

A peek into Chef Bissell's kitchen.

Another glimpse of the sculpture garden. How about you? What free (or extremely inexpensive) things do you enjoy? A cup of coffee at home, for example? A walk in the park? Comment below!

The Quirky Story of Working for 30 Years to Make My American Dream Come True

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Making My American Dream--A Successful Writing Career--Come True

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

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How hard is the journey of a writer?

It’s been extremely difficult—and extremely rewarding.

You need to take your work to a writer’s critique circle. Agents are looking for people who have been through the critique process, the more years of it the better. The writer’s circle hopefully is a supportive environment in which people help each other write better. There are guidelines for critique groups online.

But no matter how much you tell critiquers to find at least two positive things to say about a piece--and if you can't find two things you're not thinking hard enough--people are quirky. They adore the chance to criticize.

It was difficult for me to hear the criticisms. Painful much of the time. Often people are not careful about following critique guidelines--like saying at least two positive things. It can hurt lots when all they say is negative.

But if you’re a writer – and I define that as somebody who exhibits dogged perseverance in getting words on paper – you’ll want to get better. You’ll take each criticism seriously, examine it, accept or reject it according to your instincts, and use most of the criticisms to become a better writer.

It was also difficult to be rejected by literary magazines. I got two things published then nothing--for years. I don’t have a huge “platform” – Google that and get to work on building your own. Without one, agents won’t take your novel on.

It was frustrating to put in a 30-year apprenticeship and not see the results I wanted—fame, fortune, people fawning, the 3 Fs : )

But writing has been highly rewarding too. I’ve gotten to know amazing people in my writers’ circles. I've gotten to know them better as we shared our writing and our unique issues and perspectives came to the fore.

I wrote about the joys and sorrows of critique groups in my novel, The Paris Writers Circle (see the top of the right navigation column).

In it, I poke fun at the critiquers I've experienced. I laugh at the pain. I try to help writers see how--sometimes years later--you can use the junk in your life to make jokes for people to enjoy.

Writing has helped me sort through my bizarre baggage and use some of the anguishing or odd circumstances of my life as material in stories. This helps me to connect with readers.

Writing keeps me company when I’m alone and also connects me with other people better than not writing does.

For example, writing took me on a bus to circumnavigate the United States. I stayed in 20 cities over seven weeks. I’m working on the memoir about it. You can see quirky stories and pics from that trip if you go to 2011 in the right-hand navigation column.

Writing took me to New York University. I graduated magna cum laude not too long ago with a B.A. in creative writing and literature.

Writing took me on a creative writing sabbatical in Paris for one year. It took me to Barcelona to live for three months.

Writing makes me more alive as I seek, in Henry James’s words, to be someone on whom nothing is lost.

So it’s a hard journey but worth it.

Now for quirky photos. These are from a photography group that taught me to "glance" with my camera (my phone). You just walk along and take photos without putting the camera to your eye. You walk and shoot. People get caught on film not posing. I've put my favorites out of 50 photos here. Next week more. A few are a bit bizarre, but fun:

For one second this patch of Times Square looked deserted.

Times Square -- everybody's in motion.

Flowers as architecture.

Downtown and Brooklyn -- my direction home.

Snacks everywhere

Playing to the door, not the crowd. Maybe he got reverberation from the recessed entryway.

Caricatures for sale. How about you? Do you like NYC? Times Square in particular? Comment below!

American Dream Come True: A Fab Wedding in Quirky Setting

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Quirky Stories: A Wedding Overlooking a Green Pond

By Norma Jaeger Hopcraft

As a Brooklyn writer who craves greenery, I do my writing in Prospect Park from late April to early October, weather permitting. 

I sit under a tall quirky tree whose branches sweep downward. Its needles are blue. Never saw anything like it. I call it a weeping blue spruce.  

My father loved blue spruce trees more than any other tree. The year before he died, his kids gave him a dwarf Alberta blue spruce that was six-feet tall and as round as a butterball, We called it Fat Albert. 

After his house was sold, I went by it again. Fat Albert is gone, just like the man who loved him.

So I sit under a weeping blue spruce in Prospect Park, near the odd sparrow hotel I photographed for you here, and write what I have to write.

When I’m stiff and sore, I take a break to walk the park. Today there’s a saxophonist under the bridge, taking advantage of the acoustics. That’s what I do as a writer: go for resonance.

A few weeks ago I went under the bridge – no saxophone, just a small child on his father’s shoulders shouting “No!” and listening to his echo.

Just beyond, people picnicked on one side of the path while a bride and groom had their photos taken a few feet away. People are always less than a few feet away in New York City. Every patch of sidewalk is contested. The crowding oppresses me.

But there are upsides. Like Prospect Park. I walk here almost every day. I’m getting to know its quirks and secrets. 

I now know where to sit to hear red-winged blackbirds trill their summer song. I know where to go to watch turtles sun themselves or to swim lazily by the lake’s edge.

The bride and groom weren’t wandering around looking for idiosyncratic wildlife in the midst of a jam-packed city. No, they were looking forward to sitting on the terrace of The Boathouse and celebrating their happy day. Much of Brooklyn was looking on. That wouldn't be my style, but to each his own.

Picnickers on one side of the path...

...and wedding photography on the other.

The Boathouse set up nearby for an outdoor wedding.

The view of the waterfall, which you can see from The Boathouse terrace.

Another lovely feature of the park: the steps at Harry's Wall. How about you: going to the park today? Comment below! If you like this post, would you Tweet it? See the icons immediately below this post. Thank you!