The story is ready! Let's see how it will become a book

Those of you who read "Nästa skrivprojekt" (in Swedish only) can read about how I have turned my latest story into a script.

This script was sent today, to four different publishers:

These are publishers that receive many, many scripts each day, so the probability that they will select my script  is low.

So what if all of these (after the standard 2-3 months waiting time) say:

Thanks for sending in your script, but...

Well, if that will be the case I will send the script to a second round of publishers.

The second round of publishers will be smaller publishers. They have less possibilities to reach a large number of readers, but  they can be a great way to get a book published and in the hands of a smaller number of readers. I have had good experiences with my first two books at the publishers Oppenheim and Idus.

What if also the second round of publishers will say "Thank you but..."

Well, then I will look into self publishing. Booqla provides a service for those who want to publish their own e-books. This is what they say:

If you want an opportunity to be an acclaimed author, get proficient in your life and fulfill your great purpose of being a published author, there are three main advantages of self publishing that you need to know today. They are Control of Production, publish runs and profitability.

So, sooner or later, one way or the other, my latest story will become my third book. I hope many of you will want to read it!

No, good intentions are not enough

Lara walks into the living room. Miko, her five year old son, is sitting on the floor. Scattered around him are snippets of something vaguely familiar. When he turns around, big smile on his face and scissors in his hand, she understands where the snippets come from.

“But sweetheart, why have you cut my driver’s license into pieces?”

Miko’s smile fades a little as he hears the tone in mummy’s voice.

“I needed a picture of you”, he stretches out his hand. 

 “For your mother’s day card.” 

In his hand is a carefully cut out picture of her face.

When it comes to kids, all that matters is the good intention. Lara will of course hug her son tightly before she starts the process of getting a new driver’s license.

However, from grown-ups, from ourselves, we can expect more. 

Good intentions should not be used as an excuse for not doing well.

You may disagree with this opinion. There are many who think that good intentions and hard work should be enough.

Like those who work at a company with the best of intentions, but without creating results, who still expect  a yearly raise and a promotion.

Or coaches in sports that yell at the kids on their team, making them hate the sport they once loved, or even worse, making them dislike themselves. Some of these trainers say that they do it for the kids’ sake; they believe it is good for all kids to be pushed.  Such trainers may have good intentions but if they do not bother to learn how to help all the different persons in their team, I do not think it is good enough.  (The above example is also applicable for many bosses.)

Another example is a story I heard recently, about an animal shelter opening in the outskirts of Madrid.  A group of young people wanted to take care of some of the many abandoned animals.  They had lots of good intentions, but not the will to achieve the necessary knowledge, and several animals died under their care – or rather their lack of appropriate care.

It may sound hard, but to me, it is important to not just mean well, but to do well. And that will require more than just a good intention.

Let me conclude with a statement I use when I talk to school classes about writing and possibly choosing that as a career:

“Follow your heart, but take your brain with you.”

Only life knows its length

This blog post is also available as a 3,5 min video clip.


Last Christmas one of our three lovely cats left us and this world. She was not even four years old.

We have had to say good bye to beloved pets before, but we have always been lucky enough to have them a long time, they have all turned old. Now we had to give up a cat that until recently had seemed healthy and who we expected to live another ten, fifteen years.

We did not know Kleintje's life would turn out so short. Life, however, knew all along. One of her kidneys was malformed already from birth. Already from birth it was a given that she would not live as long as a cat with two well working kidneys.
If we would have known, maybe we would have been happy that she turned one, two, three and half years.

So, would we have liked to know?
No. I wouldn't have.

I am happy we had the years we had, without thinking about the end. Without looking for symptoms of the disease, without wondering if she was feeling alright.

As I wrote in Liv och död, the length of life is a mystery. Some lives only last a few minutes, some a few hours. Others last a few years while yet others last for many, many decades.

We often expect that we and our loved ones will live at least as long as the average life span is. Forgetting that an average age inevitably means that a lot of people and animals will have lives that are shorter than that number.

I do not know how long my life will be, or the life of my loved ones. All I know is that we should make the most of the time we have together.

We are so happy to have had our adventurous Kleintje in our lives, the years we had her.

Since nobody really knows what happens after death, I told my children that we can choose to believe whatever makes us feel good.
My youngest son thinks we come to a place where we can push a button and select what we want to become next. Maybe Kleintje decided to become a cat again, or a lion or possibly an elephant.

I choose to believe that her life force is still around, in some shape or form.

Wherever she is, I am sure she is having a great time, making everyone around her happy, just like she used to do here with us.

Happy new made up year!

We are reaching the end of one year and the start of a new one. Or, at least, that is what we have decided to do.

Because we have of course just made this up. We have decided that after twelve months we start over rather than continuing with a thirteenth month. I find it interesting that our model for measuring time is not really in line with the planetary moments since we need to introduce an extra day every four years to not get out of sync. 2016 will be one of these years with a leap day that we have decided to call Feb 29.

Another thing that shows how our way of measuring time is only something we have made up, is that we do it differently depending on where we are. As mentioned in What's politically incorrect about Merry X-mas, we have different traditions all around the world. In China there will be a new year celebration on my birthday (Feb 8) and in Iran "Nouruz" will be celebrated at spring equinox.

Not that it matters, I think that all kinds of new year celebrations are great opportunities to look back, look forward and to celebrate.

I hope you look back at 2015 with gratitude and happiness. Of course a year also includes things that do not turn out the way we expect them, and sometimes we encounter really difficult times. I still hope you can look back at the year with a smile on your face  and that you can find light and learning also in the parts that may add a tear to your smiling face.

When it comes to the new year I hope you are inspired and look forward to it.
If you want to shape it in a certain direction I recommend this exercise from Anders Haglund.

Happy New year to all of you!

What´s politically incorrect about "Merry X-mas?"

I work at an international company, and at some of the final meetings before the holidays I heard statements like:

Merry X-m... No, I will be politically correct and wish you all happy holidays!

From another meeting:

Can we wish people a merry X-mas?

No, let's be politically correct and send season greetings.

I am aware that my Indian and Chinese colleagues do not traditionally celebrate X-mas. I also agree that it is important to acknowledge the fact that we all have different traditions across the world.

But when my Chinese colleagues wish me a Happy New Year in February I do not get offended. Intead I get happy they wish me a happy new year and I enjoy learning about what year it will be, Dragon, monkey, goat...

Picture from: http://www.chinahighlights.com/

When my Indian colleagues are off in Autumn to celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights, I enjoy hearing about it and learning what it means.

"The Rangoli of Lights" by Subharnab Majumdar

So, when I wish all my readers a Merry X-mas, I hope this does not offend those who do not celebrate it. Instead I hope you will appreciate the wishes for a peaceful time with family and friends, which is how I see X-mas.

Picture from the Chapel.co.uk

God jul!

Vrolijk kerstfeest! 

Feliz Navidad!

Merry X-mas!

Earlier X-mas related blogspots:
Our plastic X-mas tree
Känner du Julfrid ännu?
Julstress och Midsommarfrid

#SwedeInMadrid: Exact time of no importance

Eleven fourtytwo.

 That was the time for the doctor's appointment for our son. Not 11:30, 11:45 or even 11:40. We could meet the doctor at 11:42.

We looked at the note and wondered why on earth a Spanish doctor would make an appointment at 11:42, when Spaniards in general seem to look at time as something very approximate. 

Alex, my English hair dresser, says that Spanish people are the worst clients. They can show up an hour or two late to an appointment. Or they do not show up at all. Or they cancel the whole appointment because it rains. (See "Do they understand it's just water?")

It is not only time that is stated accurately. When my husband chose a Spanish course, the fee was: 111,76 euros. Not 110, 115 or even 112. The cost was 111 euros and 76 cents.

 How anyone can care about 1 euro cent is beyond me. In our house we have a jar filled with all the "red coins" as we call them. Coins that are more or less worthless; 1, 2 and 5 euro cents. 

Once we have gathered a whole lot of these coins I plan to give all of them to one of the many street artists in Madrid. To give them just one or two of these silly coins would be an insult so I will wait until they amount to a few euros. That will take a while...

This useless exactness makes me think of something I heard in a course many, many years ago. It was a course in project management, and that day we learned about the project planning tool Microsoft project. The teacher told us that unless we had projects that were only one day long, we should not use the feature that allowed us to plan with hours and even minutes.We should not fool ourselves into thinking it is possible to predict a project that will take weeks, months or even years, to an accuracy of hours or minutes. 

Just because we can measure something accurately, like cents and minutes, does not mean we can live according to such accuracy.

Regarding the doctor's appointment at 11:42; we were there around 11:30 but we did not get to meet the doctor until some half an hour or so later. 

We were not surprised.

Stand by Paris - Feel No Fear

Paris.
The city I fell in love with during all the weekends I spent there as an au-pair.
 The city in which I discovered art. Not only in the museums, but in every park bench and light pole since aestethics is at least as important as function in this fantastic capital.

And now. A blood.stained city that has witnessed tragedies that make my heart bleed.

A lot of people wonder what the world is coming to and they say:

"Just wait, it will come here too"

No.
Stop.
Wait.

When you feel that kind of fear, when you spread that kind of worry, you are doing what the terrorists want.

The ultimate goal for terrorist organizations is not to kill many persons in a sports arena, a concert hall or a train station. Killing people and ruining historic buildings are just means towards their ultimate goal: Creating fear.  Making others so scared that they will give upp their life style, give independence to a part of a country, acknowlegde a certain religion - you name it.

Since the goal for terrorists is to make us scared - let's refuse. We cannot always stop the terrible crimes some persons commit, but we can stop them from achieving their goal. We can refuse to be afraid.
Or as the Parisians put it: "Meme pas peur" - Not even afraid.

"But how can I not be afraid when such horrible things happen?" you may think. 

Well, understanding the nature of terror organizations may help. All terrorist organizations follow an arc of decline and they ulitmately die out, on average within 5-9 years. Look at all terrorist groups there have been in the world: Red Brigades. Baader-Meinhof gang. IRA and the Ulster Freedom Fighters. They created havoc, but still. No borders changed, the western values have not changed. And the organizations have died out.

As Steven Pinker writes in his interesting book: The better angels of our nature

 "All terrorist groups carry the seed of their own destruction" 

Below is a graph from the book. Contrary to popular beliefs, fewer people are killed in terrorist attacks today, than before.

We can see spikes from the 9/11 attack in NY 2001 and the M11 train station bombing in Madrid 2004. Future versions of this graph will unfortunately have some more spikes. France Nov 13 2015 will be one of them. However, as you can see, these are spikes - not trends. The trend is declining.

There is less reason to fear terrorism now than there was a few decades back.

There are many who refer to terrorism like a hydra that grows out two new heads as soon as one is
chopped off. So even if each terrorist group will fail and die out, there is a fear that there will always be new ones coming.

To deal with this, we need to stop feeding the hydra. 

Even though it is hard to believe, those who committed the atrocities in Paris were once amazing babies who were hopefully dearly loved by parents and siblings. Still, somewhere along the way they got so lost, so insecure and frustrated that others could convince them that killing fellow human beings is the right thing to do. They let an ideology override their thinking, empathy and understanding.

The hydra feeds on hate and fear.

If we show understanding and respect to one another instead of fear and hate we can starve the hydra and let it die, taking all heads with it.

So where is the world going to?

Wherever we take it.