Interview With Beate Sigriddaughter

 

Beate Sigriddaughter

~I met Beate Sigriddaughter through a dynamic women’s site called Glass Woman Prize.She has been influential in my growth as a writer, and she was also quite instrumental in my introduction and relationship with Mercy Adhimabo.   Beate is a writer; social activist, poet, and I consider her a great mentor for upcoming writers who desire to empower women.  

 

Beate’s Glass Woman Writing Contest has become internationally popular, and the only one of its kind that does not charge a writing fee.  Please check out the site to enter your own story!  Beate pays the winning submission out of her own pocket.  She is a woman after my own heart.

 

Read her powerful interview below, and also, the review of her newest book, “The Unicorn And…”

 

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• Beate, before I get to the book, can you tell the readers a bit about yourself.  What made you leave Nurnberg, Germany to come to the United States?

   

At first I left Nürnberg because of pure adventure lust.  I became an exchange student in Pennsylvania.  During my year as an exchange student I met my first husband, with whom I returned to the United States after he finished a tour of military duty in Germany.  In hindsight, I also understand now that I was running away from Germany because of its recent history.  I was running away from my somewhat authoritarian father because he had found God after having experienced Hitler, and this was a God who could not be questioned or discussed.  I was also running away from the educational system in Germany which I found stifling in high school.  My writing was deemed too “romantic,” for example, while in college in the United States (Georgetown University), creative flights of fancy were actually appreciated.  I’ve always felt more freedom in the United States on many levels.   

 

• I am fascinated by your Ballroom Dance experience.  How long did you dance in competition. How does dance interlace with the writing process?

   

I competed professionally with my second husband for a little over 10 years.  It was an amazing experience.  We were not spectacularly successful, in part because we started so late.  I was in my late thirties when I learned ballroom dance.  Most competitors start as children or in their teens.  But we both loved the dance.  I wanted to dance, period.  My husband insisted that competition was the only avenue for us to continue dancing—so we competed.  I loved the process of reaching for improvement, and making small inroads all the time.

 

How does dance interlace with the writing process?  While we were dancing, my writing became practically non-existent.  We were supporting ourselves in non-dance jobs after a few years of trying to run a dance studio in Santa Fe where our main failing was our lack of salesmanship.  Adding up to two hours of practice most days and an occasional hour of teaching dance to a full-time job simply didn’t leave any time for writing.  So, on that level, interlacing didn’t really exist.  But on the level of similarity of process, there is a certain interlacing.  Both dancing and writing allow me to express myself beyond my usual ingrained timidity, the one physically, the other mentally.  I love performing.  Both as a Latin dancer and a fiction writer, I am able to express what wants to be expressed, but with lots of self-protective embroidery. 

 

• As you know, Beate, your women’s site, “The Glass Woman,” has changed my life in a beautiful, satisfying way.   Tell us how you were inspired to create this world of yours, who encouraged you, who has mentored you, how has this adventure changed your own existence? 

   

I had heard often enough that you need to give what you want to receive, so I thought I’d try this.  At first I thought I’d make a bargain with the universe—I’ll give back 10% of any income from my writing.  That didn’t work, as I had practically no writing income.  But I liked the idea, so I changed it to include any income.  Voilà the Glass Woman Prize.  (By the way, if I ever make over $100,000 a year, the percentage goes up.  Are you listening, Universe?)

 

Also, when I was a fledgling writer in the 1980s, I won two small prizes, which was very encouraging—I wanted to keep the encouragement alive by passing it along, especially to women writers, and among women especially to those who are going their own passionate ways rather joining the mainstream of romance and mystery writing.  If there is anybody out there like me—and I strongly suspect there are many just like me—encouragement is relatively rare while self-doubt is rampant. 

 

The women who submit to the prize are the ones who encourage me.  There is a spirit of excitement in just about every submission.  And nowadays the women who volunteer to help me with reading the submissions encourage me, too.  I think we acknowledge each other in moving forward in our combined effort to create and recognize a women’s voice that hasn’t entirely solidified yet, and perhaps never will, and perhaps never should at that. 

 

I want women’s consciousness and women’s voices to be heard and rewarded.  So I am adding my tiny drop to maybe raise the water level by this one drop’s worth. 

 

How has this changed my own existence?  In many ways.  Practically, I spend a lot of time reading, recording and evaluating stories.  Emotionally I am deeply gratified that there are so many women out there writing their passion, and willing to share their writing.  I am also familiar with the phenomenon of women (and presumably some men) writing “for myself only;" I think that’s valid, of course, but I also think that there is a bit of loss to all of us in that attitude—as though what we have to say can’t possibly be important, or as though there might be something wrong with our ideas, or that we are too vulnerable to visibly exist, and so on. 

 

My favorite experience with the Glass Woman Prize was of course that it just sits there, and all of a sudden other things happen, such as last year’s remarkable story with Mercy Adhiambo whose college career you invented after reading two of her stories on the Glass Woman Prize web page.  As I told you, that was one of my favorite events of 2008.  It just makes me so happy.

 

• Your writing contest for the Glass Woman has grown tremendously.  Almost 500 women from all over the world entered your 4^th annual competition, which was awe-inspiring.  Once again, what inspired you to make this happen?  Why no writing fee?  This is unheard of.

   

One of my favorite quotes is Gandhi’s “you must be the change you want to see in the world.”  I want women’s voices to be heard, so I need to prove that I mean it by listening to and reading women’s voices.   Though I am in my late 50s now, I’ve never lost my college-age ambitions to change the world.  I feel that every story I read for the Glass Woman Prize changes the world in a very small way: first, a woman made the effort of putting her words together and, secondly, I (or another reader) am paying attention to what another woman has to say, which is how things should be.  

 

Why no entry fee?  I chose this from a writer’s perspective.  $10 here, $20 there, a writer could spend hundreds of dollars each year, or even each month, just in entry fees.  And then it’s still a lottery as to who is reading your story, what are their prejudices, etc. etc.  I do understand the arguments for reading fees (fundraising mostly).  I simply don’t like them.  They exclude people who cannot afford them, or believe they cannot afford them, which comes to the same thing.  I’d rather do without.  I would not object to voluntary contributions, but they’d have to be just that.  No obligations to the writers. In part, that is a commitment to myself as a writer—the writers should be honored and not exploited. I have sometimes subjectively experienced entry fees as a subtle, if defensible, means of exploitation.    

 

• You have accomplished so much, Beate:  five novels, several published essays, fiction stories, poetry, and you were also nominated two times for the Pushcart Prize.  Tell us, what haven’t you done that you desire to do? 

   

Well, for one thing, there are all of these stories that still want to be written, and every time I write one, seven more seem to spring up. 

 

I’d like above all to be able to support myself with my writing, and preferably also support a small staff of agent, editor, IT technician (very important!), secretary, publicist, etc., so I don’t have to do everything myself, starting with being my own patron. 

 

Another one of my cherished dreams/visions is to live in and direct a writer’s or artist’s center (possibly including some dance space, too!), probably in Hawaii or New Mexico.  A small community of people honoring each other’s creativity.  I wouldn’t necessarily want to own it, but I’d like to run such a place. 

 

•  I just finished reading your newest little gem, “The Unicorn And…”   It reminded me of The Alchemist, Dickenson, and Keats all wrapped up together.  Sometimes the power of your words had to absorb for a few minutes so I could contemplate, allow the deep messages to fill me completely. I feel with the circumstances today that the messages in your book speak deeply to an entire world trying to find significance, meaning, and purpose in their daily lives.   Tell the readers about the birth of this book, what stimulated you to write it, what the Unicorn represents to you?                                 

   

The first Unicorn story was “The Hunter And The Unicorn.”  It appeared one day, and I started polishing it.  What sparked it was a situation with an ex-husband; we liked each other well enough, but we sometimes seemed to be from different planets.  So all of a sudden this Unicorn had a voice and an identity which I liked very much.  Over approximately five years I added (and subtracted) stories and reflections.  This year, incidentally, the Unicorn is ambitiously writing a diary.  We’ll see what will come of that.  The Unicorn basically represents a set of eyes through which I ask the reader to look at the world in not always predictable ways, and, above all, with lots of questions about standard ways of looking.  Over the years, the unicorn has become a personal icon for me that represents looking at things with compassion while not necessarily condoning all that I see.

 

·         All right, Beate, one last question: What advice do you have for emerging writers today?  What do you look for as you’re reading 500 entries for you contest?  What separates good writers from great writers?

 

The toughest challenge for a writer, emerging or otherwise, is, to navigate wisely between learning craft and being sent on wild-goose chases by apparently good advice.  The best advice I have for such navigation is:  it’s your life, you get to choose how to spend it and on what. Don’t let anyone, except possibly a minor child, make demands on you. Passion and resonance within yourself are pretty good indicators that you are on the right track.  There’s a piece of advice being bandied about in writing groups that recommends to “kill your darlings,” in other words, get rid of 100 pages, for example, that were particularly dear to you while writing when they don’t fit the overall work.  My answer to that is, “whatever for?”  At the very worst save it somewhere else.  If your writing was dear to you, then what God-like authority are you needing to impress or placate by sacrificing it, when writing is just a writer’s best method of discovering herself (or himself), just as playing an instrument is a musician’s best method, and working out is an athlete’s?

 

What I look for in reading Glass Woman Prize entries is passion and authenticity and beauty—passion is when I feel excitement and exuberance in the writing, even when the subject matter is not necessarily joyous; authenticity is when I feel there is no posturing for gold stars or brownie points, but a genuine expression from the heart; beauty is when that expression reaches, touches, and leaves an impression on my heart.  Pretty abstract, I guess, but it’s the best I can say at the moment. 

 

What separates good writers from great writers?  Courage, I think—especially the courage to go and express what moves a writer despite the possibility that it might not be a best-seller, won’t be everybody else’s darling, and might not be looked on favorably by the status quo.  Courage, also, to keep on questioning and learning and not settling for easy answers.  Courage to be passionate and to believe in yourself.   (Does that mean as soon as I, too, come up with the ultimate courage to be passionate and to believe in myself, I’ll finally become a great writer?  I sure hope so!)

 

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“THE UNICORN AND…” by Beate Sigriddaughter * * * * *

 

Reviewed by Kim Sisto Robinson (with immeasurable pleasure)

 

~”The Unicorn And” will erupt in the reader’s hands like something beautiful, potent, and heartbreaking.  I viewed the Unicorn as the seeker, the hunter, the one whom reflects and asks, WHY? The Unicorn isME.  The Unicorn is YOU.  It is a book of lessons, philosophy, purpose, history, insight, and reflection.  If the reader is looking for answers and one to solve his or her trials and tribulations, this is not the book for you.  But if the reader is searching for vibrant messages and a purposeful, thought provoking journey, this book will satisfy your hunger.

 

Beate Sigriddaughter’s writing is smooth, lush, and delectable.  Her words need to absorb into the body and soul …then discussed in depth.  I loved this excerpt on the last page, which reads like a gorgeous poem…

 

“Unlike a melancholy girl imagining her funeral with candles and flowers and everyone in tears, regretting that they hadn’t been nicer to her, the white unicorn imagined its death like this:  That is would be carried off by many busy creatures into all directions at once, on two legs, on four legs, on six legs, on eight legs, on bellies, on wings, in fangs, in mandibles, in claws, in hands.  And many years form then, its grateful bones would serve to nourish something still…

Buy Beate’s book, “The Unicorn And”  on Amazon.com 

 http://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Beate-Sigriddaughter/dp/0557007895

 

 

 

Beate Dancing !!!  Isn’t she lovely?!!!