Six ways HBO’s “Succession” hit me hard personally

Logan Roy, bully, entrepreneur, puppeteer

By Caitlin Kelly

If you haven’t watched Succession, this blog’s not for you!

If you have, you’re familiar with this filthy rich dysfunctional family — including three ex-wives and a young assistant who had so hoped to become the fourth Mrs. Roy, but — damn! — the old dude died right in front of her, in his private jet en route to Sweden to close a business deal.

I love this show, but some of its moments hit me hard personally, often echoing my own dysfunctional family.

Here are six:

It’s not a family in any meaningful sense of the word

Logan Roy has three ex-wives; one he dismissed to a psychiatric hospital; one, very English and very cowardly and the last, Marcia, whose venom comes wrapped in a husky French accent. He has four adult children, including one from the first marriage — Con, likely 10 to 15 years older than the rest, who has always felt unloved and excluded by his father. As the oldest of four adult kids of our own father, by two wives, and two affairs, with none of us who ever lived together, I’ve felt this as the only child of my father’s first marriage.

The daughter, Siobhan Roy (aka Shiv), always, always shut out of power

Logan Roy loves to play his needy and insecure children against one another

Painfully familiar. My father, now 94, has always favored his youngest, 23 years my junior and who refuses to have any relationship to me at all. The sister I haven’t met only shows up every few years and the brother closest to me in age has created huge success for himself — but our father never seems able to celebrate us.

Having someone die after you’ve just argued with them is haunting and painful

My last conversation with my late stepmother, who died at 63 on my husband’s birthday, was an argument. It was a truly terrible time, with a lot of long-repressed and ugly emotions finally blasting to the surface. When so much remains unaddressed for decades and any chance of reconciliation is suddenly gone, it is a terrible shock and leaves even deeper family wounds.

Kendall Roy, whose past conceals a terrible secret he fears might one day emerge

Money changes everything

We’re certainly not wealthy in Roy style — private jets, helicopters everywhere, multiple huge houses — but two of my male ancestors were very successful in creating their own business, and the money they made very much affected their offspring and how they view(ed) money. It’s a useful and familiar way to wield power, to bestow or withhold affection. It’s also weird to grow up around opulent spending (my maternal grandmother was a literal heiress) and never earn or acquire such means yourself. It was normal to have Granny’s chauffeur — Raymond — and her jewelers, Jack and Adrian — attend her annual Christmas party. So I get Tom Wambsgans’ admission, coming from a less wealthy family, that he actually does like money.

Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s hapless husband

When a man as calculating and manipulative as Logan Roy dies, beware

I’ve never met my half-sister (5 years younger) and have no wish to. My two half-brothers have an off-on relationship. With no clear communication between all four of us, it’s quite something to navigate.

There’s so much the Roy “kids” still have to figure out — like what emotional intimacy and trust even look like

While the Roys are spoiled rotten materially, and are putative adults, there’s an awful lot about the real world they just don’t know and will finally and suddenly need to learn without their father’s protection and power. Surrounded from birth by bodyguards and helicopter pilots and maids and chauffeurs, paid people who say yes to almost everything, they also seem to have no friends anywhere. Every conversation is about getting, keeping or getting more money. Forget love or affection or the joy of something basic — like actually enjoying a pampered life in New York City, with every cultural richness literally on their doorstep. As Season Four progresses, its final season, they’re finally, for a while, able to love and support one another.

I finally, gratefully, have a relationship with one of my half-brothers. But that’s it.

As I always joke, there’s no Hallmark card for a “family” like ours.

From pitch to publication — producing a NYT story

By Caitlin Kelly

I’ve been writing for The New York Times since the 1990s, when I started out writing 300-word book reviews on arcane topics like a history of the Kurds.

As a generalist, I’ve since written for almost every section of the paper: real estate, culture, business, Metropolitan, health, styles, essays, sports.

The one place you never ever want to be published in is their corrections box! Luckily it’s happened to me only three times, with more than 100 bylines there.

I know that being published there is a dream for some writers, so here’s a peek inside how I produced my latest for them, about prenuptial agreements.

I pitched two ideas to the editor (you need to know who exactly to pitch! I learned this by reading Twitter, where he announced his new position and shared his email address.)

He immediately wanted one of them.

We had a phone conversation Feb. 16 to discuss what he wanted from the story, angle and length. I was off!

Then…gulp…it was time to find sources, not so easy when getting people to discuss their finances in a global newspaper with millions of readers.

I found a lawyer in Iowa to get started, to get a general idea of the story’s parameters. Once grounded, I found a New York lawyer — through their PR gatekeeper — who led me to a local woman who became a key source, albeit a fearful one I tried to reassure. I have a lot of respect for anyone who agrees to speak on the record, especially to the Times, and how anxiety-provoking it can be. I explained carefully the goal of my story — to help others — and we negotiated what felt OK to print, and what did not.

The Times does not allow freelancers to use fake names or unnamed sources, nor for sources to read copy pre-publication.

One of the many moving parts — the hidden bit — of reporting any story is finding and persuading sources to even speak to a reporter. People can be really jumpy and sometimes I explain in detail how the process will go to alleviate their concerns.

I get it! I’ve been interviewed enough times I know how scary it is to lose control of your own story.

But the gatekeeper to the NYC lawyer was also initially quite resistant to a Times story, arguing that the paper only caters to the wealthy. Well, fair comment, but I told them my story was designed more to protect people, especially women, from getting screwed in a divorce, which I’ve seen plenty of, and it’s not pretty.

We went back and forth a bit, and she agreed to put me in touch with the lawyer she works with.

I interviewed the lawyer and her client (3 sources now) and through a pal in Los Angeles, found a lawyer there to add more insights and who connected me to a young gay Asian couple who were terrific to speak to; we did an hour Zoom.

Now we’re up to six sources…more to come!

The final one (in addition to me) was a financial writer, a woman.

Then it was time, finally, to write.

The actual writing, typically, is not difficult for me as, by then, I always have a clear idea what I want to say and in what order; my assigned word count was 1,500 to 2,000, enough real estate to tell this complicated story properly.

But I also know an editor will have, always, their own ideas and lots of questions.

I was a little nervous, as this was my first story for a new-to-me editor and I always hope to start off on the right foot.

For my first revision, I changed my lede (the first line, key to hooking the reader) and it stayed unchanged to publication; I choose them really carefully, and am fiercely protective of my ledes, relieved when the Times (and the FT) have liked them enough to keep them and praise them.

The editor immediately trimmed it a bit (no biggie) and had some smart questions I needed to answer to clarify and better explain some things. One real challenge of including your own story is that it’s obviously so familiar to you, but not to your editors and certainly not to your readers. It was also, to be honest, emotionally difficult for me to revisit a painful period of my life and a brief marriage.

The editor warned me the story would be read by several additional editors, (best to know this ahead of time) but each edit at the Times means you, the writer, get a “playback” which is our chance to make sure it still reads well, hasn’t been changed in a way that (unlikely!) is now inaccurate.

It’s very helpful to see, in every playback, what changes they make (with strikethroughs, etc) whether in sentence structure or wording; I don’t find it intrusive but see my copy getting tighter and stronger. The guts of the story, and my voice, remain, and that’s important to me as well.

Every new editor who reads the story can also make their own cuts or changes and adds their questions, then sends their version, so one can easily receive two or three or more different playbacks, each of which you need to read — and once a story is skedded for iminent publication, hang on!

My adrenaline is up.

You’re on a speeding train now, with the Times editorial machinery moving at its own internal pace, your copy moving from one editor to the next — so you need to be ready to give them whatever they need, asap. No pressure!

I always ask — what time do you need this back from me?

And why I always warn sources when I first interview them to be ready to reply very quickly to more questions once this process is in motion.

So by 4:30 Thursday afternoon I was reading the third playback — with 14 more questions; none overwhelming, with two needing my quick calls to sources for clarification.

I also had to make sure a few times the story’s photo caption was correct because one of the sources had changed her surname since I began work on the story, so I alerted a few editors to that. The photos also matter!

Accuracy in every syllable matters.

By 7:30 p.m. my story was in the hands of the final editor — who helped me finesse an attribution; if the source got back to me after 10:30 pm ET, I should (!) alert a Times editor in Seoul.

Talk about a global newsroom!

The piece went live yesterday at 5 a.m. Eastern and got nice “above the fold” placement on the Times’ homepage.

It will also appear in print tomorrow.

So, almost two months from pitch to publication, it also got a great illustration and photo, and some very nice feedback from editors and readers.

WHEW!

On to the next…

The surprising allure of generosity

By Caitlin Kelly

I’ve been hanging out on Twitter for a few years, but have never had a tweet go viral — more than 11,000 likes!!

This one did:

I recently got a NYT call for pitches, none of which worked for me at all — but was perfect for a friend, and one with a new book on that topic, now both soon to appear. This is what we all should be doing. It is rarely as zero-sum as everyone assumes. #freelance

I didn’t think much of posting this, as it’s nothing I haven’t said there many times before.

Maybe it was the “ooooooh!” allure of an elusive New York Times byline that caught people’s attention?

Maybe it’s just the luck of that fickle algorithm?

But it’s been really gratifying and satisfying to see it retweeted and liked and bookmarked.

At its best, Twitter can offer a bully pulpit.

It was nice when that specific writer outed herself in reply and thanked me but I was just happy to make that introduction; I know her and I know her work and I trust her to do work of NYT quality. I don’t just do it for anyone; referrals can wildly backfire if the person you refer is less than completely professional.

I recently signed up to be a mentor with Report for America, a program designed to encourage younger/newer journalists as they start their careers, some in small towns, others in larger markets. It’s a joy to be helpful.

I’ve also been really busy this week emailing fellow alumni of our Toronto high school to create a new annual award for a graduating senior for creativity, named in honor of a fellow student who was funny as hell and much beloved and whose later life was very much marked by severe mental illness, a terrible loss.

Three fellow alumni from our year, so far, have agreed to share the cost with me.

Thanks to the school’s guidance counselor, we’re figuring it out quickly and I hope to be up in Toronto June 28th to present the award with a fellow student, a dear friend of that student.

Without kids of my own or nieces or nephews to encourage, I feel it’s really important to encourage the latest generation…already so plagued with so many challenges like COVID and climate change as it is.

Our high school is still pretty upper middle class, but now more diverse racially and ethnically, and has some lower-income students — the $1,000 we will offer is still a nice amount.

What would you do with a windfall?

Sigh. The N.S. house that got away — where I had hoped to invest my money.

By Caitlin Kelly

The word dates back to the 15th century — fruit blown from the trees, no need for the labor of picking it.

These days, it’s a bit of luck, often financial, that appears when we least expect it.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a few of these over the years, like a five-figure copyright settlement for misuse of my work (and many others!) by Canadian publishers.

A four figure sum, a dormant bank account, also in Canada, I had no idea existed.

The greatest was a surprise inheritance from my late mother, who died in 2020, after a decade of no communication with me, her only child. I would never have expected she would leave me a dime, but she left a decent sum, to my shock and gratitude, and five pieces of art I really love and wondered if I would ever own.

That money paid, in part, for my trip to California in June, one of the best vacations of my life, allowing me to explore a place I had long dreamed of, to connect with 11 friends out there and even with a cousin I hadn’t spoken to in years.

I bought myself a very good watch, an estate piece (i.e. previously owned by someone else) and love wearing it.

I still haven’t figured out what to do with the rest of this inheritance, which is a pleasant dilemma, for sure. The markets are a mess, so investing it feels like not a great choice. It’s not really enough to buy appealing North American real estate. I would never touch crypto or bitcoin, so for now I look at affordable properties in far-off places like Brittany.

If you’ve never had much money to manage beyond the basics of survival, it’s overwhelming to figure out what to do, who to trust, where to use it (or not) and how soon. Financial literacy is a learned skill — many people don’t know what a fiduciary is — someone managing your money who by law must act in your best interests, not their profit.

If you suddenly came into some serious coin — $10,000 or more (and even $100 can make a huge difference for many people, especially in an era of rampant inflation) — what would you do with it?

We often fantasize about winning the lottery, but it’s a hell of a responsibility!

Work should be fun! (Really?)

By Caitlin Kelly

Long loud harrumph.

Thumps cane for emphasis.

No!

Ok, yes, of course, often, maybe, if you’re really lucky, much of the time.

But always, every damn day of a 40+ year career?

Unlikely and foolish to desire.

The tedious cliche is “that’s why they call it work.”

The opposite fantasy is “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

Ask anyone who’s been in the working world for a decade, let alone 20, 30 or 40 years.

This is also, I know, somewhat stiff-upper-lip generational — and I think an insistence work be “fun” is really proxy for a lot of other frustrations: carrying massive student debt for decades, low wages, terrible/non-existent promotions and raises, toxic managers, coworkers and/or customers (hello, foodservice and retail!)

As I’ve written here many times, I generally enjoy my work as a writer of journalism and content marketing, coaching and teaching. But there have been many times I was utterly miserable, even for a full year — like my last staff job as a reporter at the New York Daily News — where I was consistently ignored or bullied. It was torture.

It was a steady, decent paycheck at a then-respected newspaper, then the nation’s sixth-largest.

But happy? No, I was not happy. Fun? No, it was not, ever, fun.

When I worked for a few months in Toronto at Canadian Press, the national wire service, I had to write up every weekend’s accidental deaths across the province, slugged (named) Fatalities — aka Fats. NOPE. Not fun.

As a trade magazine editor in New York, I had a terribly low freelance budget and a highly demanding boss. Not a fun combination.

I do not subscribe to the belief that all work is, or should be, drudgery. But accepting that even the coolest-looking work has downsides and frustrations is more realistic. Even the best-known and wealthiest musicians and film stars have had work that failed to find an audience, auditions that were a disaster, spent years in the trenches working away before hitting the big time. Fun? Probably not.

I think we’re fortunate if we can find work that:

pays decently

offers kind, fun, funny, smart co-workers (even one of these!)

decent management

respect for the work we do

offers room for growth, internally or a boost to our next job elsewhere

helps other people live better/safer lives

I admit that, at its best, journalism has been amazing fun for me, many many times.

But it’s not a well-paid career.

It’s not a secure career and getting fired or laid off is pretty normal, even if expensive and annoying.

Forget a pension.

It’s often insanely competitive, even within your organization. So there’s plenty of stress and anxiety as well.

What’s the most fun job you’ve ever had?

The managing of money

A tiny annual check I receive as library royalties for my two books — but it all adds up!

By Caitlin Kelly

There’s a whole new crop of young women offering financial advice to their peers, writes The New York Times:

But rather than rallying behind meme stocks or the latest hot crypto trend, she [Tori Dunlap] is part of a growing tribe of largely millennial women aiming to change the narrative around women and money, often by drawing from their own experiences. There’s Berna Anat, a.k.a. Financial Hype Woman; Melissa Jean-Baptiste, the Beyoncé of Personal Finance, also known as Millennial in Debt; Delyanne the Money Coach; and Haley Sacks, founder of Mrs. Dow Jones and Finance Is Cool.

I find this fascinating and encouraging, since so many women earn less than men and often outlive a husband or male partner.

I learned early to handle money because at 19 I was living alone in downtown Toronto on a monthly trust fund, thanks to my maternal grandmother — $350/month. Out of that enormous sum, I paid rent on a studio apartment ($160), food, phone, answering service, subway, clothes, haircuts, dental care.

Oh and tuition and books for University of Toronto.

My father had suddenly and without warning sold the home I lived in and decided to move to Europe. He never offered a dime and he was making enough I doubted I would even qualify for student aid.

So I started writing and selling my photos freelance to supplement my income.

I still remember a can of tuna cost 89 cents then. I guess I ate a lot of it!

At 25, I inherited some money, enough it scared the hell out of me — as I had a good staff newspaper job and didn’t need it. I stuck it in the bank until I was 30 and moved to New York, grateful as hell to have a decent downpayment for the apartment I’ve lived in ever since. I could never have afforded it without that family help.

But no one in my family — and there was plenty of money sloshing around (like a spare $150,000 to pay cash for a house in Ireland) — ever discussed how to save and invest. I learned to be frugal, obviously, and that was a powerful and important lesson; when you’re living on little and have no one to turn to, you have to.

And since my family was far away, there was one to ask for advice or help if something terrible happened. And it did…I was attacked in my $160/month apartment when a man leaned in my ground-floor bathroom window and tried to pull me out (mid-bath.)

I left the next day.

So all I’ve really known about managing money is to make as much of it as possible — and save a lot! Only after maybe a decade of hard saving (like 15% every year) did I feel I’d accumulated anything. The past few years were a godsend because the markets, for my investments, returned tremendous gains, which I needed since freelance writing fees are dropping every year.

I did great for years, alone, freelance in the 1990s, managing to pay for health insurance ($500/month alone) and mortgage and maintenance. I’m fine buying and wearing consignment shop clothing and shoes, and have some pieces I’ve worn for a decade, quality bought affordably. So I’m OK pinching pennies when need be. I tend to keep things for decades.

When I do have more to spend, and look at buying some lovely new clothes or shoes, I often break into a sweat of anxiety. Crazy. Not fun.

Managing money can feel terrifying if you’ve never done it and don’t even know who to trust for solid advice.

I’ve never touched an ETF or index fund, (as many people do) but have several mutual funds and four Canadian bank stocks — Canadian banks are notoriously conservative and consistently profitable; Canada never had a 2008 bank crash as Americans did, (thanks to lending millions to people with no ability to actually pay their mortgages.)

I read a few finance books, but the basics never change — live on less than your income, saving and investing what you have. Rinse and repeat!

I now read the Financial Times daily, even though it’s mostly for institutional investors moving millions. It helps me see where the global economy is going and which companies and sectors are doing well or terribly.

My peak earning years are over, sorry to say, so managing every dime is really essential now.

How are you managing your money?

Where did you learn how to do it?

A family reunion, of sorts

My maternal great grandmother, Blanche Gresham, 1924

By Caitlin Kelly

For years, my late mother and I were estranged. When we were in touch, even as her only child, she almost never discussed her childhood or adolescence before, at 17, she met my Canadian father in the south of France, then left her native New York City to move to his hometown, Vancouver, where I was born six years later.

Both parents grew up wealthy — in large houses with servants, attending prep school (my mother), owning a horse and a sailboat (father). But neither childhood was necessarily calm and happy.

So their histories have remained mostly a mystery to me.

My mother died April 15, 2020 and a very large, heavy packing crate arrived a year later from her final home, a nursing home in Victoria, B.C.

For a variety of reasons — partly fear the works inside would be very damaged (they weren’t), ambivalence about owning the final items of hers and knowing we have no one in our family to leave these things to — I didn’t open it for nine months.

It took a lot of hard work to get it open — thank you Jose!!

This week, finally, we did, and my husband Jose attacked it with a hammer and crowbar and a lot of determination!

Amazingly, the four things inside were in excellent shape; only a few bits of one frame had chipped off and the glass was wholly intact on everything (having been taped.)

There were two family portraits and a gorgeous Inuit print of a polar bear from 1961 I had long admired. And a sampler, from 1845.

This is one of the earliest Inuit prints, by Lucy, 1961; ignore my unbrushed hair!

So now my maternal great-grandmother — Blanche Gresham — later the Countess Casagrande of Park Avenue — has come almost full circle, some 3,011 miles.

I only met her once, as a very old, very infirm lady in that apartment. My mother adored her. I adored my grandmother — while we both had very difficult times with our own mothers. Go figure!

These women led quite extraordinary lives, cocooned by enormous wealth, but with marital mayhem — my grandmother married six times, four in a decade. I never met any of them, long gone by the time I met her.

I think (?) the smaller image is her with my grandmother Aline, and her sister Lois

I am very curious about these women and their lives; the money came from my great grandfather, Louis Stumer, a Chicago stockbroker and developer of a gorgeous skyscraper in 1912, The North American Building, on State Street in Chicago, (since torn down):

Developers Stumer, Rosenthal and Eckstein hired one of Chicago’s busiest, and best, tall building architectural firms Holabird & Roche for the project. William Holabird and Martin Roche, along with a team of talented designers and engineers, had developed a commercial building system that was not only pleasing to the eye, but more importantly for an investor could be built quickly, efficiently, and ready for rent-paying tenants on schedule. They were instrumental in helping make what came to be known as the Chicago School world famous.

One reason I chose to move to the U.S. was my fascination with this family and their lives. One relative became an ambassador, one an archeologist, one (!) a bullfighter. My cousins had lives that included piloting their own Cessna and running a rug business from Morocco. They were all intimidatingly confident — and so much larger than life than most of the quiet, polite Canadians I grew up around.

It’s quite comforting to finally have these women in our home now.

The Nova Scotia debacle…

By Caitlin Kelly

Note the small lot….a problem for adding a septic in a town of dug wells and septic systems…

Well, kids, it sure wasn’t dull.

The house dream blew up in fairly spectacular fashion Monday morning the 15th.

That was the day we were to commit to purchasing the house or losing our $3,000 deposit if we missed that deadline.

Friday morning — i.e. with two days to spare — I discovered the house is actually illegal, thanks to its antiquated septic system that, like many in that village, empties into the ocean.

Gross!

Also, against Nova Scotia environmental laws.

We needed probably three weeks to seek and win necessary government approval to install a wholly new system ($12,000) but the seller — a wealthy and powerful local businessman — refused us even an extra day.

Busted!

That was that. We bailed.

Then — do not ever mess with a skilled reporter! — I placed three calls that day to the local office of the environment and an official called me right back and is launching an investigation.

Also writing a letter to the top three people of the seller’s realtor to point out how crappy this is: either she lied or the seller lied and this put us in tremendous financial jeopardy if we’d been forced to buy an uninhabitable house.

Lessons learned:

1. The house’s owner, a local grandee accustomed to deference from the little people, isn’t going to suddenly get all ethical and nice for an outsider. Probably the opposite. Our realtor made clear he was furious to have dropped his price and then we dared ask for more time.

2. Never assume that a small town in a largely rural province is de facto any nicer or gentler than the iron-fisted ways of New York City! It’s very clear that panic pandemic buying has massively inflated prices and created a feeding frenzy for realtors and sellers that only leaves any buyer vulnerable.

3. Never stop asking questions!!

4. Take lots and lots and lots of notes; an email paper trail is also useful for reference. Also photos and videos.

5. If something feels off, it is!

6. My love for the physical structure of a charming house was blinding me to local conditions that would have made life there unpleasant and expensive — to reach the town means taking a car ferry and missing it (as I did one day) means losing valuable work time. I was warned that no one would even deliver a sofa that far because of lost waiting time; same for other services like pumping out the septic.

7. Take time to do every possible inspection and made each one a condition of purchase.

8. Getting a larger sense of the community and its culture quickly reduced my enthusiasm — after people lied to me, I had no wish to live there, even part-time.

Waiting for the car ferry; it carries 17 vehicles, and takes about 10 minutes

This was also just emotionally painful for me to let go of all the attendant hopes I had:

— welcoming friends

— getting to know a new community and province

— coming back to Canada

— a chance to use my decorating and design training to make the house lovely

— maybe getting summer rental income from it

— owning a place with no rules (like our co-op apartment)

— finding a property within our budget. Impossible now, really.

A visit to Nova Scotia

By Caitlin Kelly

Back again!

I spent last week visiting a province I had only been to once before, in my 20s, when my father then owned a big old Victorian house in Lunenburg on the South Shore.

This visit included a lot of driving!

There are no direct flights from NY to Halifax, so it becomes an all-day affair with a layover in Toronto (90 minutes north then 2 hours east.) I arrived, of course, sweaty and exhausted after an entire day masked, just in time for sunset — to drive 90 minutes in the dark on unfamiliar roads.

How had I forgotten how tiring and stressful travel can be?! Because I hadn’t been in an airplane since June 2019…

I was staying with my best friend from Toronto high school, who designed and built an off-grid home on a lake in a forest there. I hadn’t seen them in three years, since they left their rural home in Ontario. They were super welcoming and their 27-acre property was so blessedly beautiful and silent.

Morning mist at the lake!

I went up to see a house we are thinking of buying, after years of looking fruitlessly at real estate ads, watching prices literally double in the past year as wealthy people fleeing COVID have snapped up a lot of Nova Scotia real estate, driving up prices and making anything in our budget unattainable.

I finally found a really pretty gray shingled house, 2 bedroom, circa 1906, its interior unchanged for decades and uninhabited. We made an offer which was accepted.

The dining room…the house is full of their stuff.

Every room has wallpaper — I really like this one!

There are 3 calendars in the house — 1938, 1947 and 1953

But only then did the true fun begin….I was now dealing with 10 different individuals (!), including a realtor, lawyer and eight different tradesmen, from septic to wells to two general contractors. One afternoon, I was trying to talk to two of them at once with only an hour to conduct business because the realtor had to leave — and we had all missed the earlier ferry.

Oh yeah, you need to take a five minute ferry to reach the village, (pop. 300), one of three on an island.

The car ferry, which takes five minutes, and holds 17 vehicles — including tanker trucks and schoolbuses

Why do anything EASY?

So it was a week of a lot of learning for a woman whose entire life has been spent in apartments in cities and towns of 10,000 to millions, never in a remote village.

Even at our advanced ages, Jose and I have never owned a house, or even looked at one or made an offer — but a surprise inheritance (!) from my late estranged mother made this possible.

The house is not winterized or insulated so this would only be for summer use. That doesn’t bother me, since I really enjoy my NYC life, with easy access to museums, shows, ballet, opera, shopping and restaurants,

If this goes through — and we have hit yet another unforeseen potential deal-breaker just now — it would also give Jose and I a foothold back in my native Canada. Because if T—p wins again, and it is not looking good right now for the Democrats (trounced in recent elections), I’m not going to live in chronic anxiety for another four nasty years of GOP rule.

Highlights included three-hour drives to the house and back; sitting in morning silence by their lake; visiting a friend in Halifax I hadn’t seen since my wedding in Toronto a decade ago.

I loved the Nova Scotia accent, with its drawn-out vowels, and people were kind and helpful.

Will keep you posted!

This writer’s week

By Caitlin Kelly

Whew!

It seems obvious that writers write, certainly when every word adds income — and our health insurance alone (God bless America!!) is $1,500.00

The truth, as every freelancer knows, is that before I write a word about anything, I also spend a lot of time, probably 80 percent, just finding and getting the work and negotiating payment and conditions. For one recent story, I had to read and sign a nine-page single-space contract.

This week involved no writing, but lots of meetings:

— My web designer, now living in Asia and who I’ve been working with since 1995, suggested my writing skills to a client of his, a physician in Virginia, to help refresh the copy on his website. I spent half an hour speaking to the doctor, a specialist, to find out if we might be a good fit. I was a little nervous, as he might have been as well. These initial conversations are something of a mutual audition. Do we speak the same language? Do we each have a sense of humor? Did we enjoy it? I also had to name an hourly fee and rough estimate of how much time I thought it would take, not knowing if this would be acceptable. It went great, so onward!

— A former coaching client who’s become a friend needs new freelance writers so we skedded a call to discuss.

— A new design website needs copy focused on antiques, something I know well and have studied many times, hence a call to talk about some ideas.

— I’m working on a very cool story for The New York Times, (I’ve written more than 100 for them), but it’s moving very slowly. My key source lost his mother very suddenly, so I stayed away for a while. This is a story where I think personal introductions to sources will prove more fruitful. There are different ways to find and approach people, some better for some stories than others, and some just take a lot more time to pull together. None of this time is paid for, just built into the one fee we get per story.

— A calm and civil conversation with the editor I had walked away from mid-story. I’ll get a kill fee, 25 percent of the original, instead.

— Emailed an editor in England I’d hoped to be working with on a story in July, but she warned me of changes at the company.

I recently did a Zoom webinar with Jose and counted up the number of clients I worked with in 2020 — 19.

This year, already, 19!

I enjoy this variety, but I admit it’s tiring adapting to 19 different people and their needs and their individual style.

I’ve had one boss before in many staff jobs. It’s a bit easier!