Category: What I’m Thinking

After graduating from college, I applied to 22 teaching jobs before finally landing one—at a juvenile detention facility. It was already October, my husband had just started grad school full-time, and we had no income to pay bills or buy groceries. I was desperate.

The rejections were tough. I took each one personally, even though I knew not all of them had to do with my qualifications. Still, rejection stings.

Fast forward twenty-five years, and I find myself in a similar place—putting my work out there and hoping someone says yes. These days, it’s not job applications but query letters. Every week, I send out ten or more, searching for that one literary agent willing to champion this first-time author and her manuscript.

Let me tell you—querying isn’t for the faint of heart. Thankfully, my time spent at Queens earning my MFA helped me develop thick skin in terms of receiving feedback related to my writing. Well-meaning, highly-qualified professors would give honest and necessary feedback in order to help me develop my writing and grow as a writer.

After graduation, I was accepted into the Book Development Program and paired with editor Alexa Pastor from Simon & Schuster. In our first Zoom session, she said, “I absolutely love your character Lily.” My heart soared. As my head began to swell and I envisioned book signings and public speaking events around the globe. Then came the follow-up: “I hate her story.”

Oof.

But instead of giving up, I rewrote the entire novel over the next six months. With Alexa’s guidance, Lily’s story transformed—and so did I.

Which brings me to today. Desperately seeking a literary agent and one of countless fish in the literary pond. And, because I’m casting my net wide, I’m also receiving rejections, almost daily. Some are generic and kind: “Thank you for submitting your manuscript. Unfortunately, at this time we are unable to offer you literary representation. It is not a reflection of your work and we hope you the best in your continued search.” Others have been a little more critical: “Our interest was piqued in your query letter; however, your early pages underwhelmed us.”

But I’m not alone.

A quick Google search reveals I’m in good company:
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• Lisa Genova’s Still Alice: 100+ rejections
• Kathryn Stockett’s The Help: 60 rejections
• Stephen King’s Carrie: 30 rejections
• Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time: 26 rejections
• John Grisham, A Time to Kill: 28 rejections
• Dr. Seuss, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street: 27 rejections
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22: 22 rejections
• William Golding, Lord of the Flies: 21 rejections
• Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank: 15 rejections
• Chicken Soup for the Soul: 144 rejections

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So, how do I handle all the “no’s”? I try to see each one as a step closer to the “yes.” I’m trying to rise above it and not take it personally. I remind myself that I’m filtering out the agents who aren’t a good fit, making space for the one who is.

A friend asked how my querying was going, and so I was honest about the emotional rollercoaster of receiving a rejection and needing to carry on and keep the faith. She directed me to this quote by Stephen King:

“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”
— Stephen King, On Writing

That gave me an idea. I grabbed a mason jar, stuffed it with a few dollar bills, and christened it my “Not Yet” jar. For every rejection, I add a dollar. One day, that jar will buy me something fun. If I get accepted tomorrow, maybe it’s a coffee and scone. If it takes 100 rejections, maybe it’s a first-class ticket to somewhere beautiful.

Right now, the jar sits on our kitchen counter. Sometimes I catch my daughter emptying it out to count the money. And honestly? I love that. I love that my kids see me staying hopeful, embracing rejection, and keeping the faith that “not yet” is just one step away from “yes.”

Artificial intelligence is the buzzword of the moment. While we barely spoke of it five years ago, some now fear it’s on the verge of taking over our world. And yes, there are headlines that feed those fears—self-driving Teslas crashing into driveways, a young woman dating a chatbot boyfriend created through ChatGPT. It’s unsettling.

But if we think about AI as simply the newest form of technology, then history is simply repeating itself. Parents were convinced the introduction of the television into homes would destroy their children’s brains forever, turning them into mindless zombies. When computers became mainstream, access to the internet and frequent use of email became the concern d’jour. CNN wrote an article in 2005 claiming emails would damage our IQs “more than pot” (​https://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq/​). Each of these innovations caused panic—and each eventually found a place in our lives. They didn’t destroy us, though they certainly changed the way we live.

Personally, I enjoy turning on my television and sending a quick email, and I’m not convinced either have made me less intelligent. Just last night I watched a hockey game with my family which was being played hundreds of miles away, and then we all watched the news at 11:00pm in order to track the storms in our area and to see if we were at risk for a tornado. This morning I communicated with someone through 6 different email messages, something that would have taken weeks via snail mail.

So here we are with AI—somewhere between excitement and unease. Don’t you think Henry Ford felt the same way when he sent his first Model T out on the roads?

Here’s my personal take on AI: it’s okay (even wonderful) if used as the equivalent of a calculator. But calculators are best used after you’ve learned how to do the math. They’re tools—efficient and useful—but not substitutes for understanding. The same should go for AI.

AI lives in a world of gray. All of us in the creative industry worry about how and when AI will produce creative projects that are our livelihood. Spines, a new company which promises to streamline the process for authors using AI to edit, format, design and distribute, is being met with much scrutiny. Writers and publishers are understandably skeptical, worried about quality, ethics, and the future of human-made stories. (​Here’s a recent article​ that’s worth reading.)

And yet—true confession—I use AI as an author. Wait! Don’t sound the alarms. I use it as a tool, like that calculator I mentioned earlier. Let me explain.

Back in March, I went on a writing retreat, hoping to create a series of short stories based on a family who lives in a funeral home. I only had three days, and I wanted to crank out as much first-draft material as possible, so I made sure to do some brainstorming and outlining before I left. I knew I would need a number of names of old people who had died and were at the funeral home; I also knew that stopping to google while I wrote would be a recipe for disaster. Every good writer knows they are looking for a distraction, and too often we find ourselves falling down the rabbit hole of meaningless internet scrolling, all in the name of “research.” Knowing this danger that would possibly await me, I went to Chat GPT and asked it to give me a dozen “names traditionally associated with old people.” It spit out Harold and Hazel and Gladys and Eleanor and George and Henry and Frank and Francis among others. Boom. Done. During my writing time, when I needed to add in a new name of a deceased person, I went directly to my list, chose a name and continued typing. No time wasted.

After writing my stories, I had a fellow author friend inform me of another clever option from Chat GPT. I entered one of my short stories and asked it to find any plot errors or loopholes in my writing. To my surprise, it offered the perspective of a critical reader, informing me that I had written about someone breaking into the funeral home, but I did not write if there was a keypad or a traditional key and lock on the door. How would the individual break in? Did they find out the code? Did they have a copy of the key? Brilliance. Thanks to AI, I had feedback but still needed to do the revision work on my own.

AI is a slippery slope. We discussed at our family dinner table how AI is a great tool which gets abused in the hands of unethical or lazy people. But that’s true of many other things.

So here’s my final thought: let’s welcome AI, but cautiously. It’s just the new technology kid on the block. It will cause concern from those who fear it will take over the world, just as cars and radio and television and computers and the internet. And traditionalists will forever fight anything that is new and different in our world (I think they’re still solely sending out snail mail). But let’s use the most powerful tool we have–our brains–to critically examine it, to predict issues we might be facing, to avoid using it in place of our own creative work, and above all to hold ourselves to an ethical standard in which we only use it for the good and never for evil. And let’s keep doing the real work of creating, revising, and imagining ourselves.

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“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Shakespeare is known for penning wisdom. His lines have filled volumes of analysis and fueled semester-long college courses for centuries.

Personally, I’m in awe of the man—his tangled plots, his tragic characters (Ophelia still breaks my heart to this day), his universal themes, and his unmatched creativity. He’s credited with inventing more than 1,700 words we still use today. (Me? I’ve invented exactly zero words that have caught on.)

But I’m going to be bold here and challenge that iconic quote from Romeo and Juliet. Because, truthfully? I do think names matter. And I’m living proof—as I’m currently deep in a name/identity crisis of my own.

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I was born a Berkhof and lived for 21 years with that identity. As the younger sister by three years, I spent most of high school responding to “Babyberk.” But then I married young (summer in between my junior and senior year) and never thought twice about the traditional expectation of taking on my husband’s name.

By the time I began student teaching in the spring of my senior year, I was already “Mrs. Bolt.” And for the past 25 years, that’s exactly who I’ve been.

But as I began flexing my writing muscles and slipping on the author hat, something stirred. My name resurfaced for the first time in a quarter-century, and I started wonder who I wanted to be.

There’s something about an author’s name that feels permanent. When writing books or other pieces for publication, there is a consideration of legacy. When I am published, my book will outlive me. It will be around for generations to come. My kids and grandkids and great-grandkids will get to read it and will see my name on it.

But what was that name to be?

These days, an author isn’t just a writer—they’re a brand. A platform. A searchable identity.

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I experimented with “Kimberly Berk” as a pen name, but my daughter quickly declared she hated it. One agent told me it’s just too complicated to go by a pen name these days. Samuel Clemens may have pulled off “Mark Twain” in the 1800s, but he didn’t have to worry about matching his website domain and Instagram handle.

But I wanted my maiden name to own a piece of this legacy. My grandmother had two boys who in turn had 4 girls, so our family name will end with my dad and uncle.

So, for now, I’ve landed on Kim Berkhof Bolt. It’s a bridge—connecting who I was with who I am now.

It’s not coming as naturally as I thought. I’ve started updating my email address, and I’m practicing using my full name every chance I get: signing it, saying it, writing it.

In March, while picking up my son from the airport after his spring break, I spotted a steel beam available for signatures—a commemorative piece for a construction project. Naturally, I had a Sharpie in my purse (I believe everyone should carry one). I signed my first name… and then paused. Something nudged me to write the new name. The real one.

When I stepped back, that small moment felt significant.

Maybe this is the start of a new chapter.

What Death Teaches Us About Life

I can imagine that even reading the title made you cringe a bit, so I congratulate you on even reading the first sentence. I promise that nothing you will read will be gory, will give you nightmares, or will even bring you one step closer to death (although, you technically are closer to death now that you were one minute ago. But it’s okay. I promise. Stick with me here).

Why is the topic of death and dying so terrifying that we don’t even want to talk about it, read about it, or think about it? Believe it or not, fear of death is not a universal fear–as we have been led to believe. It is most specifically and prominently in Western culture that we are afraid of death, and it wasn’t always this way historically.​

Caitlin Doughty writes in her book “From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find a Good Death” how funeral practice became a business in the turn of the 20th century. Before then, people held wakes in their living room, literally waiting to see if the supposed dead woke up, because determining death was often unsuccessfully done by feeling for a pulse or looking for someone’s breath on a mirror. According to McGill Office for Science and Society, “premature burial affected many unlucky folks. Up to the mid-19th century, there were stories of people who were mistakenly pronounced dead and buried quickly, just to be discovered with bruised knees, broken fingernails, and scratched-up coffins from trying to escape an unintentionally fatal burial. As these stories spread, taphephobia (the fear of being buried alive) grew, prompting more people to request cremation or beheading before burial, just in case.” https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-did-you-know/saved-bell#:~:text=%E2%80%9CSaved%20by%20the%20bell%2C%E2%80%9D,brain%20death%20and%20heart%20death.

Death and Burial Become a Business

To address taphephobia, funeral directors decided to turn death and burial into a business, commercializing and corporatizing it. When a loved one was declared dead, that person was immediately removed from the home and grieving family members. They were either cremated and their ashes placed in an urn or embalmed and their body placed in a casket. The family and friends were then allowed to see the loved one for a short period of time before the casket was then brought to a cemetery, and lowered inside a grave vault six feet deep. Once the vault was sealed and the earth was placed back on top, all the family had was a possible gravestone marking the spot.

Funerals have become quick, efficient, clean, expensive ordeals in Western Culture. This often leaves us at a loss (pun intended) for how to grieve. And it is not so in other cultures, as Doughty points out. She knows this because she traveled across the globe to experience other cultures handle the death, burial and remembrance of their loved ones.

I won’t spoil the book, because it is such an eye-opening read. Some of the practices feel awkward, cringy, even disrespectful, but she reminds us not to read these stories as if the way we do it in Western Culture is best. She writes, 

“We consider death rituals savage only when they don’t match our own.”

So returning to death, dying and grief. Where does that leave us? I hope primarily it humbles us to realize that along with many other things in this life, the United States/North America does not approach this perfectly. We might not even be on the list of the “Top 5 Ways to Deal with Death” (if ever there were a list).

Normalizing Talk About Death and Dying

I believe an easy start is to simply talk about death and dying. Bring it up at dinner parties, while waiting for the delayed bus to arrive, with the barista at Starbucks. I guarantee you’ll get a few wide eyes and the majority of people will dismiss you. But we have to start talking about it if we want to normalize it. Spoiler alert: we all die. It’s actually one of only two things that unite us all as globe dwellers: our birth and our eventual death. Ironically, far too many of us are willing to talk about our own birth stories, or how we birthed humans ourselves (I was there personally for three of them. Beautiful but messy ordeals). And that’s how we should view death as well; something we’re willing to talk about, to share stories. Maybe about others first, because that feels a bit safer and remembering those who have gone before us is just a cool thing to do (I mean, Mexico and Bolivia actually dedicate one entire day each year to this and declare it a holiday). And maybe, when death and dying start working their way into conversations after we’ve discussed the weather (unpredictable and often disappointing) and politics (even more unpredictable and disappointing) and if we think the Lions maybe, just maybe could actually win a playoff game this year (don’t get me started) then perhaps we could begin to normalize this a bit, make it a little less terrifying.

I want a green burial; I want to be composted. And I want Jane Kenyon’s “Let Evening Come” read at my memorial service. I want my pallbearers to wear running shoes, both because I have bad feet and need to wear sneakers all the time and because I loved running when I was alive. I do NOT want ham on buns served after my memorial service; as a vegetarian, I would roll over in my compostable grave. Instead, I’m stealing an idea from Natasha Meyer Turner, a friend of mine who lost her battle to cancer after almost a decade, but was celebrated by friends and family with a dessert bar. I too want cakes, cupcakes, pies, desserts, possibly even a chocolate fountain (if my germaphobe husband is not alive at the time) as you celebrate my life. I stand with Marie Antoinette in declaring “let them eat cake.” Over my dead body.

It is said that our perception of death impacts how we live life. So let us not fear death but live life to the fullest. And while we’re doing that, “let’s talk about [death], baby.” (Possible slight change to song title to better fit the topic of this blog).

What are your thoughts?

When it comes to death, dying, and grief—where do you stand? Are you open to talking about it, or does the topic scare you to death? (pun intended). Post on either my Instagram or Facebook accounts and keep the conversation going.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” —Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” Wild and Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver

Author – Speaker – Mom of 3 (+1 dog)

If you’ve gotten this far, a warm welcome to you into my newly launched world. Along with teaching for the past 25 years, I’ve always had a love for writing. When I joined the Lake Michigan Writing Project in 2005, I found other teacher/writers with whom I could nerd out on all things teaching and writing. But writing was always compartmentalized for me. It was a safe thing I did with other teachers, for my students, and maybe a little on my own from time to time.

Then Covid struck in 2020 and the world was burning down. I was juggling being at home helping my three kids through their online schooling while teaching fully online for the first time. I half-jokingly proposed an idea to my husband that I should go back to school and earn another Masters degree. But this one wouldn’t be practical; it would be completely selfish, to fulfill a lifelong dream. My husband, always the cheerleader, responded with a “why not?” and shortly thereafter I enrolled in Queens University in North Carolina.

As of today, I now have my Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing, specifically in the area of fiction, and I have completed a manuscript which I am working toward publication. For the first time in my life, I am actually living out my dream as a writer and author. I am excited and terrified and am doing things I would never have imagined such as speaking in schools and classrooms, building my author platform, gathering people to be a part of my audience and my new world.

So if you are here and you have read this far, thank you. I truly hope you will find this place one of interest and enjoyment. Or, if nothing else, a place where you can watch my crazy unfold in this wild adventure I’m on.