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On November 26th 2020, I had the privilege of chatting to the writing whirlwind, Olga Mecking, about her new book, Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing.
Here’s the low down
When a highly productive and talented writer says that there’s value in not doing anything, it’s time to pay attention. Olga Mecking is the creator of the blog The European Mama, translator of her father’s memoir, One Chance in a Thousand, editor of and contributor to the 2014 anthology Dutched Up!, has been published in the Guardian, BBC, The Atlantic and The New York Times, and has recently published Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing. After her NYT article, ‘The Case for Doing Nothing’ went viral in 2019, Mecking had the opportunity to investigate the topic further and produce a complete book on the topic. She recently joined me for a remote chat in which we discussed her career so far and the development of her new book. The full conversation will be linked at the end of this article, but here is a taster of some of the things I learned:
1 – Blogs are a great place to get started with your writing
Back in 2011, Olga Mecking set up a blog called The European Mama to process the isolation she felt as a second-time mother in a new country. As a Polish writer with a German husband living in the Netherlands, holding further connections to France alongside her Jewish roots, the blog helped her to define her own identity as a mother and multicultural individual. She wrote about raising kids with multiple languages, living abroad, travel, recipes and more. Now, as a published author, she is able to repurpose her blog as an author’s website to showcase her work and ensure everything contributes to her career.
2 – But they aren’t a guaranteed secret to success
“I love blogging,” Olga admits, “but [over] time it’s become so professionalised.” What once took an hour to prepare and post now requires far longer in order to compete with the vast numbers of blogs currently out there. With this amount of time and effort, Olga realised that it would be better to put her talents into writing that would make her money. Networking with other writers allowed her to learn more about the industry, where she discovered that…
3 – Newspapers want freelancers
We generally assume that newspapers produce their written material using… well… their writers. After all, that’s what they hired them for, right? The reality is that newspapers are always looking for fresh perspectives and experiences to supplement their own content. Starting out with pitches to small publications and paying blogs, Olga developed her skills and portfolio with these articles, which soon meant that she could start pitching to bigger and bigger outlets. By 2016 she had received her first payment, and she hasn’t stopped since.
4 – A good writer is hard to pin down
“My degree is not in journalism,” Olga points out, “but it is in language. I used to work as a translator and I speak five languages. I see what I do now as another form of translation. It’s not just words from one language into another, but concepts from one culture to another.”
When I congratulated her on having such a unique written voice in another language, Olga laughed. “For me, every article is different, and I try to adapt to the voice of the publication,” she explains, before adding, “right now English is my best language for writing.” It’s not about first or second languages, in her view, “but how long you have been using it and what for.”
5 – The importance of luck
Olga is too cautious to draw easy conclusions from her success, and wryly points out that having an article go viral “really helps.” She discovered the concept of niksen by chance in a Dutch wellness magazine, and publishers contacted her after the piece went viral. The topic was being taken up by lots of publications whose stories were referring back to her article, so agents and publishers who were actively looking for interesting topics swiftly pounced on her sudden success.
What’s more, the final book came out a week after lockdown had begun in the Netherlands. So whilst her initial article tapped into a general feeling of frustration amongst readers who want to reclaim laziness, boredom, and procrastination as important parts of life, her book was fortunate enough to land on shelves just a point where many readers had nothing to do, and so could turn to her for advice about niksen.
6 – Book production is a collaborative process
Olga did not agonise over her first draft, assuming that she had more time than she did, so wrote 1500 words a day with no further research, and finished in six weeks. “My first draft was a mess,” she admits, but the skeleton was complete. Next came revision, a massive amount of research, interviewing, and rewriting of her manuscript under increasing time pressure to get the book out. A similar book came out just a few days after her own! Her editor was very helpful in pointing out what could be cut, what expanded, and what should be shifted around. After this, her publisher brought in an illustrator whose quirky, fun illustrations fit the book perfectly.
“I admire people who have design skills because I have none.” Olga grins, “So it’s great to have that artist on board as well.”
7 – The ‘nasty bit’ of publishing
Of course, after the book is finalised, there’s still the nasty bit of publishing to deal with; marketing, promotion, and sales. Olga is grateful to her publisher’s marketing team who organised so much of this, but was surprised to find producers contacting her directly on Twitter and email, with podcast appearances on the imminent horizon, underscoring the importance of having an active social media profile that interested people can use to find you.
8 – You cannot predict what people want to read, but you know your own tastes
“My favourite thing to do is to offer a new perspective on a certain topic,” Olga says, citing her desire to parody the ‘wellness’ genre which “tell[s] you [that] you have to do this and this and that and then you’ll be amazing, but if you don’t do it you’re a loser.” She thinks that part of her article’s success came from it tapping into a general sense of exhaustion with this kind of thinking, and remarks that people in the UK and US are keen to hear of philosophies from other cultures that they might not have access to due to the language barrier.
None of this can be predicted, however, and during her transition into professional writing she would pitch articles that didn’t fit with her blog in order to make herself comfortable with moving out of her comfort zone by thinking about new ideas and defying “the experts who tell you to stay in your niche.”
9 – Niksen and the art of writing
Seeing the irony, Olga is the first to admit that she rarely embodies niksen in her own work. “I think I’m terrible because I don’t write every day,” she chuckles, “but I do something writing related every day.” Reading a book, going out, taking the bus, sitting around, and even going shopping can all result in writing. It may be a single idea she encounters or a sentence that strikes her which leads to an article.
10 – Pitching articles as the removal of obstacles
Finally, Olga has some wonderful advice for writers struggling to develop a pitch. “I’ve found it’s all about getting obstacles out of the way. So if you have an idea that’s already good, it’s one obstacle less. If you’re able to find the magazine you want to pitch it for, that’s another obstacle gone.” Next comes finding the editor’s email address (not as hard as you’d think), writing the pitch, and finally the article, with each stage a single obstacle to be dealt with one step at a time. So if you’re struggling to write the pitch, just remember that you’ve passed some of the biggest obstacles already!
I want to thank Olga for talking with me. The complete video of our conversation about Niksen can be found here, and her new book, Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing (2021) is available in hardcover and eBook from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishers (256 pp.)
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This post has been collated by our new intern, Charlie Wellings, who is helping us to produce more content to inspire your writing.
