My trip to Lund: 5 lessons I learned revisiting my freelance roots

I spent some time last month in Lund, a college town in southern Sweden. It was my first visit back since living there briefly in the mid-1980s, a time that coincided with my first pass at working as a freelance writer.

The main reason for the trip was a family wedding in a nearby town. But I made a point of going a few days early to revisit my freelance roots.

It was literally and figuratively a trip down memory lane.

Here’s what I learned:

1. I’ve come along way since my initial foray into freelancing. Back then, I sent letters of introduction via snail mail and waited impatiently for editors to reply. I wrote on a portable manual typewriter I picked up at a second-hand store in Copenhagen. I conducted interviews in English and Swedish, the latter not very well. To keep in touch with family and friends, I wrote letters or made long-distance calls, the latter not very often because I didn’t have that kind of cash. Being borderline broke, I took any kind of freelance work I could find: stories on European health care for the home-care trade magazine I’d recently left, assignments for a Swedish-American business magazine promoting trade between the two countries, even a gig translating product literature from Swedish to English.

2. Time goes by, but some things don’t change. On my visit to Lund, one of my first outings was to the apartment building where I lived (and worked). There it was, just around the corner from my hotel, an older three-story red brick building with the same weathered doors painted green just as I’d remembered. I cried as I walked into the entry way, a reaction I wasn’t expecting. It was as if I’d entered a time loop, and was experiencing being my 20-something self again. I’ve never had such a strong reaction to a place; it’s something I’ll hold onto for my writing in the future. It’s also a great reminder that when doing interviews to ask people questions about the places they’ve been or the emotions that certain places evoke for them. When some family members came to Lund on my last day there, I had them take my picture in that doorway so I could preserve the memory of myself there now.

3. I love working in hotel rooms. I’ve said it before, hotel rooms are one of my favorite places to write. Probably because if I’m staying in a hotel by myself it means I’m traveling for business, one of the few times in my life as a working wife and mom I don’t have anyone else to answer to but me. I get up as early as I want, stay up as late as I please and spend as much time as I want writing or editing without having to worry about carpools, practices or dinner. One day of my trip I worked late on an editing a project and got fresh smoked salmon at the Lund Saluhallen – think Seattle Pike’s Market – and other items at a grocery store around the corner for this in-room dinner.

4. Don’t trust everything to memory. Even though I spent six months in Lund and vividly remember many experiences there, I had no recollection of entire sections of the city, such as this cobblestone street, one of many like it in the oldest part of town. Moral of that story: don’t rely on memory alone if you go somewhere and think there’s a chance you may write about it someday. Take notes!

5. Life’s full of coincidences. After my stay in Lund, I headed to the wedding, which took place in the beach town of Falsterbo, about 45 minutes outside of Lund. The hotel where we stayed was just a few doors down from a house where I’d spent one raucous midsummer weekend with a bunch of Swedish friends. Seeing it was one of the trip’s unexpected bonuses. Coincidence? Yes. But it was the perfect bookend to my visit, and another reminder that life – like writing – brings you places you might never expect. Embrace it.