Riva Pomerantz: trust, inertia, and the respectful mess of realistic change

See You is the juicy family drama you expect from Riva Pomerantz, but so much more. Not content with its main theme of a crumbling facade of perfectionism, it insists on making everything meaningful. It’s a layered drama that pulses and turns until a satisfying conclusion. 

Riva Pomerantz was born and bred in Toronto, Canada, where her sophisticated reading appetite led her to classics like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and O. Henry. Today she writes fiction for Ami Magazine, runs an online writing community for women and girls, in addition to her other exciting ventures. Riva lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel with her husband and kids. See You is her fourteenth book.

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I never planned to be a writer. I was going to be a biomedical engineer and do cancer research. I've been writing since I was little, so I didn't think it could be a career, it was almost too simple. But Hashem had other plans for me, and after doing a lot of different things, I ended up publishing an article. That opened my eyes to the neat little fact that, hey, I could be paid for doing what comes so easily to me.

I'm a very assertive person (in a nice sort of way, I hope!!), and when I get my mind on something, I'll follow through. I decided I wanted to write for Mishpacha Magazine, and I made the editor crazy until she finally gave me an article. She was really happy with me, and then they asked me to do a serial for them. I had written my first books, Breaking Point and Breaking Free, long before, but I had never dreamed of doing a serial. At that point I just thought, okay, I'll try it, I'm always up for a new challenge. That grew and evolved and became a full-time career.

How do you think your own approach to writing has changed since you first wrote Breaking Point and Green Fences?

It depends on what you call approach. I don’t think my mission, values, or voice have changed. I think it’s very authentic and in line with what I strongly believe in, which is the power of hope and of creating respectful conversation and dialogue in order to affect social change. There has to be a really symbiotic relationship in order to have a heartfelt connection with my readers. I want them to trust me and believe in me, and I want them to know that I believe in them and in their ability to write their story of hope and transformation. It’s a really cool job, to touch so many people and have so much of an impact, but also an enormous responsibility.

I am very rooted in keeping things real. My characters grow in ways and in stages that are realistic and true to life, I'm not giving any pipe dreams or offering any false hope. I think that would not only be disrespectful and patronizing, but it would also be cruel. The reader is often very wrapped up in the character and can identify with their challenges. So if you give them an unrealistic solution, they'll just feel like you dropped them off a cliff.

You brought out this point very literally in See You, because this turns out to be Esther’s struggle. She has this epiphany, reevaluates her life, and then implements her new ideals in an unsustainable way.

Change happens differently for different people. A complex character like Esther Samson is going to try a lot of different things. She's going to fail, get into a slump, get out of the slump. She's going to try something new. She's going to succeed, and hit a roadblock. This is life, a two-step forward and one-step backward process. It's a continuous reevaluation of what works, what doesn't, and what we can do better.

See You starts and ends on perfection. But while Esther’s life is already starting to unravel on page 1, she reaches that ultimate moment of “I just can’t do perfect anymore” much later on, when she’s already given up everything you can possibly think of, and seems to have dropped the facade long ago. Why is the turning point there? What had to happen for Esther to come to this point?

Self-awareness is a process. The human psyche is so complex, and defense mechanisms are so essential. Nobody wants to change. So there has to be a lot of breaches and insights and very compelling reasons to dig deeper. For a person like Esther Samson, who has a very important reason to protect her ego and not become vulnerable, she's going to be very, very cautious about letting it all unravel. But she keeps getting hit over the head with another sledgehammer. Just when she thinks that she's got her stride, more tzaros happen.

She thinks she has done the work because she has made changes in her life, but then it turns out it wasn't enough, or it wasn't targeted enough.

I want to speak to that point because I think that with Esther Samson, as with all of us, it doesn't discount the change that she made. It doesn't mean that she wasn't doing the real work. It's like if you ever play Super Mario, you can't get to level five until you go through level one. You have to go through the levels; the only way out is through. So it's not like she’s intentionally shying away from the real dirty work. Emotionally, psychologically, even sometimes physically, there needs to be that that ever-deepening willingness. 

Many of my characters go through complex journeys because I think that's really the essence of life. My favorite line is, “Life is a gym. It's not a spa.” We all show up expecting to get our bathrobe and rose petal bath, but we're here to work. When you face one challenge, that doesn't mean your job is over. This is good, this discomfort, this challenge, this pain, is what's going to build you and make you shine.

Esther claims that her drive for perfection is something that she built up intentionally in response to her relationship with her sister. But we see something in her personality that drives her to take things all the way. I'm fascinated by the fact that you had her choose her personality, but later on, it's taking her over and she's not in control of it anymore.

Because these kinds of things can run amok. It starts as a defense mechanism, and then it can grow and take on its own form. It gets fed by a thousand different things. We get reinforcement from others in the role that we play. Esther's persona swept her away to the point that she was really missing out on what could have been the deeper joys of life, like her family and marriage. She starts realizing that even the excitement of success comes at a price: When your whole persona is built on something so shaky, you can't even allow yourself to relax because if you do, you might find out that the whole thing is a house of cards. 

Poor Esther. I really love Esther, that's the truth. I'm fascinated by her story. I know that sounds really weird because I created her, but she’s a cool lady! 🙂

Authors often will try to show the “before,” what things were like before the transition,  so we can see the contrast. The fact that the readers literally dropped into See You as Esther’s change is starting to happen emphasizes how the story is the change. We can only imagine what before looked like.

That's a storytelling device that I decided to employ. Instead of showing you the before, I'm just giving you a tiny drop of context and then dropping you right into the heart of the storyline. It makes things so much more complicated and so much richer. Esther is grieving for her husband without grieving for him until she realizes that she's really grieving for herself. That she missed out on that opportunity to really appreciate him in his lifetime.

It's also nice to start with the catalyst. We know nothing about Binyomin in the beginning, just that the family just got up from Shiva and the details are very hazy, but you get this feeling of this crisis, which is the first thing that got the ball rolling for Esther Samson. Beforehand, she was totally in inertia. She would've gone on like this forever, with her husband taking care of the family, with Esther ignoring her kids, taking her husband for granted, building her magazine, and hating her sister. She could have gone on for ten more decades, but suddenly there’s a stopping point, and that’s where the story begins.

In your afterward, you write “In See You, I take that conflict to the extreme, forcing Esther into a corner…”. How do you balance emphasizing an issue to bring a point across while still being realistic?

I think the reader will make concessions for a more extreme plot line for a character, but they will not be forgiving of an extreme solution to the problem. Right now, I have a serial going in Ami Magazine called Take 2. It’s a very extreme plot line, but it’s actually based on a true story. This is something that happens, people are reaching out to me saying, “You are telling the story of my life.” So yes, it's not necessarily a de-rigueur story that every second person tells you, but it is realistic and real. Some readers are just like, oh my gosh, this is so crazy, I can't handle this. But a lot of readers will be okay with the character going through something extreme.

What they will not be okay with, however, is an unrealistic resolution to whatever the character's going through. So I feel like I have that license to push the character against the wall, but how the character will inch away from the wall has to be pretty lifelike. Because otherwise, that's where I'll lose readers or chas v’shalom hurt them if I make it unrealistic. For the writer, that is the hardest job. That's where it takes the most information and insight. 

Many of your books have explored topics that were new or undiscussed in their times. What kind of approval processes have you gone through at Mishpacha, Ami, or Menucha Publishers? What do those sensitive conversations look like?

I discuss a wide range of topics, but I am not controversial because I do it with a lot of respect and sensitivity. I view my mission as a writer as creating dialogue in the global frum community, in the hopes of making positive change, but the way I do it is by aiming to provide insight, not to “incite”. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've run into an issue where I've been asked to change a line or change a word.

My first book, Breaking Point, was written before the words “Kids at Risk” had been invented. It sat on my publisher's desk for three years. He was too afraid to publish it until the Jewish Observer did their groundbreaking article on the topic, and then the story broke wide open. My book was the first to talk about the phenomenon of kids who grew up frum and then left Yiddishkeit. There was a reaction, I wouldn't say a backlash, but there was a reaction. There were parents who didn't want their children reading it, schools who didn't want it in their libraries. I completely understand. But it was an important book on many levels. 

What's your perspective on teen reading? You wrote All that Glitters, an adorable collection of novelettes for teens. How do you feel about young girls reading some of your more sensitive books, like Charades or Six Degrees?

I wouldn't want my child reading those books, to be very honest. Charades (a story that explores domestic violence) bichlall is very dark. It was an important story, and it had to be told. But I don't feel like younger children would have the maturity and nuanced thinking to absorb that story in the right light. That said, I read everything as a kid, so I'm a big hypocrite :-). But there were certain things I read that I wished I could unread afterward. So I'm into sheltering my children as much as possible from outside stuff. I'll have open conversations with them, and if they want to talk to me about anything, I'm always available. But I’m cautious about introducing third-party literature.

My favorite audience and the age group that I have the most admiration for are teenagers. They’re going through this incredible process of transformation from childhood to adulthood, and I really applaud them. I have a part of my online writing community, Masterpiece, exclusively for teenagers because I think creativity and self-expression are survival skills for teenagers. I see how the girls bond through their shared passion and art, it takes the whole thing to the next level. 

Do you think we might see more from you for teens?

I just accepted a commission to write a book for teenagers. This is going to be a really cool true story. I don't wanna give away the details yet, but you will hear about it. That'll be my 17th book, be’ezras Hashem. Meanwhile, I’m blessed to have a beautiful, kosher, safe writing community exclusively for Bais Yaakov teens at www.rivapomerantz.com/teenswrite, which gives me so much nachas!

How would you assess frum fiction today, relative to when you started?

There was good frum fiction when I started, but it was very sparse. Ruthie Pearlman’s Making it Work trilogy, and Rachel Pomerantz and Avner Gold were writing at that time. Today we have loads and loads of amazing writers who are turning out such incredible work. I think the magazines could be credited with a lot of the change because they have essentially pressed writers into the service of writing every single week. The magazines are actually impacting the book publishing business because people feel like they have their fill in their weekly magazine, so they're buying fewer books.

From your stance within your writing community, what would you say is the biggest obstacle to writing quality fiction?

I think that it's a combination of factors. Some of it is skill. A lot of it is confidence and just breaking through whatever is holding you back. And the other thing that I think writers fail to realize is that the only way to become an amazing writer is to write. The more you write, the better you get. I just reread Breaking Point, and I was cringing. But I hope that in 10 years I'll look back at See You and I will cringe because that's the growth process I want to be on.

You recently launched Skillnosh, a marketplace for frum courses. Creating courses is all the rage now - what do you think led up to this trend? What has the initial response to your new platform been like?

I sell my own courses and also sell replays of Masterpiece workshops. I guess I started thinking, maybe I could invite other people to create workshops. I love the idea of frum people around the world helping each other and growing a community together in this organic, cross-pollinating way. After Covid, we discovered the power of Zoom, and the accessibility just opened up for everybody. Mothers of young children cannot get out to a shiur; they just can't do it. But they can listen while they're taking care of their baby. 

The response has been enormous. People are giving the coolest courses. There's a guy who wants to teach basic electricity, like how to do basic wiring in your house. There's a doula, a life coach, a Sheitel Macher, a few photographers, graphic designers. There's a woman who wants to teach advocacy for disabilities, a woman who mentors mothers whose kids are going through rough times. It's amazing. You can learn more at www.skillnosh.com.

You mentioned book number seventeen before, so I imagine you have a whole lineup of what’s coming next. What sneak peek can you give?

My next book to come out is a really wrenching translation of a Holocaust memoir, called Limrot Hakol in Hebrew. My 16th book will be Take 2, which will appear in novel form after it's finished. I'm on chapter 35 now. And then my 17th book will be the one I’m writing for teens. And then I'll probably start a new serial. Do you have any ideas? 🙂

The other thing in my pipeline is not specifically geared to a frum audience; it’s an online community where women write their memoirs. After I get Skill Nosh up and running, I will hopefully put more effort into developing this memoir-writing site, which offers a series of videos that teach you how to write your life story, start to finish. Every life story is so complex, and we learn so much about our present and future by exploring the past. So that’s my next project to develop after Skillnosh launches, b’ezras Hashem. I’ve taught this proven method to many groups of women around the world already, and it's a really beautiful process. So transformational! I think it's really powerful for women to celebrate, explore and heal by writing the complex, ornate story of their lives. 

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