I suppose it’s time to get serious. I’m going to have to start figuring out a marketing plan for this book. These last few, golden weeks have been blissfully marketing-free. But now I have to start thinking about twitter feeds and facebook pages and developing a readership. There’s so much more to this than just the writing. I’m excited and scared at the same time.
I once had a conversation with a prospective employer. (I didn’t actually know at the time he was asking me to work for him, I just thought he wanted to chat.) At any rate, it was at the Depot in Missoula, and he’d met me in the bar before I started my shift washing dishes. He was the executive director at a theater company. Anyway, he was sitting across from me and without a lot of fanfare asked, “What do you want to do with your life?”
And I was all like, “Whaaa?”
And he was all like, “Seriously? What do you want to do with yourself? I’m assuming you don’t want to wash dishes for the rest of your life.”
Of course he was being a bit presumptuous at the time. Up until recently I had never really divulged my affinity for washing dishes. Back then, (you know, in the 80s), washing dishes was a nowhere job. And I was young, I suppose. And silly. So I took a sip of my Tab and said, “Well, I suppose one day I want to be an actor.”
And he laughed. Out loud. At me.
Bear in mind, this guy had already hired me and paid me a slave-labor wage to haul my ass all around Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas and western Canada to … well … act among other things. But I was young. And silly. So I said, “What’s so funny?” Kinda like he’d hurt my feelings.
And he said, “Well, I guess if that’s what you want to do you should do it, but if you ask me … ”
“You asked me,” I said.
“Right. Well … I just think,” he said, “it would be a terrible waste if you just became an actor.”
I had no response to that. At the time he was referring to my superlative secretarial skills. (I still think I’d make someone an excellent executive assistant if only they would give me a chance.)
If you fast forward about 15 years or so, another man in a similar power position said to me, “I think it would be better if you just stayed a teacher.” And I don’t really know if it was the limiting way these fellas had spoken to me, or my own gut that told me, on both occasions, to get the hell out of Dodge.
When I applied for the job I currently have, the woman who hired me said, “I didn’t know you were a writer.”
And I think I said “Well, I didn’t know I was a writer, either.” But she had faith in me. And here we are, almost eleven years later.
The fact of the matter is, it was really my ability to put two words together that got me anywhere. (Well, anywhere other than Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas and western Canada.) And I’m extremely grateful for that. I cannot write in actual words, how lucky I feel to be able to do something that makes me feel good and shitty at the same time. And if there’s one other thing I think I know I’m good and shitty at it’s … well … marketing.
I just don’t know if I’ll be any good at marketing myself.
Only time will tell.