From the Sublime to the, Um, Less Sublime: The Wonderful World of Getting the Word Out

Time was, sitting around writing in spiral notebooks with pilot pens seemed like the coolest work in the world. (Intellectually and artistically satisfying; fulfillment of a childhood dream; a way to explain at-home motherhood that didn’t trigger highly politicized, lip-curling disdain…)

Still does.

But time was, also, that anything even vaguely resembling self-promotion seemed creepily, shamelessly materialistic -- a form of unappetizing bragging, that could cause friends and strangers alike to literally and figuratively unfriend me.

I was wrong.

And here we have the few, incredibly obvious truisms that have finally permeated my consciousness to make shameless promotion somehow less shameful: legitimizing my forays onto twitter, facebook, and my shiny new website; transforming these previously embarrassment-riddled jaunts into necessary activities in support of my writing. As opposed to a hideous time suck.

Or maybe it only takes one. And here it is:

For me, as much as I love sitting around and guiding pilot pens from one end of a spiral notebook to another, the point of writing is saying something to someone.

Someone who has to know that the book is out there, what it’s about, and about my sensibility as a writer. (All right, given twitter, the sensibility of my dog is also on the table. As is my dog. ) Someone who does not, in fact, live next door and whose primary access to information about books involves a computer.

Duh.

And did I mention my pre-sale giveaway?