Birth of a Salesman

First of all, a confession.  I stole the above title from myself.  Way back in 2004 the first workshop I ever did was the Maritime Writers' Workshop at UNB in Fredericton.  I applied to the workshop for financial help and received some from a benefactor to whom I had to write a letter of thanks.  At this workshop I rediscovered my love for public reading and decided to write my thank you letter in the form of an essay in which I realized that reading my work to an audience could be construed as selling myself to them.  Hence the title.  As I wrote in the beginning of that essay: 

It’s a dirty, dirty word. The S word. Selling. It makes one think of everything unsavoury, from unscrupulous travelling hucksters who sleep with farmers’ daughters to ruthless day traders whose only point of reference is the bottom line. For most people there is no chicken soup for the soulless conglomerate.

Maybe a better title for this entry would be "Rebirth of a Salesman" because here it is 5 years later and my first book of stories, Fatted Calf Blues, will be published by Turnstone Press in April.  And once more I find myself in the position of being a salesman.  I have already set up a book launch on April 23rd at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown.  I have also, with the help of Thelma (my wife, web mistress and right arm), created a Fatted Calf Blues group on Facebook and recruited a fair number of members (with hopefully more to follow after the book comes out).  In the future I am planning to create a virtual book launch with videos of myself reading from the book, to be posted on Facebook, Youtube and anywhere else that will have them.  But most importantly, I expect to hit the road and do a few live readings this year, on and off PEI.     

But of course I'm not doing all of this planning and plotting alone. My publisher is going to do what they can to get me into writer's festivals, send out review copies of the book and submit it for any prize and award that it might be eligible for.  Turnstone has been very supportive with helpful suggestions on how and where to promote the book (such as contacting book clubs).  It's surprising where a salesman's leads will take him.  

I suddenly understood that the people who were able to effortlessly sell newspaper ads or time-shares did so because they actually believed in what they were selling. And now I had something to believe in too. My talent. Myself. 

Now that I think of it, I've been selling myself since I moved to PEI in 2001 and started to write in earnest and send my work out. Part of the creative process includes sending your work out.  If you are serious about your writing then you always have an audience in mind, even if you don't know who they are but if you persevere, one day you may just find yourself having to get out there and meet them face to face.  I'm looking forward to that.