Sam-I-Am

Boy, you have to wear a few different hats with being a writer. For those of you who aspire to do this, let me tell you—it’s a lot of work! Tremendous! Promoting a book and revising another—did I mention how hard it is? I did? Well alrighty then… I love the creative side of writing—but the marketing side? Not so much. It reminds me of the hustle you had to have as a new hairstylist. You always had to be on point—hair done to perfection, hundreds of business cards in your purse inching to come out at a moment’s notice, (Why yes I do hair! Here’s my card…) Hustling like that is exhausting but when it’s all said and done it’s part of the business and you either accept it and thrive or wither away. I plan to thrive as long as I can and so I’m getting the word out about Unbeweaveable the best way I know how right now. I’m not on schedule with my revisions like I would like to be, but I have to let that go because I know over the next few months when things have died down I’ll be ready to send my book out to the world for critique. I’m cringing from the thought…

For those of you who remember, (and for those of you who don’t here’s the link) I was totally against all social media.

MySpace. No.

Facebook. You got to be kidding right?

Twitter. Which don’t you understand the N or the O?

I was against them all. All my writer friends, (you know who you are) kept telling me on the opportunities I was missing out on. I deemed Facebook a complete waste of time and for the life of me couldn’t figure out why so many writers were out there in cyberspace instead of writing.

I’ll tell you why. Writing my friends is a lonely business. On a typical day of doing hair I would talk to so many people, clients, product distributors, other stylists—the list goes on and on. Well now that I’m home with my four-year-old daughter, my day consists of Candy Land, Yo Gabba Gabba (There’s a party in my tummy, so yummy, so yummy!) and sitting in the sweltering heat while she rides on the sidewalk on her scooter. When a stranger asks me how I’m doing, I actually answer. “Well, today I’m thinking of cooking pork chops for dinner. My husband loves them. Although chicken would be great too…” I see their feet slowly back up as I continue to talk, until I realize that a simple, “Fine,” would have done nicely.

So now, *ahem* I…um…take it all back. Can I say that I love Facebook? That the people I’ve met, especially the writers, have been so supportive of me I’m at a loss for words.

For example, the lovely Cheri Paris Edwards, (Fabulous author. Her book, The Other Sister, will be in stores November 2010) posted a lovely review of Unbeweaveable on her blog. (Read it here.) Of her own volition. I mean, how cool is that? She reached out to me on Facebook and dare I say that I feel a friendship forming?

All of my old reasons for not being on Facebook are long behind me.

Time waster? I wish! I don’t have time to be on there long. And I don’t play games, (nothing against it, but have never been much of a video game kind of gal) so it’s pretty hard for me to waste time.

Addicting? Puh-leaze! I have always been good at self-discipline, (if you’re a writer you learn that pretty early) so I don’t know why I thought I would get addicted to it. Don’t get me wrong, it may be addicting for some, but for me everything has it’s limits. And that includes Facebook.

My lesson? Be flexible and willing to change. Be adaptable. And be humble enough to try new things. Dr. Seuss had it right all along, “I do so like green eggs and ham! Thank you, thank you, Sam-I-am!”