Aug 24, 2015

I have two goals for entering the Inkshares/Nerdist writing contest:

1. To win an American publishing contract. (D’uh!)

2. To not be * THAT GUY *.

You know the guy I’m talking about. The one who alienates all of his friends and family by constantly pestering them to preorder his book. The one who checks his stats every five minutes to see if somebody else has preordered his book (even though we get an email telling us when somebody has preordered a book, so there’s no point to checking). The guy who walks up to random strangers in the street and begs, “Will you please preorder my book. Please? Please? Pleeeeeeeaaaaaaasssssse!”

Yeah, that guy.

Because this is my life. I have to live with the consequences of my behaviour. I try to live by a couple of simple rules. The obvious one is the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I want to be treated well by others, so d’uh again. The less obvious one is to leave wherever you are better than when you entered it. If you treat others merely as tools to reach an objective of your choosing, you are denying them their autonomy, their right to choose, and demonstrably making the world worse, not better.

I have approached a couple of people I have minor connections to for help, and I have certainly asked my friends and family for their support. I think one or two things I have done already may have crossed the line into being annoying to the people I did them to, going a little way to making me that guy (this is the first time I have ever entered anything like this, and I’m kind of groping towards the best way to accomplish goal one while respecting goal two), and I may cross some boundaries in the future. I’m human.

In the end, though, whether or not I win a publishing contract, I will have to live with what I did to get there. And I will try my best not to be that guy.

PS: How awesome is my sister, Lisa? She bought three copies of Both Sides. NOW! without even knowing what it was about. I just said one or two things about the writing contest, and her response was, “Where do I sign up?” (The fact that she’s the kind of person who is likely to love it is just a bonus.)

Family can really be great.

PPS: And a big shoutout to First Thursday friends Ian Pedoe and Richard E., who also preordered copies of the book yesterday. And lots of hugs to Patricia Bobisha, a long-time family friend who took hardly any arm-twisting at all, really, to preorder the book, and with whom I had a long middle of the night conversation afterwards. Friends can be really great, too.