17
No Knack
My
Toastmasters speech
a
dry run.
Tense,
but eager
Using
clear, concise tones.
Each
word highlighting a point
on
how the writing process
flows
from
idea sparked,
to
bursting flame,
generating
a complete and published work.
Then
I swap the breezy artist’s cap
for
one of entrepreneur –
and
feel the constant drag
like
wading through
a
cooled pahoahoa lava flow, or
a
river of mud.
I’ve
stood on cooling lava flows when they were still quite warm to the touch. On
the Big Island of Hawai‘i, Kilauea is known as the friendly volcano. It has
been gently erupting since 1982.
Walking
on the surface of what once was over a thousand degrees of liquid fire, ancient
material that flowed up from the center of the earth, is a bit eerie. Pahoahoa lava is smooth, rope-like in
appearance. A’a flows are chunky,
like oversized stucco.
Once
cooled, lava is rock hard. There is no “wading through” rock. That is my first
impression of marketing, an impossible task required to sell a book.
With
my first novel, I had a degree of success. But after writing a second and third
book, with research and editing, the publishing process seemed to overwhelm me.
Marketing fell to the wayside while I returned to the fun part of being an
author: writing.
Easing
back into the marketing arena again, I plan to replace the sense of constant
drag with rhythmic rollercoaster action. With hard work, and luck, I look
forward to building momentum. My goal is to continue moving forward, slowing at
curves only long enough to give myself a breather before heading into the next
run.
If I
can turn “no-knack” into no-lack of interested readers, even
cooling lava flows won’t detour me from stepping into the overheated arena of
marketing.
