I've always liked the back door approach.
Too bad I didn't know it existed until I had grown and moved out of the house. As a middle child, I really could've used it to my advantage.
Whereas other siblings applied persistence and manipulation tactics towards getting what they wanted (contact lenses, bottles of perfume, clothing, and even cars) out of the parental units, when I was told 'no', I simply accepted it and walked away from that particular desire, wrote it off as impossible, and learned to make due in my scarcity.
I've learned.
I've learned that the back door is a beautiful thing. If the figurative front door, with an imposing $200 wreath and a NO SOLICITING sign affixed, doesn't open at the first or even fourth knock, the back door is always open. And if it's not, you can just camp out till it is.
We're told that in the selling world, "no" means "not right now." If I'm on the giving end of the no, and someone isn't hearing me, I'd find that seriously annoying, but their attitude is probably right. Catch me on a better day. Catch me in better circumstances. Catch me when I'm feeling generous, and that answer could very well change.
I think the only exception to this would be when it came to Krabbie, someone I fell in with by accident. We were going to work together, trading our expertise to move our careers forward. That was the idea, anyway. When she invited me over for lunch to discuss what steps we'd take, I thought nothing of it. Minutes after my arrival, out came the liquid container of SuperMagicStuff that she said would do everything from growing hair to healing my sore shoulder. She then told me it would cost a cool $140 per month, only available if I signed up for 'the plan', on that very day.
I didn't want to sign up for the plan, and I didn't want the SuperMagicStuff, and told her so. I was annoyed that SuperMagicStuff had interrupted our discussion. With only an hour to meet with her, I was perturbed that SuperMagicStuff had suddenly been brought into the picture. I hadn't intended to spend that time talking about potions.
She leaned forward in her chair and looked at me intently.
"Amy," she said, eyes wide, "The Universe is giving you an answer to your hurting shoulder. And you're rejecting that answer."
I blinked, trying to hold back the tidal wave of laughter that threatened.
"I'm serious, Amy," she told me, "Your answer is right here in front of you, and you aren't even seeing it."
I found it interesting that my answer involved her making one hundred and forty bucks off me.
"I'm the sort of person that researches these things," I told Krabbie carefully, "I don't just jump into a financial commitment without any sort of a trial period,"
"---If the UNIVERSE is going to give you a gift, are you going to study it out before taking it?" She said, volume rising.
I tried very hard not to grin.
"--Are you?" she demanded, "are you going to reject a gift? Are you saying no to...to... abundance?"
I told her that this time, I probably was. I left soon after, and we gave each other a hug upon parting, but it was one of those false, patting hugs that leave a person feeling empty and somewhat tainted.
There wasn't a back door that day with me. Although, I have to say that if someone nurturing and caring in my life that I trusted was to tell me that SuperMagicStuff was the best thing ever, and asked me if I wanted to try it for one month only...I'd probably relent.
Which leads me to my real point...that presentation is everything.
When I first became a writer, I couldn't wait to get it all out on paper. Every thought, every injustice, every anecdote. There was a lot saved up in there, and it needed to come out. All of it bled out onto a page. 600 pages, to be exact, in memoir-y style.
Without running out of fingers and toes for counting, I can tell you how many people read my masterpiece. It wasn't a hit. Why? Because, I found out later, unless you're ridiculously famous or have done something or experienced something that's shockingly profound, your memoir may just not be a page-turner.
I wish I'd known that 600 pages earlier.
Since writing the 600 pages, I've become a magazine writer and an editor, doing nothing but writing and editing for years now. It seems that writing about a business or person or place of interest sells, and that's cool. I don't mind that, and it's been great practice, but I have to admit that I'm still anxious to write about me and my stuff. I think there are some good stories to tell, and I'd like to start telling them long before I've redeemed my last coupon.
There's an art to the 'me' stuff, though, and that's where presentation comes in. I've looked over several peoples' writings that had far too many 'I's' and 'me's' sprinkled throughout, and it gets wearisome. They're still okay to do, you just have to sneak 'em.
Which is where the essay comes in. Do you know just how much stuff you can 'me' into an essay? TONS. Think of Erma Bombeck, Robert Fulghum, Nora Ephron. Their essays deal exclusively with their thoughts, their opinions, their experiences, and no one minds at all, they even welcome it. In this essay alone I've told you I'm a middle child, that I got next to nothing from my parents when the others got more, that I'll make up fictional names for people I'm writing about that have not-so-hidden meanings, that I don't like being directly pressured into a sale, and that I don't believe that the Universe's ultimate plan for me is to make someone else rich by selling me SuperMagicStuff.
Put into 'back door' essay form, it's fairly palatable. Put into a big old long 'me-moir' with a windy "I can recall" or "I remember", and not so much.
I'm just really ticked that it took me four and a half years to realize that.
