cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Plan Now Grows to a National Scope My plan is getting even better. I realized that the major value to doing these 4 hour workshops is that food writers and editors tend to show up at sl0w food events. So what I need to be doing is targeting cities that have especially high numbers of food writers and editors and producers and getting in touch with the local sl0w food chapters to teach workshops through them, preferably for free on my part so that I'm technically raising money for them. This will ensure maximum cooperation and appreciation. This will result in people from all of the big food magazines knowing who I am and being likely to review my book when it comes out. Also it should help with getting invited to speak or teach at conferences and such. This will pay huge dividends. I am fucking brilliant. NYC is going to be easy, since I have places to stay there for free and I could either drive there or take the train for around $200. Not hard to manage. But I realized this morning that I HAVE to teach a workshop in LA as well. I just priced out a trip to LA and I think I can do a 2 night trip there for around $800 including air fare, car rental, hotel, meals, etc. This will get me some press in LA as well and maybe I can get the LA Times to come out and cover it. This would be doubly useful, since I'm under contract to an LA production company to develop a TV show around me and if the people they are shopping it to pick up the newspaper and see a story about me then I'm increasing the odds of the show getting picked up. I'm waiting for a call back from a lit agent right now. She handles cook books normally, but I think that someone like her would understand my market better than many other agents. So much shit going on. OH SHIT! I just got an email from a lit agent asking for my manuscript. My manuscript that still needs a fuck ton of edits and this is kind of embarrassing. Shit. Do I send it to him right away as-is? Or do I wait and drag it out somehow until I have 5 hours or whatever to make the edits? I mean, I should strike while the iron is hot and be prompt and reliable and shit. But I don't know what to do. And fuck, I just had a couple pull out of the class next weekend because they were given a surprise honeymoon trip by family memebers during that time. Now I have to fill those spots, which I can do but it means dealing with it. Fuckity fuck fuck. Also I have to get shit squared away with getting this depredation permit done for a vineyard so I can go there and hunt when HBO comes out to film me. Whose life is this that I suddenly seem to have stepped into? This is one of those days where I need to be doing this full time. I need to be able to quit my day job already. Too much to handle here. I just need a nice fat book advance to pay the bills for the next 12 months or whatever and then I am gone from this job. Or at least I will phase out. Actually, I was thinking about what that will consist of and I don't think I'll leave all at once. In fact, I would like to keep coming in every day to this same desk. What I'm going to propose once I have a decent book advance in hand is that I scale back to part-time work and get paid the minimum necessary to remain eligible for our health insurance. $10k a year or something. I would keep whatever hours I feel like, sleeping late or whatever if I want to, but I would come in here and sit at my desk to write and when something comes up that needs my knowledge or help then I will step in right away. There would be no limit on vacation time, so if I need to take off for a week at a time to teach somewhere or do interviews then I just do it. Scaling back like that would mean that I remain at least peripherally involved in the business so that if this new career doesn't work out then I can scale back up and go full time again. And I'd be keeping my benefits. I think I'm going to try to teach the workshop for Sl0w Food Chicago as well. Basically I'm going to hit the major media cities in the US during the next 3 or 4 months in order to establish myself as the undisputed 'expert' on this topic, which will lead to further opportunities that haven't even occurred to me. Win win win win win. I want to win and get paid already. 11:38 a.m. - 2010-01-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||