cellini's Diaryland Diary

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A Victory

I was magnificent. Really, I was. The Sl0w F00d NYC workshop was a great triumph. It was beyond sold out - there were people who had tried to get tickets and were told they were sold out, but they still showed up and stood outside in hopes of getting in somehow.

The wife of the head of a major division of H@rper Collins showed up (at his request, since my agent had pitched the book to him) and she loved the whole thing. She showed up before anyone else did and said she'd seen my bio and that we both went to the same small, notorious MA liberal arts college (although she was there about 15 years before me). We talked for a while and got along really well, and then she took notes all through my presentation and asked a lot of questions. Afterward she came up to me and raved about the whole thing, invited me to come stay at her place in Vermont for a weekend (?!?!) and then she spilled the beans that she was the person sent from Harper C0llins. I hadn't realized that was who she was. She said that she loves this whole thing and is recommending that the publisher signs me as quickly as possible.

So I went ahead and pitched my new book to her as well. She loves that one, too. I got a really short email from my agent last night, forwarding an email that she got from this big dude at H@rper Collins. It said that they were extremely impressed with me, that they think I am a rapidly rising star and a natural teacher. Now hopefully they will be meeting in the next few days to put together an offer to sign me by the end of the week.

Oh! And this James Be@rd award winning food writer was there and she fucking loved the whole thing, too. She took tons of notes and made a point of speaking with me privately afterward to tell me what a good job I'd done. Seriously, that was praise that meant something.

A reporter for the W@shington Post showed up. Then there was this contingent of people from a P@leo diet group who are like my new groupies or something. Apparently they fairly worship the idea of being a subsistence hunter and here I was the first one they had ever actually encountered. Their organizers asked me to do a workshop for them in NYC and they want to fill up a weekend class with their people (which they can do since they have over 300 members in NYC).

The whole thing was a huge triumph. Also the Sl0w Food people volunteered to hand me a bunch of the cash collected at the door, for which I was intensely grateful. They will pay for my train ticket or air fare next time. If I can get paid by Sl0w Food AND teach a separate 3 hour workshop for the P@leo dieters at, say, $10 a head with 30 to 40 people showing up then I can actually go home with some actual profit for gas and groceries.

I'm trying to nail down my schedule for April as quickly as possible. I depend heavily on having a calender of shit lined up well ahead of time because otherwise I'll get lazy and sloppy and lose my momentum. I need to be committed to events in advance so that I HAVE to bust my ass even when I have no hope in any of it. This is the strategy that keeps my shit together in the long run.

Today I realized that if I can do a good program for the P@leo diet group then there are probably groups like that one in every major city in the US. Now that I have my Sl0w Food program pretty well ironed out, I think that I am going to establish the objective of traveling to another city every month to do a Sl0w Food workshop paired with something for a P@leo group or similar organization on the same weekend. If I can line up 2 events in each city then I should be able to generally come home with at least an extra $300 after my expenses.

Obviously I still desperately need a book advance right the fuck away and the publishing stuff is very important to my whole plan. But I want to be careful not to lean too heavily on that one thing. I need other shit going on, because each of these things helps all of the others. Becoming an in-demand speaker and instructor has been part of the master plan for months now and I think I'm starting to hit my stride in that regard. I'll do a series of these things for local Sl0w Food chapters with the goal of getting asked to speak at international conferences and possibly corporate events. Then I'll start making some better money when I do these. Like, all travel and hotel expenses paid plus a $1,000 or $2,000 honorarium. I'll be happy just getting to travel and if I can do half a dozen of those higher-level events a year then I'm looking at enough to send Harry to pre-school for a year.

3:16 p.m. - 2010-03-16

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