Own Your Role
On a recent trip to Greece, I visited Atlantis Books on the island of Santorini. On a cliff, overlooking the Aegean Sea, the bookstore is a honeycomb of cave-like rooms, small, yet charming. Whenever I visit an independent bookstore, especially when I travel, I look for books I normally wouldn’t buy at home. In this case, I searched out English translations of famous Greek novels, then poked through some classics as well as their small selection of books on literary theory, an esoteric interest of mine. When I went up to the cash, the clerk/owner perused my choices. “Impressive!” he told me. “You’re our customer of the day!”
Not gonna lie, that made me feel pretty good. In fact, it made me bold enough to tell him I’m a writer, and I’m always searching out new ideas in unexpected books. I don’t do that often—open up that I’m an author to booksellers. But that led to an impassioned discussion about books, philosophy and ideas. It was inspiring.
Which made me question why I don’t always speak up about my role as a writer. In a bookstore, of all places, I’m going to meet like-minded people, who could have a lot to share.
Why not consider doing that, too? Even if you haven’t published (yet), or are still working on your first draft of your first book, you have valuable insight into a conversation about books, and you may learn a lot, too. It’s not easy to own that role. But it’s worth it.