Last month, I went to the Pennwriters conference. Pre-pandemic, I went at least every other year (it alternates between Lancaster, which is 30 minutes away and Pittsburgh, which is more than three hours away), but between a cancelled conference in 2020 and my own hesitation about being trapped in small rooms with too many people, I wasn't ready for an-in person event.
Until this year.
As usual, I'm really glad I went. There are always a number of good presentations, and a few that are stellar. And this year, I got my act together to pitch to two agents, one of whom requested my book proposal.
Yayyyy!!!!
The other agent was very nice. He listened attentively to my pitch, then took the time to give me advice after I finished. I was disappointed that he didn't want to look at my proposal, but also appreciated his time and expertise; he could just have easily thanked me, shown me the door, and taken two minutes to breathe before the next person came in.
His advice, in a nutshell, was that I wasn't famous enough. He didn't say it that way of course, and it's important that I clarify that because by no means do I want to malign a person who was kind enough to offer me professional advice -- especially since he wasn't entirely wrong. He made some concrete suggestions, along with a currently out-of-reach end goal that represents the ideal, both of which I've been mentally sorting through ever since, trying to find my comfort zone. I want to put his feedback to use, but first I have to determine a way forward that will reasonably fit into my actual, non-famous life.
So, one night last week, I Googled myself, thinking that taking stock of where I currently am was probably a good starting point. I was hoping to find a few of the spots where I'd been quoted online, and some of them did, indeed, turn up.
Along with a few surprises.
As it turns out, a recent article I wrote, one that lends credibility to me as a source (the piece he felt was missing if we wanted to sell my book) had been quoted and/or linked on a few sites and even translated into French.
I'm famous!
In a really, really, really small way.
But that's not the point. The point is that my adventure in Googling reminded me of something. What that agent gave me was his opinion. A considered, professional opinion, but an opinion nevertheless. And, while I cannot (and should not) completely discount that, nor should I accept it as fact. And again, this was a nice man who was not, under any circumstances, suggesting I should accept his opinion as fact.
And yet, to some extent, I did just that. I let the opinion of someone I respected dictate my own self-respect. Somewhere between "it must be true because he knows his stuff" and "I'm not famous enough" lies my actual situation. Spending too much time on either of those spectral endpoints is neither healthy nor helpful.
Fortunately, I didn't do that. On some level, I remembered what I know about building on strengths, and so that is what I did. I took stock of where I am in order to plan out steps to get myself to the next level.
Happy ending? Yes. But I'm annoyed with myself for turning my interpretation of what I heard into a weapon that allowed me to (temporarily) devalue myself. Do I have work to do? Yup.
Welcome to the human race.
When someone gives us an opinion, we can take it or leave it. Or, perhaps even better, we can find the middle ground. We can mine the opinion for any kernels of truth that matter to us (which is different from obsessing over it), and use them to improve ourselves. And, if we find that the mine contains no gems whatsoever, we can leave it -- both the mine and the opinion -- having done our due diligence.
In a world where opinions proliferate to the extent that they can sometimes blur the line between fact and opinion, it's important to know how to distinguish one from the other and to know the value of each. Otherwise, we run the risk of not only being misinformed, but also allowing ourselves to feel maligned when that wasn't anyone's intention. A considered, professional opinion offers us an opportunity for growth.
Even if it takes us a while to get there.
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