The Write Life

How many copies have you sold? How much did you make? How much did it cost?! Are you going to write full time? 

I loved the interest in what happened after I published ‘Lou Who?’ and its “success”. I write that word in inverted commas because what really does that word mean? But those well intended questions had an effect I hadn’t expected or considered before I turned my “just for fun” dating blog into something that resembled a business. (Don’t get me started on the complications of the tax aspect of it…)

Fighting for space in my head and life was my Monday to Friday (and evenings and weekends where required) job where I lead the marketing function at a technology company. My corporate life is in the physical security space, where our goal is to prohibit weapons entering places of mass gathering – think stadiums, arenas, schools, hospitals, workplaces. It’s a job and a mission I am both professionally and personally passionate about. Then there is this right here – my writer life. The thing I’m driven to do when I’m feeling out of sorts, or overwhelmed, or underwhelmed. The thing that started as a fun, anonymous dating blog, but morphed into my first book and now Lou Writes Life. And so I found myself juggling dual personalities – maybe unsurprising considering I’m a Gemini? 

It was easier to allay the mental battle when I was “just” blogging. It was less pressure, there was no money involved and it was easier to class it as a hobby. But when ‘Lou Who?’ went out into the world in 2020 the questions around its impact and significance in my life arose, both externally and internally. I never wrote the book with the intention to make money from it. I also didn’t write it to lose money. It was never about the money full stop. It was only ever to fulfill an itch of mine, to see if I could do something like that, and to invoke conversations about topics I think are important. So in that sense, it was a wild success. 

However, that didn’t stop me from wondering if I should have been able to sell more, make more, do more. I’d be lying to say I wouldn’t jump at the chance to earn my corporate salary from writing. But in trying to understand how I could weave both parts of my life together, I came to realise the realities of each didn’t really don’t go hand in hand. I write about a lot of very personal things while at the same time now hold a Senior Vice President title, at a publicly traded company.

The nature of what I write about is likely not information I’d typically share with colleagues or associates. But with the book out in the world, I have no control over someone reading about some of my most difficult life experiences, as well as details of dating stories more naturally shared with friends over a glass of wine. So I find myself treading a very fine line between my “corporate persona” and my “writer persona”. My LinkedIn talks nothing of my writing, and my personal socials talk very little about my corporate work. I have no issue sharing the stories that I do in my writing. I clearly think there’s value in doing so – and it’s really my whole point, let’s all feel less shame about our messes. But people can’t un-know the stories once they’ve read them, and as an executive at my workplace I have to be cognisant of how knowing details of my personal / dating life could affect my relationships with my team members who look at me as a leader, board members I report to, or shareholders looking to invest in the organisation. 

Have there been benefits in wearing two hats? Absolutely. Valuing empathy and vulnerability in my writing is also a stalwart value in my leadership style. My time management was enhanced hugely when I wrote “Lou Who?” and I needed to be the most efficient and effective in my Monday to Friday to allow for writing, editing and promotion time. But at that point my workload was a lot more manageable. Since the book was published, my responsibility and job title got a little more serious, moving from Director to Vice President, and very recently now to Senior Vice President. And so the chasm between how to be both writer and SVP feels to have grown further. That work/write balance, as it were, feels like a struggle. 

Every so often my internal voice likes to shout at me – PICK A LANE! If only because it would be easier to introduce myself.  It’s like women who aren’t sure whether to lead with “I’m a Mum” or “I’m a lawyer”. Both elements are arguably a large part of their identity but people like to be able to box us into one. And does anyone really have any one identity? And can it really only be in relation to our jobs or our parental status? (Sidebar – interesting that this isn’t an issue for men…) 

Then I read something that said “why do people nowadays always feel like they need to make their hobby an income stream?” Someone was dropping some truth bombs on Substack that day. It would have been ironic had it been on a paid subscription Substack… But I digress. It did make me stop and wonder though, do the questions around book sales and revenue really add pressure, or do I only feel like I need to have stellar “numbers” in order to justify it as a hobby, because otherwise it’s silly, and trivial, and what’s really the point? But the point is, I enjoy it. The point is, it’s a passion, it’s a part of who I am and it’s something that I envisage always being part of my life. The irony being I loved writing the book but marketing and selling it (my actual Monday to Friday job!) were not my favourite parts.  

So what am I? Despite the struggle soon after the book, I now try not to carve my identity out as either a marketer or a writer – I rarely lead with “I’m an SVP of Marketing” because I think I sound like a dick, and I still have imposter syndrome claiming to be “a writer”. I was asked once “what do your friends see you as? Lou the SVP of marketing or Lou the author?” I had to think about it for a while, because I actually wasn’t sure. The reality is I actually hope they see me as twenty other things first – a good friend, an empath, a (relatively) good dog Mom, a Scottish Canadian blend, an ice cream connoisseur, a trip planner… oh and she also works in marketing and writes. Not attaching ourselves to any one identity allows for fluidity in all the things, whatever jobs, or relationships, or family dynamics, or hobbies come and go. So I’m trying to shirk all those feelings of what I should  be, especially as I’ve been struggling with just being more recently (blog post to come)…