Why Enchilada?

The bottom line:

Of course, you’re right. It’s a play on the familiar expression, “the whole enchilada.” This blog explores right-brain/left-brain topics for the purpose of promoting the writer-entrepreneur paradigm. In other words, topics for writers who ultimately want to get paid for their product (I know some of you are cringing at labeling your writing a product, but this is exactly my point.). If you’re writing just for kicks with no intention of getting paid for it, then all bets are off. Feel free to let your right brain become dictator. For the rest of us, however, we have to balance our emotional, creative side with business savvy. Not always easy, but necessary. The Write Enchilada seeks to help you do that…

Oh, and I love Mexican food in case you hadn’t guessed.

 

The TMI Version:

In late 2007 when my husband finally convinced me to follow my dream and begin writing the story I’d been carrying around in my head, I still had one of my two children at home. I wrote when I could, and by the time I went to the RWA national conference that next summer, I was half done. I showed up in San Francisco a small fry in a big effing pond. It was awesome. I wore my first-timer ribbon with pride. Anyway, many strangers I buddied up with told me not to over-do it. Study your conference schedule, they said. Only do the sessions you really think you care about.

Oh, hell no. Not me.

I wasn’t spending a few grand and being away from my family for a week just to people watch, by God. So I overdid it. I’d run from session to session like I was late for the last flight outta hell. Over-the-top geekness? Give me the damn badge, I don’t really care. I was on a mission.

It was following one of those sprints that I snatched the last remaining front row chair (yes, I’m a front row geek, too) at a session I’d been especially excited for. Trying miserably to disguise my gulps for air, I smiled at the lady next to me and dug in my bag for a pen and notepad. The lady quickly glanced at my flushed face, but was kind enough not to say anything. She didn’t even slide her chair away. At last, I found my pen. My heart continued to race, but it had nothing to do with the sprint at this point. This was probably going to be the most important session of the whole conference for me. It was called “The Arc of the Trilogy,” and surely this class was going to be my Holy Writing Grail because I was half done with the first book of a planned trilogy.

I. Couldn’t. Wait.

In walked a multi-pubbed author with several trilogies under her belt. For me, everything fell away—the heat of too many bodies in a small space, the voices outside in the hall, someone’s sickenly sweet perfume… There was only this woman’s advice. My pen was poised for her golden words. The first thing she said was, “My best advice for all you aspiring writers out there is, don’t start your career with a trilogy because agents and editors are more likely to take a chance on one book, not three.”

Oh.

Oh.

Now, I’ve never been sucker punched, but that lose-your-breath, pain-in-your-gut sensation is how I’d imagine it would feel. To be honest, I got jack-squat out of the rest of her talk. I’m sure it was fabulous, but I was too preoccupied with a high-pitched hissy fit ragin’ inside my noggin. It went something like this: OMG, I’ve been writing for almost a year. Now what? I can’t walk away from this project. What does she know anyway?

Luckily, that session was on the last day of the conference because I felt like one of those limp balloons the cleaning staff kick out of the way the morning after the party. I no longer sprinted between sessions because my energy was tied up in a growing clash of wills between my right and left brains.

The next morning I paid for the hotel and brooded on the way to the airport. I brooded on the plane. And even as thrilled as I was to see my DH and kids, I brooded when I got home. On the fifth day I realized that I’d been right about something. That session was indeed the most important one of the whole conference because it made me learn an important lesson. That is, if I’m determined to make a career out of writing, I need to think like an entrepreneur.

Think like an entrepreneur!

Well, duh. Writers need to make sound (logical) business decisions and save the emotion for the writing. Two separate, yet critical domains. So whether or not that author’s advice was ultimately right is a moot point. The important part is that it changed my whole paradigm. Right brain. Left brain. I need to harness both to even think about an ante in to this wild game of publishing.

We can get published—or attain any of our dreams—with the awareness, mix, and mastery of these separate deployments. And that’s the whole enchilda…The Write Enchilada.