Dispatches from a book tour: Some thoughts on worthiness, belonging, and showing up
How does a person stay grounded through the highs and lows of a book tour?
Listen to me read the post…
I’m in Winnipeg. I’ve made four stops on my book tour, promoting Where Tenderness Lives, and I have some thoughts...
A few days ago, I was in Fargo, the third stop on my tour. I arrived at the bookstore at the appointed time, (a time that had been promoted on a FB event the bookstore had created). The one person working in the small bookstore knew nothing about it and couldn’t find any of my books to sign. He tried to phone the owner to figure out the mix-up, but got no answer. “I guess I could set up a table for you to sit at and if people come, you could sign something for them.”
“No, I don’t really see the point, since you have no books,” I said. “And since there’s nobody here and I still have a long drive ahead of me, I think I’ll just go.”
On the way to my car, I met a woman coming up the steps, holding my first book. “I’m guessing you’re here to see Heather Plett,” I said, pointing to the book. She nodded. “That’s me,” I said. “But there’s been a mix-up at the store, so the event isn’t happening.”
We chatted for awhile and she told me how she’d found my first book because of a meme of my quote on FB, and it had come to mean a lot to her. I said “since you’ve come all this way, I don’t want you to leave empty-handed. I have a few copies of my new book in the car. I can sell you one of those.” Her face lit up, but then she remembered that she had no cash. “You know what?” I said. “I’m just going to give it to you, and some day you can pay it forward. Give the book’s value to a charity or something.” Then I signed both books for her.
I drove away feeling sad and defeated. This is far from the kind of glamorous book tour every aspiring author dreams of in their youth. The gremlins in my head started chortling about my insignificance and the pointlessness of all this. (Yes, you can have two published books in the world and still wrestle with gremlins on a daily basis.)
I pulled into a parking lot behind a church to switch the pretty shawl I’d put on for the event for a more comfortable driving sweater. I grabbed a face wipe from my suitcase and removed the small amount of makeup I’d put on. And then I let myself have a good cry. Because sometimes putting your work into the world feels disheartening and nobody is paying attention. And after all those hours of driving, I was exhausted and my emotions were close to the surface.
Back on the road, another voice popped into my head to challenge the gremlins. “Did you write this book for the fame, or did you write it for that one woman on the bookstore steps who needed to hear a tender voice today?” Of course I knew the answer. It was always for her. None of the rest matters if that one person shows up seeking something that my writing can offer. My only regret is that I didn’t invite her to a coffee shop so I could have heard her story.
(Note: I later learned that the owner of the bookstore did have copies available and was ready for the event, but got called out of town suddenly for a family emergency and forgot to pass the information on to their employee.)
***
Two days later, back in my hometown of Winnipeg (which I left behind nearly two years ago), I was getting ready for my fourth event, unsure of what to expect. I knew that a few friends would be there to give me moral support, but other than that... who knows? Hometown crowds can be tricky – sometimes they love you and sometimes they ignore you (or worse). In the past, I’ve had an easier time filling a room for a retreat or workshop in the Netherlands or Australia than in my own hometown. It’s human nature, I suppose, to take a writer or teacher more seriously if they’ve come from far away.
This time, I was especially nervous about appearing before a hometown crowd, because the stories in this book are more honest and vulnerable than what I’ve published in the past, and some of the people in the room might have their own versions of those stories. Plus I’ve dared to write about some things that might not be well received in certain circles – like a personal exploration of religious trauma, for example, or the shadow side of growing up Mennonite.
The morning of the event, I did a radio interview with Nadia Kidwai of CBC radio. I’d spoken with her after my first book came out, so I knew her to be a warm host and thoughtful interviewer. She did not disappoint. She’d done a thorough reading of the book and was ready to ask meaningful questions. (You can listen to the interview here.) When she asked me (in a pre-interview) whether it was okay for her to ask questions about the chapter I wrote about my mom, I had to take a deep breath before I said yes. In my hometown, there might be people listening who knew and loved my mom, and... would I be tainting the memory of her? Or risking their disapproval of me?
In the early evening, I drove to the event with my friend Saleha who was serving as conversation host for the event. There was some nervous energy in the car (for both of us), but we did our best to co-regulate, as we have done many times in the past.
The first two people I saw when I walked into the bookstore were Ellen and Susan, two faithful friends I worked with in federal government nearly thirty years ago. Their presence helped to calm my jitters. If few other people came, I knew that I could still walk away feeling the love and kindness these friends have always given me.
Soon, the room was filling up with people and I found myself enveloped in hug after hug. There were work colleagues from multiple past jobs, cousins on both sides of the family, an aunt and uncle, my sister and her best friend, other writers in the city, old friends from various facets of my life, a cousin of my former husband, members of the women’s circle I started several years ago – the list goes on and on. And then there were strangers – people who’d heard me on the radio that morning, had seen the poster in the bookstore, or who follow me on social media. Nearly every seat in the room filled up, with close to 75 people present. It was humbling, gratifying, and somewhat overwhelming.
The event was as lovely as one could imagine. Saleha did a beautiful job of interviewing me and it was fun to share a small taste of our friendship with that room full of people. (You can watch the entire event here, starting at the 5 minute mark.)
I was surprised at how emotional I became, halfway through the event, when I read a portion of the chapter about learning to let my daughters go. I felt the absence of my girls, not only in that room, but in the city where I’d raised them. Earlier in the day, I’d been sorting through things in my storage unit to make one more round of decisions about what to give away and what to bring with me to my new home on Vancouver Island, and that had pulled me back into the melancholy nostalgia of my twenty-six years as a mother in this city.
Afterwards, I sat at the signing table with a line of people snaking through the bookstore. I wanted to have conversations with everyone in line but didn’t want to hold up the line. Even the little snippets of conversation filled me up and will be replayed in my mind for a long time to come. One person, who I hadn’t met before, said he’d been waiting weeks for this event. He thumbed through his well-read copy of the book in which he’d written in the margins of nearly every page, and then he handed me a letter to read afterwards, because he wanted me to know how much my words meant to him.
***
It's a few days later as I write this, and I still feel the glow of that event warming me. It was so full of love and belonging and acceptance of my work – far beyond what I’d hoped for.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my ego was stroked by that room full of people, but here’s the thing... if the truth of who I am, my worthiness in the world, and my access to belonging is not told by the story of the failed event in Fargo, than it is also not told by the full room and long line of people two days later. I am neither insignificant, like the gremlins tried to convince me after Fargo, nor special, like the gremlins tried to convince me after Winnipeg.
I am consistently, unequivocally worthy. I am worthy whether this book sells millions of copies, or it only sells two. I have access to belonging whether people shower me with love and adoration, or they mostly ignore me (or worse). Neither my worthiness nor my belonging is dependent on other people’s opinions, or the numbers of people who show up for my work.
Both the highs and the lows have to be taken with a grain of salt (and, in the language of Buddhism, “non-attachment”). I don’t want to diminish what happened in Winnipeg, but I don’t want to measure it either. I simply want to be full of gratitude for every person who came, every bit of love that was showed, and every snippet of a story that was offered me.
It’s been a long journey (and continues to be a long journey) to come to a place where the worthiness and belonging attached to both me and my work are grounded in a deep and abiding place, disentangled from other people’s attention or opinions. This is especially challenging in the attention economy and social media landscape we are in currently - especially as a small business owner, when engagement with one’s work can mean the difference between paying the bills or not.
If I measured my worth by numbers or attention (or even ability to pay the bills), it would mean becoming both a slave to the algorithms and a pawn for the financial gain of the social media giants, and I’m not willing to do that. My worth is my own and I give control of it over to nobody.
It is both exhausting and soul destroying to measure your worth by social media numbers (or any other measure, for that matter), and yet it is our human tendency to do so. I have found, for example, since the year that my blog post went viral, my readership exploded, and it felt like my work had caught fire and people were paying attention, that all of my numbers (likes, shares, views, comments, newsletter subscriptions, workshop registrations, etc.) have been going slowly and steadily down. That’s the opposite of what’s “supposed” to happen, and it can really take a toll on one’s self esteem. Why is that the case? It’s not because my work is less relevant or that my writing is not as good as it once was – I’m confident that the opposite is true, because I pour myself into researching, learning, and evolving the work. (Plus I hear from a lot of people about the impact, and sales of my first book remain steady. It recently came out in Vietnamese.)
It's largely because the attention economy has become noisy with influencers clamouring to be noticed and because the algorithms have become more and more sophisticated in their ability to ensure that those who own the social media giants are making the maximum amount of money. If I make them little or no money, then what I put online is made to be virtually invisible. I’ve seen it happen several times, for example, that the content I’ve created (like a quote from my viral blog post) will be shared by a large platform that generates a lot of revenue for the social media outlet and it will get thousands of likes, shares and comments (with none of it resulting in my numbers growing). When I share the very same content, it’s barely seen, even though I’m the author of it. In other words, my content has “worth” on social media if someone with more power and influence than I have can use it to generate revenue and attention.
It reminds me of when I once wrote an article for the Globe and Mail and they paid me nothing for the article, but then paid someone to illustrate it and someone else to do an audio recording of it - everyone else made money from it but me, the creator of the original content. Similarly, Amazon makes more money from my books than I do, even though my effort was massive and theirs is minimal. (Note: This is one of the reasons we are migrating much of our content to Substack, a platform that, at least at this point, seems not to be algorithm driven and where writers can generate some income rather than the social media platforms that take advantage of our free content. Your paid subscriptions mean a LOT.)
To attach worth and belonging to numbers and attention is to let capitalism pull our strings. Numbers are fickle. Attention is fickle. Popularity is fickle. Even financial success is fickle.
My work is not a popularity contest. My work is rooted in deep, honest and authentic self-reflection, community building, liberation, and love. When I lean into that commitment, I can survive the waves that come – both the highs and the lows – and not lose my footing.
And it’s not just about the work, either. Even if I did no work at all, I would still be worthy. Even if I put out no content and made no contribution to the kind of productivity capitalism values so highly, I would still be worthy. Any other belief is rooted in ablism and classism. Even the least productive, poorest, and/or most disabled person among us is worthy of love and belonging. You don’t have to contribute to have inherent worth.
Here are some of the ways that I try to maintain a grounded sense of worthiness and belonging:
- Turn toward the woods, the water, and the earth. I know I say this often, but there is nothing like a good walk in nature to ground me and to remind me that I have a place in the natural order of things and that every being has worth and belonging. As I said in my last post, consider the value of the most humble of fungi, largely invisible to the naked eye.
- Turn toward my grounded friends who hold me up when the waves of self-doubt come. It means everything to me to have friends and family who show up with the kind of love that is faithful even when I fumble. Their support is not fickle.
- Go smaller instead of bigger. It goes against everything that capitalism has taught us, but there have been several times that I found myself intentionally shrinking my work and my circles instead of expanding them, and that helped me find exactly what was needed. For the event in Winnipeg, for example, I knew that it would probably draw more people in if I found a host with a large platform (and I made some effort to do so), but in the end, it felt best to have Saleha do the interviewing because I knew our conversation would be intimate and meaningful. I’m so glad that’s the way it turned out and I believe those in the room benefited.
- Choose tenderness, again and again. After few people show up for an event, or my work is ignored on social media, I have learned to speak to myself with the voice of tenderness. Tenderness teaches me how to disentangle my worth from anyone else’s opinion or attention.
- Have a good cry, and then carry on. Of course, I am still human and I still get a bruised ego and I still let the gremlins win occasionally (at least momentarily). But the discouragement never lasts. I let myself have a good cry when I need to, and then I remind myself that I am worthy and loved and that my work and life have value. And then I carry on.
- Remember the woman on the bookstore steps and the man who wrote the long letter. I am committed to the people who find meaning in my work and who share stories of how it has impacted their lives, and I will keep showing up for them again and again, even if their numbers are small. When I get discouraged, I bring them back into mind and recommit myself to serving them.
- Commit to the spirit of the work, not the reach. I haven’t found quite the right word (purpose? passion? mission?), but at the core of the work is something rich, deep and meaningful that I return to again and again. I’m going to call it “spirit of the work” for this moment because it feels right. It energizes me, gives me hope, and keeps me going, because it is REAL. Like the Velveteen Rabbit who was loved into raggedness and realness, it’s a little beat-up, but it’s alive.
- Rest, play, and remember what it means to be human. We are not machines. Our lives are not controlled by algorithms or devices, even though it sometimes feels that way. Let’s step away from the machines, be fully in our human bodies, and remember our humanity.
If you appreciate my honest and authentic sharing, then please buy my book! And don’t forget to post your review on Amazon, Goodreads, or social media. (Even though I’m sad about how much power Amazon has, reviews on Amazon help to get my books in front of more eyes.)
To believe everyone has worth is to move away from the paradigm that those with the biggest, shiniest platforms or those in the most public roles are worth more. In our new course, we’ll be supporting people to fully claim their value and their humanity while playing the supporting character. (NOTE: The start of this course is being delayed until September.)
Join me for one of the upcoming stops on my book tour!
One more thing… taking my own wisdom to heart, I’ve decided that for awhile, when I land back in my new home on Vancouver Island after my book tour, I’m going to go smaller instead of bigger. I’ve been feeling the nudge to offer some one-on-one (and possibly small group) coaching again. I haven’t prepared a sales page or established pricing yet, but if this is something you’re interested in, let me know and I’ll be sure you’re notified when the offering is officially available.
Such wisdom! Thank you!
Thank you Heather. This is so thoughtful and helpful.