This month, in addition to the activities you’ll read about below, I am editing the first draft of my second novel Kindergarten Mafia.

In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.

–Andy Warhol, 1968

Little did Andy Warhol know that the idea of everyone being ‘famous’ would gain traction. I wonder what he would make of Facebook and blogs like this? Ten years ago – thirty years after Warhol uttered those oft-quoted words – Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence) introduced the idea of everyday people actually branding themselves. While Warhol was talking about the media’s appetite for content and people as commodities for public consumption, Peters was writing about everyday people taking control of their own image. He called it personal branding.

Personal branding includes every aspect of presenting oneself to the public. And that includes the good old-fashioned low-tech business card.

How does a writer begin to market herself before she is even published? I write contemporary commercial fiction for women over the age of forty. (And for young adults, too, but that’s another story.) I’ve completed one book and have a full first draft of the second. Over the past eleven years I’ve developed my writer-ly bag of tricks, built up a storehouse of ideas and developed outlines that will have me writing for years to come. For a woman whose Myers Briggs test always settles ever-so-slightly into the Introvert column, it’s a fine way to spend my workday. Just me. In my head.

However, it’s time to shift into marketing mode. This month I leave the comfort of my home office and begin to network. In fact, each week in October brings a new opportunity to learn and play well with others:

•  Week one: through the Canadian Author’s Association, I’ve signed on for Rodger Cove’s one-day workshop on story structure
•  Week two: I attend the Vancouver branch meeting of the Canadian Author’s Association
•  Week three: I attend the RWA Greater Vancouver meeting
•  Week four: I attend the Surrey International Writer’s Conference

The Surrey International Writer’s Conference is where I will pitch my books to agents and editors and publishers. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. This is the first writer’s conference where I have a completed manuscript to pitch.

Which brings me back to Andy Warhol and Tom Peters. I can’t just show up at these meetings, workshops and conferences empty-handed. I need to be clear about who I am, what I do and where I want to go. This is where personal branding comes in. This website, gingerheart.com, is just the start of my ‘brand’. Thanks to talented webmaster Heather Chang I now have a new Writer business card in tow:

Maybe you are on this site because I gave one of the cards to you at a meeting or a workshop or a conference. Maybe you just stumbled upon the site. In any event, thanks for stopping by. And, in the spirit of blog as a kind of personal brand work-in-progress, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at susan@gingerheart.com.

To learn more about personal branding read the Tom Peters article that started it all: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html. For a comprehensive checklist read Jesse Randall Warden: http://flex.sys-con.com/node/316377/print.