Plan Part THE LOCAL STRATEGY
Holy cow, it's been a busy couple of days. My productivity has plummeted since Thursday, but that's okay, it's been family and CPS bureaucracy. One is more fun than the other, both cause your plans to change sometimes. I'm also set on concerts for a while- the Taste of Chicago actually had some really awesome programming this year. Thursday night was Janelle Monae, Friday night was Allison Krauss and Nickel Creek with the rents. I think I'm going to have to take some time off before I see anybody else play music, just to be fair. And I got to spend all day today wrestling with my cousins, so all's well.
Anyway, picking up where I left off. One of the things I had to turn over in my head when I was planning all this is that it isn't a financial necessity for me to stay in Illinois any more. I could've gone cheap-exchange-rate hunting abroad, or headed out to the middle of nowhere, with accordingly cheap rent, or just shopped around for other possibilities. I could go to grad school, god help me. As it happens, I think I have good boardroom-ready reasons for staying put, but if I'm being honest with myself I know it would take a lot to get me out of the Chicago area. I'm a hobbit. I've lived around here for almost my entire life, with a brief interruption for college and work that took me to the wilds of Wisconsin, and it's not an accident. I'm an explorer, but lovely Chi-town provides me with enough weird new things to see and due to last me five lifetimes. Show me something I've never seen adjacent to something I have, and I'm interested. Drop me off in the middle of something completely new, and I'm just kind of grumpy and shut down until I have a point of reference again.
Of all the different quadrants I've hit in and around Chicago, Forest Park is the only one I've lived in and wanted to go back to. I will tolerate no anti-suburban snobbery. FP is on multiple El lines, it's cheaper than whatever hipster rathole you want to tell me is the center of the universe and just as close to downtown, you can ride your bike around without taking your life in your hands, and there's a river lined by goddamn trees. It's in close proximity to both wealth and poverty (both important to my rent-paying life for different reasons, and also just a balance I'm comfortable living in proximity to), it's pretty, people get drunk and have fun and play music there, and it's got good libraries and independent bookstores in striking distance without being particularly well-known for either of those things and hence attracting excessive competition. It has lots and lots of cemeteries. It is an ideal place to become the center of my universe.
And the center of my universe it shall become. If you are anywhere close to my magic demographic target I laid out in my last installment of this increasingly ridiculous series, and you live anywhere near Forest Park, I'm going to be doing everything in my power to make sure you hear the words "Brendan Detzner" multiple times in conjunction with things you think are cool and are willing to spend money on. Part of the reason that having a marketing target is that most people need to hear about what you're doing from multiple sources before they're willing to raise a finger to learn more about you, let alone spend money on your work. I'm hoping that being geographically specific will help me build the kind of density I need to make progress, without forcing me to make the kind of compromises that I don't like.
So I'll be hanging out at bookstores and libraries. I'll be making friends. I'll be organizing events, hopefully. I'll be writing stories set in the area and promoting my work on that basis. And I'll be doing stuff on the internet. Oh yes, there will be Stuff On The Internet. More on that next time, troops.
*AMERICAN DEMIGODS FUNDRAISER TOMORROW AFTERNOON
*PATTY TEMPLETON BOOK RELEASE WEDNESDAY NIGHT
*GUMBO FICTION SALON THURSDAY NIGHT
*and what's looking to be an genuinely massive BAD GRAMMAR THEATER FRIDAY AT POWELLS
-fin-
Anyway, picking up where I left off. One of the things I had to turn over in my head when I was planning all this is that it isn't a financial necessity for me to stay in Illinois any more. I could've gone cheap-exchange-rate hunting abroad, or headed out to the middle of nowhere, with accordingly cheap rent, or just shopped around for other possibilities. I could go to grad school, god help me. As it happens, I think I have good boardroom-ready reasons for staying put, but if I'm being honest with myself I know it would take a lot to get me out of the Chicago area. I'm a hobbit. I've lived around here for almost my entire life, with a brief interruption for college and work that took me to the wilds of Wisconsin, and it's not an accident. I'm an explorer, but lovely Chi-town provides me with enough weird new things to see and due to last me five lifetimes. Show me something I've never seen adjacent to something I have, and I'm interested. Drop me off in the middle of something completely new, and I'm just kind of grumpy and shut down until I have a point of reference again.
Of all the different quadrants I've hit in and around Chicago, Forest Park is the only one I've lived in and wanted to go back to. I will tolerate no anti-suburban snobbery. FP is on multiple El lines, it's cheaper than whatever hipster rathole you want to tell me is the center of the universe and just as close to downtown, you can ride your bike around without taking your life in your hands, and there's a river lined by goddamn trees. It's in close proximity to both wealth and poverty (both important to my rent-paying life for different reasons, and also just a balance I'm comfortable living in proximity to), it's pretty, people get drunk and have fun and play music there, and it's got good libraries and independent bookstores in striking distance without being particularly well-known for either of those things and hence attracting excessive competition. It has lots and lots of cemeteries. It is an ideal place to become the center of my universe.
And the center of my universe it shall become. If you are anywhere close to my magic demographic target I laid out in my last installment of this increasingly ridiculous series, and you live anywhere near Forest Park, I'm going to be doing everything in my power to make sure you hear the words "Brendan Detzner" multiple times in conjunction with things you think are cool and are willing to spend money on. Part of the reason that having a marketing target is that most people need to hear about what you're doing from multiple sources before they're willing to raise a finger to learn more about you, let alone spend money on your work. I'm hoping that being geographically specific will help me build the kind of density I need to make progress, without forcing me to make the kind of compromises that I don't like.
So I'll be hanging out at bookstores and libraries. I'll be making friends. I'll be organizing events, hopefully. I'll be writing stories set in the area and promoting my work on that basis. And I'll be doing stuff on the internet. Oh yes, there will be Stuff On The Internet. More on that next time, troops.
*AMERICAN DEMIGODS FUNDRAISER TOMORROW AFTERNOON
*PATTY TEMPLETON BOOK RELEASE WEDNESDAY NIGHT
*GUMBO FICTION SALON THURSDAY NIGHT
*and what's looking to be an genuinely massive BAD GRAMMAR THEATER FRIDAY AT POWELLS
-fin-