There have been a lot of questions this past year about the difference between my day job in marketing, and the writing of my first novel.

“Not so different,” I’ve answered to the surprise, apparently, of many.

Serious marketing requires serious communication. And great advertising copy comes from a deep understanding of your markets, your target customers, the lives they lead, and the way they express themselves. So, putting my characters into a story, wrapped up in a book cover, was not dissimilar to imagining the lives I believed might be graced by my clients’ products.

There is one major difference, however, and there is no getting around it. In marketing, I am not paid to produce things my clients like. I am paid to produce results. Whether the corporate president or his wife likes the color blue in the their logo, or appreciates the headline of their ad, is only of passing interest to me; I can’t let myself be distracted. I am not talking to them, I’m talking to their customers. Criticism of my work in marketing is not subjective. The campaign worked, or it didn’t. While its always a pleasure to be recognized for one’s creative work, my fulfillment comes from the undeniable ways in which that work functioned.

But sending a novel out into the world, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.

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