Tracing Word of Mouth

Before the Internet, that's how everything spread. Word of mouth was like wildfire. Sometimes it would beat newspaper headlines to the other side of the country. We may forget it, in this era of instant tweets, but people used to talk to each other all the time.

Geez, where did we go wrong? (I kid. The Internet is awesome and creates many opportunities that never existed before.)

Anyway. I've mentioned before that the Internet is not quite ubiquitous in Madagascar. All the authors I'm working with (save one) have an email address, but response times from them can range anywhere from a few days to a few months. Word of mouth is alive and well there.

And oh, in so many ways. Let me count them.

Way #1: Random Phone Calls

Week two into my Madagascar visit, I finally get an email from an author I adore! We set up a meeting! The meeting goes great! I ask him for a favor: there are a handful of authors I haven't been able to contact yet. Does he know them? Why yes! He'll contact them that evening and give them my information.

I'm an American. I found him via email. I assume he means email.

Fast forward four days, I'm in the bus (taxi-be -- remember those?) when my phone rings. My Malagasy phone. With a number I don't have programmed into it. Who the heck in Madagascar could have found that number if they didn't already have it? It's loud on the bus, so I can't even hear her name. She just starts going on and on about how somebody I met on Saturday told her to call me because I was interested in what she'd written . . . Oh. It's only one of the most lauded authors in all of Madagascar on the other end. What's proper talking-on-the-phone-on-the-bus etiquette, again?

Way #2: That Elusive Catch

A couple months ago, I was desperately trying to contact an author whose work I wanted to put into the issue I'm guest-editing for Words Without Borders. I'd only hit dead ends. No email online, no university posting that might have a phone number, no blog that talked about her, no contact from her publisher, no nothing. And yet, her bio mentioned her prolific writing career and the radio shows (plural) that she hosts in Mada. Someone had to know her, right? . . . Right??

I ended up mass-emailing all the authors I'd met while there to see if any of them knew her. Finally, one wrote back to say that he had a phone number for her . . . but it was disconnected. Sigh.

A week later, something must have changed. She was back on the grid! I put credit in my Skype account and dialed away. After a very awkward explanation of who I was and why I loved her so much, we set a date to have a call where she would answer all the questions I had about her work. (We ended up talking for so long that time that the call disconnected because I had run out of credit on my end. It's a common occurrence in Mada. She thought an American running out of credit was the funniest thing she'd ever heard of.)

Finally, I asked her the best way to get the contract for rights to her. Did she have an email address I could send it to? Well, no. And no postal address, either. Umm. Okay. I can't send a contract via phone.

What about that other author who'd given me her phone number in the first place? Was she friendly enough with him to have him serve as printer-and-email-holding intermediary? Why yes! Lovely. Excellent. All's well that ends well.

Way #3: Just Talk to People

My very first full day in Madagascar last year, I was running on terrible jet lag, four hours of sleep, and precious little ability to take care of myself. My host family had delivered me to the founder of the first non-profit organization I was visiting, who drove me two hours outside of the capital to rural Ambatolampy. The only way to stay awake (and be polite) was to talk, and he and his assistant were fascinated by what in the world I was doing in their country. I explained my job reporting on some non-profits, and then my own personal reasons for coming, mostly having to do with literature.

The assistant bursts out laughing from the back seat. The founder grins and says, "Oh, you must meet my wife."

He goes on to explain that he's married to the daughter of General Ramakavelo, a cultural figurehead of Madagascar and probably the only politician who's ever been beloved in that country. This daughter -- his wife -- is a champion of all things artistic, and has a wide network of authors whom she champions and runs events with. They're even going to a gala thrown by the Minister of Culture in a few weeks. I wouldn't want to come with, would I? (Sadly, it ended up taking place after I'd already left the country. But I got the contact.)

Is there a moral to this story? No, not really. It's just a story.

But talking to people is generally worth it.

Networking Works

It also nets you profit. (Sorry. Couldn't resist. Anyway. Back to serious business.)

The Internet is a wonderful tool for freelancers. You can find and court new clients, work jobs, get paid, and talk about everything, all without leaving your desk.

But in the era of email, Facebook, Skype conferences, webinars, Twitter, scans, texting, all the connections you could possibly ask for...one is missing. One connection, the face-to-face human connection. It gets lost in the ease of doing business. And it's a shame, really.

I took a trip to NYC last week to reconnect with old and make new contacts, but the most important part of the trip was the the five different meetings I had with colleagues I've already been working with for months, or even years, solely through email. Maybe the occasional phone call, if we're lucky. And it's so hard to read emotion and personality via email.

For all the work I've done with these people -- a project manager, a publicist, even my editor -- I didn't really know anything about them. Not how they smile, not even how they speak. And it's hard to feel secure in a business relationship without that personal connection. It's hard to trust someone's judgement with your creations if you can't look them in the eye when asking questions. 

After meeting in person, that trust builds up the other way, too. Five wonderful meetings later, I got numerous offers of "how can I help you as we move forward?" or "here's a good editor, should I pass your name along?" or "you are on our list for this type of job, right? no? I'm putting you on." So much future potential from the people I was already working with, just because we finally got to look one another in the eye and have a lovely conversation over a cup of tea or a glass of lemonade. (It was hot last week.)

So yes. Do it. Try to meet everyone you work with in person, at least once. Set up a meeting if you pass through their city. Go out of your way to end up in their city, if you must. It'll be worth it. 

Pay It Forward

When you start out in an industry, any industry, you have a lot of things working against you. A lot of roadblocks, or obstacles to overcome, depending on your point of view. One of the most looming and glaring is the lack of contacts.  Every piece of advice for job seekers includes the instruction, admonishment, whatever, to networknetworkNETWORK your little butt off because you're never going to get anywhere without knowing people. 

And it's true. It's tough to hear, and tough to implement, but true. 

When you're just starting out, and don't know anyone, and have to suddenly make lots of contacts, it's scary. Terrifying, for some. Fear puts on the brakes, gets in the way. Fear of rejection, fear of no response, even fear of being a mild annoyance in some Very Important Person's day. 

"Why would the thrice-published Senior Executive Vice-President Experienced Person who knows everyone else in the industry be willing to talk to lil' ol' me, even for a twenty-minute informational interview?"

But here's the thing: most of them will. A lot of them are happy to help newbies. Everyone was a newbie once, no matter how unlikely that may seem.

I learned that two ways. The first, from Ramit Sethi, who writes a blog called I Will Teach You to Be Rich.  His posts convinced me to go try talking to people I admire. And when I did, I found that every single person I've reached out to to date has responded to me. Most have taken the time to have a conversation with me. At worst, I learn something new, and at best, I have a new business contact who gives me a job.

People are nice. 

I'm nice, too. (Hopefully, most of the time.) So when I got an email from a woman older than I was asking how I got started in literary translation, I didn't demur and shy away. I didn't cite my lack of expertise and beg off. Because even though I've only published one book, I have published a book. The "getting started" part of my career is over; I've hit the growth and expansion phase.  We exchanged messages and ended up having a lovely conversation.

And then a colleague of mine sent along a woman who was looking to get into French translation. I gave her my small mountain of info. (Maybe it's a large molehill. Not sure on that.)

Then I signed up for the mentoring program through my alma mater's alumni office. Now, I get about one email per month with recent or almost-grads who are curious about translation, literary or not. There's always the caveat that I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I help however I can. And it feels awesome.

It's a source of pride to be able to help guide new translators down a helpful path, one that takes some shortcuts to the most effective methods of finding your footing. 

And then, at the same time, there are lots of contacts and mentors who have done the same for me. I still look up to them. I still ask them questions. And I try to check in with all of them every little while, because I am making strides in my career, and they deserve to know that and be thanked. (Christmas cards are a great way to do this.)

This turned sappy. Eventually, it'll all just become a huge circling cycle of paying it forward. 

Which, I think, is the way it should be. 

On Prosopagnosia

Also called "face blindness."

I enjoy swing dancing. It's ridiculously fun, besides also being good exercise and a nice way to be social and meet new people. Most everyone ends up having trouble remembering people's names, since it's such a rapid-fire way to meet people. Dance with them for four minutes, usually in a darkened room while you're concentrating on connection and steps and all of that, then exchange names, and move on to the next person.

But for me, it sometimes goes beyond that. I may have had a long conversation with someone one night, but I won't recognize them the next day. I danced with someone for over a month, left town for a while, and upon coming back, couldn't remember if I had ever met them.

As an undergrad, I majored in both French and psychology. And in a psych lecture one day (Perception, I think), the professor started talking about prosopagnosia. It's when a person's ability to recognize faces is impaired. Thanks to something in the brain called the fusiform gyrus, human beings have a unique ability to recognize and distinguish between faces, much more easily than other similarly complex types of input. But prosopagnosiacs can't. Depending on the severity of their disorder, they may have to rely on other clues: voice, hairstyle, glasses, gait, even clothes. With varying degrees of success, of course -- people change their clothes every day.

And then I started doing a bit more research on the disorder. I recognize my family and friends just fine, yes. But if someone I know has shaved off their hair, I do a double-take. I have trouble distinguishing people in movies or plays if they're the same race and build. And if I run into someone out of context (a classmate out shopping, a swing dancer in the library, the coffeehouse barista out to dinner), I may not know who they are.

Unfortunately, this lack of mental ability can be interpreted as rude. If the other person doesn't remember my name, I have an easy out -- we can both laugh and commiserate over how difficult it is to remember the names of every single person we meet. Or if we've only met once, or even twice, it's easy to explain away. But. Otherwise? Ugh.

And networking? Fuggedaboutit. Oh yes, it's possible, of course. But if I have to remember what someone looked like, I sometimes have to use my secret weapon: Google Images. Maybe it's cheating. Maybe it's the only tool I have. Thank goodness for the Internet, sometimes.

I'm lucky, though. A friend of mine, a psychologist in France, has a more severe case of prosopagnosia. She has to explain to her patients that she won't be able to ever recognize them by face alone. Saying "Oh, but of course you'll remember me! How could you not?" doesn't actually help. You're not a special case. Your face is just like any other face, unrecognizable. And she's lost patients because of it.

Over the years, I've gotten used to the split-second terror that comes when someone walks up to me with a smile on their face, saying "Hi, Allison!" and I have no idea who they are. If there's nothing distinctive about them, I'm lost. If it's not the smooth, dark-skinned woman with wonderfully wavy hair who always drapes scarves over her shoulders...or the 6'5"-tall swing dancer with rectangular glasses and a matching smile...or the pale woman with very straight, naturally bleach-blond hair and cutely scrunched up features...or the guy with the light brown hair in a ponytail all the way down his back...... If I don't have any other cues, I've gotten used to the hot pink that creeps up my face to my ears, and my heart pounding THUMPTHUMPTHUMP against my bones that drowns out the question I'm forced to ask, "I'm so sorry, but I've completed blanked on your name...where was it that we met?"

How embarrassing. But only because prosopagnosia, no matter how slight, has not entered the collective consciousness. It's still not socially acceptable. The automatic assumption is that of course there's not any valid excuse for forgetting someone's name, someone's face. You're forgetting their very identity. To you, they're not a person. How rude.

How rude for that assumption to be made of millions of people with some form of the disorder. Really. An estimated 2.5% of the population. That's millions.

So I rely on my coping mechanisms: Google Images, cell phone pictures, conversational cues, re-introductions, profuse apologies proffered. And, subconsciously, a solitary career that minimizes the amount of time I have to spend with other people. Seriously -- there are only two girls who work afternoons at the coffeeshop I began frequenting, and it was two weeks before I could tell them apart. Not much of an incentive to go work as a doorman. -woman. -person. -holder. I'd be the worst receptionist ever.

Thank goodness for the books. I can at least recognize them by their covers.

For more information, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia