How Do You Do?

It’s a funny saying, isn’t it? “How do you do?” Not the most obvious choice for a first meeting greeting.

Most of you will have seen the Evil for Crestline auction happening over here. If not, please go look now. See how I said please? The event, among other things, has brought to my mind again just how many amazing people I’ve encountered on my odd little writerly journey.

I’ve met the best people. The best. And the odd thing is, some of them are brand new, never published a thing people, and some of them are massively prolific professional authors. Some of them are “Indies” and some are Traditionally published. Some of them “know people” and some of them don’t even know who they should know. Many of them believe very strongly about how this process should go, and many of those are on exactly opposite sides of the fence. Any fence.

And they all rock.

Because it turns out none of that matters. It doesn’t. What matters is a busy editor giving a chance to a clueless author who doesn’t even know what a passive verb is. What matters is a pro at a convention seeing someone at her very first panel who is absolutely petrified and flashing a purse filled with chocolate, a smile and an “I’ve got us covered.” What matters is a hopeful author with her eyes full of stars taking a hard crit on the chin, reeling, and then shaking it off, standing up with even more determination and saying, “Yeah, I can do this. Give me another shot.”

What matters is a bunch of people hearing about a tragedy and not even questioning for a second that they are going to do something to help. Not for a second. Of course they will. Great people.

How do you do?

Maybe that makes sense after all. Maybe, life is less about looking in the mirror and liking what you see, and more about lying down at night before bed and liking what you did that day. Not liking what your sales were, or what you wrote even, not liking your Amazon ranking, not liking who you know or who knows you, but liking what you did. Maybe, “How do you do?” is the most important thing we can know about anyone, and that’s why it’s the first thing we ask.

It’s probably the last thing we ask too. When the dust settles and the smoke clears, we’ll stand up, brush off the crud and give a little shake. Maybe we’ll laugh and say, “How did I do?”