hustle + flow

work in process//14.

The other morning I went for a mountain bike ride. I am supposedly “training” for the Leadville 100 bike race in August, but the minute I start thinking of biking as training, the idea of racing 100 miles seems like the dumbest idea I’ve ever had. So I have to trick myself. I am just riding my bike. 

A lot. 

The trail network has a sweet flow trail called Hustle and Flow, a rolly-smooth downhill dirt track with bermed sides and little jumps. I love the flow trail even though I rarely hit the jumps or take the track at any speed. I was busy getting ready for the book launch of Brief Flashings in a few days (a phenomenal success—see below for the scoop!–and #1 in new releases on Amazon!), dictating texts into my phone as I rode—hustling in a different way.

book cake or cake book?

Midway through the flow trail, my phone rang. Siri told me the number. I guessed from the unfamiliar area code that it was the Miami writer Andrea Askowitz, whom I’d emailed the day before on the recommendation of a runner friend, to ask her if she’d like to co-host my reading at Books + Books in Coconut Grove on May 14 with me. I debated taking the call. I was training. I was riding. I was trying to flow.

Then I remembered. I was also trying to hustle. I pulled off the trail and took the call.

Andrea wrote the book My Miserable, Lonely Lesbian Marriage and co-hosts the highly bingeable podcast Writing Class Radio. As soon as we started gossip-laughing about the bizarre business of book publishing and the ridiculous and beautiful torment of motherhood and writing, I knew we were kindred spirits. We talked so long about the event, that when we hung up I realized I was going to have to hustle through the rest of the flow track to get home in time for a podcast interview. 

Hustle is such a weird word. It simultaneously connotes ingenuity and stamina, as well as desperation and craven self-promotion. I had been running my unsystematic one-woman social media marketing campaign for three months, almost long enough to be able to tell the difference between the two. My personal barometer was whether I could write a post or record a short video in one go, without deleting or editing. Almost always, the first take was the best. If I had to redo it a bunch of times, it felt fake and, in the words of my 15-year-old, “cringey,’ and I didn’t post it. On the other hand, if it flowed naturally and I felt like myself while making it, I put it up.

A few days later, I went downtown to one of my favorite shops to drop off invitations for the book launch. The owner smiled when he saw me and said he’d been following my book posts. “Videos, though, I don’t know about those….” He wrinkled his nose and and trailed off, like he was waiting for me to agree.

At home I got an email from a writer I admire, congratulating me on the upcoming launch. “You are really hustling these days,” he wrote. “It seems so challenging for an author to ‘cut through the noise.’” Was I cutting through, or making the noise? Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. 

Then I remembered something my agent had written to me a month earlier. “Your hustle is beautiful.” I loved this so much I wanted to put it in flashing neon on the wall or needlepointed on a pillow. Even when I was making it up as I went along, my hustle did feel, if not exactly beautiful, then real. True. 

Is there a better word for hustle? There are many: hard work, persistence, effort, grit, stamina. Zen calls it “right effort”—when we do something with full determination and commitment, without expectation and regardless of outcome. Suzuki Roshi, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, said that nirvana was “seeing one thing through to the end.” Lao Tzu wrote, “be who you really are and go the whole way.”

I was swooping through the final turns of the Hustle and Flow track when it hit me: I’d literally been hustling while flowing. Hustle, when we do it with right effort and true intention, is flow. 

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Book launch Tuesday was a phenomenal success! More than 100 people came out to swanky Bishop’s Lodge to celebrate Brief Flashings with a book talk, signing, and a birthday cake from Dulce Capital that looked just like the book cover, only much yummier. Huge thanks to Garcia St. Books for putting on such a terrific event. 

If you haven’t bought a copy of Brief Flashings, today and this weekend is a great time to order online or better yet, pick one up from your local bookstore. Book sales in the first week weigh extra in the mysterious metrics of publishing. It’s kind of like being expected to lead a 100-mile race from the gun. 

Yeah, we got this!

If you already have a copy, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I’ve been humbled by readers’ raves in just the past few days. it’s hard to know when you’re in the midst of making something what it is—like the Zen koan, “What is it?”—but when I read aloud from Flashings the other night for the first time and began hearing from readers, I am sort of astounded:

“this book is brilliant!”

“the language is electric!”

“the best kinds of books are the ones you can’t stop reading!”

Reviews like these really matter in bringing more readers to the book.

I am grateful for your support. 

be the flashings, xx

katie