And Now a Few Words on What I Also Really Do, and Why

I started my own business at the age of twenty-five—hung out my shingle and began to consult with a dozen or so design and engineering firms. I worked on branding and positioning, wrote brochures and proposals, conducted research, trained internal staff. I continued along in my tried-and-true Undercover fashion, ghosting articles and writing talks for the city's architects.

Within a few years (following a brief full-time stint for a major consultancy), I had expanded my range—put my History and Sociology of Science degree to work for pharmaceutical companies like Merck, DuPont Merck, AstraMerck, and AstraZeneca (there's a pattern there, do you see it?). I was writing internal magazines by then, annual reviews and annual reports, corporate histories. I was working behind the scenes, again, to craft the talks that others gave. It all kept changing, shifting, growing. There'd be years when I'd leave the consulting behind to focus solely on books—a grant would come in, an advance, a spate of magazine assignments, competitions to judge. And then I'd be back at my work-a-day desk—interviewing executives or civic leaders, trying to see the world through their eyes, forging friendships that have lasted straight through to now.

Seven years ago my husband left architecture to enter the field of graphic design. We've since built a boutique communications firm that incorporates not just strategy, research, writing, and executive coaching, but also photography, video montage, and design. Whatever the work is, it always takes me somewhere new, and while it is true that at times I lose my literary self for weeks on end, that I fail to find the time to read a book, to dream something personal and bright, to comment as much as I wish I could on your blogs, this work that I do is also often a refuge—a peopled landscape with clearer border lines. It's a chance to make another kind of art, to stare down a challenge and emerge on the other side.

The literary life is rich and essential and often heartbreaking. The business is engaging and rapid-fire and deeply taxing. I once thought that I needed the one to survive the other. I've learned since that I need both to survive myself.