FAQs for a Keaton Row stylist

I recently launched a side business with Keaton Row and I am having a blast with it. Whenever I start something new, like I change my toothbrush or I decide I just really like roasted beets, the paparazzi and members of the international press race to the scene and overwhelm me with questions, so I thought I would put in writing my answers to the questions they've already been frequently asking so far.

Q: So, what is Keaton Row and where is that? A: I don't know if it's a place. I think it lives on the internet. It's a personal styling service developed by some beautiful Harvard MBA women.

Q: Do you come to my closet and throw all of my dowdy clothes away like that Stacy and Clinton from TLC? A: No. Everything is done online. You fill out a 5 minute survey and then I pull 5-7 looks for you and put them in an online stylebook. You can either shop from it or just gather ideas/inspiration.

Q: Does the style consult cost anything? A: Not a penny! (Did that sound too infomercially? Sorry)

Q: Shipping? A: Free for delivery or return, so no penalty for trying things on. Yay.

Q: Why should I ask you for style advice? Sometimes you look like you are dressed for preschool picture day? A: Um, ouch?

Q: Well, I just don't feel we have the same style? A: Fair enough. Sometimes really great hairdressers have mullets, though.

Q: What if I want to become a stylist? A: Just fill out an application! Click on the Become a Stylist button here!

Q: Is this part of a racket to get you into a white Mustang or something? A: Promise you, no. I started this because my highschool mate Annie did such an expert job that I just had to try it myself.

Q: I don't need style advice, but I have a friend who does. A: Send her my way! (p.s. This is for women's fashion only.)

Bumper Stickers of the Christian Writers Conference

I have spent this past week in Someplace Beautiful, USA at a Christian Writers Conference. Blessings have been pouring down. I have felt drenched as a writer from the blessings: interactions with fellow writers, editors, agents; insights on the Christian publishing industry; the beauty of creation here. As a little marker of my time here, I've "collected" some of the bumper stickers I have seen around the conference center. Bumper stickers are such a big-small thing, are they not? In a small space, we can convey a big message. As a petite person with a mousey voice, I appreciate the economics of impactfulness :) Bumper stickers, as a concept, are also metaphorical of our spiritual walk. We may not get to choose what car we drive. But we do get to choose what message we convey as we travel.

McSweeney's

The following is something that is important to me. It is not so important because someone named Chris in California responded within a couple of weeks of receiving my submission and told me that it made him laugh and that he was going to run it within the following couple of weeks. I know that it's important to be published if you want to be a writer, you should gain ex-po-sure if you want to be a capital W Writer, you should aim for the big name lit mags if you want to live in the stratosphere of the professional writers. Wahmwahmwahhmwahh. This piece is important to me because the idea came to me when I was freezing my tochis off in my sister's girlhood bed over Christmas break. I had just paid my student loan bill that day and felt all sorts of depressed about how many more years of this indentured relationship I had with the feds, and how hilarious that the feds now knew my social security number AND ALSO the name of the first buoy with whom I ever mashed faces. Oh katzen. Struck me as funny.

So, in my frigid, sleepless state, I grabbed my laptop and started typing out a little ode to the feds. I just had that feeling that I would rue the night that I refused to capture this inspiration, allowing it rather to float out into the ether where all the memories of loan repayments and first smooches and the ideas of how to negotiate things once and for all with your boss just go and vaporize. The following week, Loverpants took the kids out for an afternoon and I finished this piece and sent it off and felt good, ya know??

All in all, just celebrating the almighty process which is equal parts torture and triumph to a writer. The process as well as the publication. Thanks, McSweeney's.