The whole thing was valuable, but the part that sticks out the most to me is how it has you re-imagine your mission: instead of simply calling yourself an artist or a writer, or a dry grantspeak that nobody understands, Andrew Simonet has you talk about your work in a way that gets the point across in a way that's both vibrant and easy to understand.
When someone asks me, "What do you do?" I now have a little elevator pitch that's short, sweet, and exciting. It conveys my passion for storytelling, the things that matter most to me, and the things I write about.
Regular Person: What do you do?
What I Used To Say: I'm a playwright.
What I Say Now: I’m interested in creating works of fantasy that takes the straight white male default and turns it on its head. I’m looking at how I can create a space in the fantasy genre for myself and people like me--queer Black women who love magic and elves and witches but don’t get to see ourselves in stories like that. I’ve written stories about a famous person crawling out of a television, a Black lady pirate falling in love with a Latina sorceress, a Black woman who is lured away by the Elvenking, and a white cop who shot an unarmed Black teenager and claimed that the boy was a werewolf.
That's probably not the best I can do, but it's not bad. It's quick, clear, and doesn't pretend to be something it's not.
I could do a lot worse than this.