Fame at Last

A commenter says, "Father, how do you deal with the fame? You're a bit of a celebrity yourself, with the blog and books and radio and TV appearances (even on EWTN). Do you ever worry about pride or ego?"



First of all, I don't honestly think I'm famous. Really. Famous is Bruce Willis. Famous is paparazzi trying to get your photograph. Famous is people recognizing you when you're out. I'm not famous. My blog and my books have some readers, but not many, my blog has an average of about 2,000 hits a day. This is not a big deal. Furthermore, I never wrote anything to be famous or well known. I just did something I found I could do and something a few people seemed to want. So what? It's not much now and it will pass.



Secondly, do I worry about pride and ego? Absolutely. I'm a very arrogant, know it all, egocentric person, and I'm not happy about this. I give it to Jesus and hope to be transformed by grace.



Thirdly, I am very lucky to have three very ordinary jobs: I'm a high school chaplain, a parish priest and a husband and father. Most of the people I work with every day don't even know I have a blog or that I have written books. The ones who do know this seem to accept me for what I am in their everyday lives. The writer, author, speaker, radio and TV person is a different persona. My three 'real jobs' are far more important to me than what I do in the media.



Last thing is this: my first publisher was very canny about the whole publicity, celebrity personality thing. I was hesitant to publish my name on my first book and put in that whole author blurb malarky on the back. I didn't want a book launch or any of the publicity hoopla. He said, "Dwight, you have to get over this. We are marketing your books and the way we do this is to market you. However, we're not really marketing you, we're marketing an image of you. This is a useful fiction that we use to publish books. It's not a lie. What we say about you in the blurb is true, but we all know it's not the whole truth. You're more than a book cover blurb. But we have to market you as a personality because we want to sell books, and don't be embarrassed about selling books because why did you write the book in the first place? It was to communicate with people and save souls right? So consider each person who buys your book to be one of the souls you communicate with. That's why we're in this together--not to make a lot of money, but to make enough money to keep publishing good books that promote the faith. So be humble enough to put an image of yourself out there for people to latch on to to buy your books, and be humble enough not to believe your own book blurb or the nice things people say about you. None of it's real. It's just a way to sell books." I've always remembered those words and realized that none of the publicity stuff is real. A few people might think I'm wonderful. They don't know me. They just think what I write is wonderful. That's nice, but it's not substantial.



This is not to say that it is phony or that I am trying to be phony or sell people a line. It just means that there is an unreal aspect to it and you shouldn't be taken in by it--'cause I sure as heck ain't.