authorial personality: where I've gone wrong

Last night, late, a conversation about authorial personalities. A sorting through. A reflection on personae and brands.

Such as:

Decisively (intentionally) bold and brash—open declarations and disdainings, proclamations about one's place in things, quantifications of power—here are my crowds, here are my letters.

The supremacy of clever—over-the-top, wild asides, gee-whizz performances, e-gadgetry of sometimes rousing proportions.

The power of the personal—the autobiographical stories that reveal the truth inside the fictions.

Passionate advocacy—for a cause, for a period in time.

Straight-up, wins you over, can't help but smile with them charm.
 
We were speaking, my husband and I. I was asking him something that I have never asked him, or any other, before.

I try only to be myself, I said. But I often feel that myself is not enough.

The mistake you make, he said, as only my always-honest husband could say, is that you are too accommodating. You get up to talk and spend half your time speaking about everyone who was nice enough to come.

Be yourself, he said. But tell your story.