Pretending to be Royalty

There’s one situation which all of us face at least once in our life. The context, place, degree of detail may vary greatly, but the central idea is the same. I’m talking about that one certainity apart from birth and death, the one question we all have to face either in grade school or on our college applications or at our job interviews or while trying to get the world (literary agents) to read our books. The dreaded ‘Write a few lines about yourself’.

My first ever attempt was at primary school and went something like this:

“My name is Nmaha. I am a big girl because I can write my own name*. I love painting and reading books. I like pink and my baby brother. I am ‘x’ years old and am in ‘y’ class. Thank you for reading this.”

We were asked to write five-six sentences and the tough part was trying to find different ways to start a sentence. Obviously, I wasn’t very successful as four out of the six sentences started with ‘I’.

Over the years, while my choice of content improved (as I become a slightly more interesting person), the dilemma of how to phrase that content wasn’t really resolved. Finally, I decided to give into the third person style, which makes me feel like I should have a crown (actually I prefer a tiara**) and a throne. It also has the techie in stitches when I read out my notes to him.

Anyway, today I am in the same situation as the primary school me and this is the ‘About Me’ section of my concept note to a literary agent:

“Nmaha is a Chartered Accountant by profession and currently runs a healthcare diagnostics business with her husband. She attempts to juggle motherhood, running a business and her passion for writing, while miserably dropping the ball at regular intervals. Nmaha celebrated her 30^th birthday this year by embarking on a year-long exercise to move her current life closer to the life she actually wants. Read about her efforts on creating a balanced and synergistic life at http://www.seekingsynergy.wordpress.com.”

Not much improvement in 25 odd years right? I just seem to have replaced “I like pink and my baby brother” with a slightly more grown-up version.

Oh! I almost forgot, “Nmaha grants you the right to refer to her as ‘Her Royal Highness’ from today”.

*My real name is very difficult for a 5-7 year old child to spell. I actually had a little pocket book in which I spent hours practicing writing my name correctly.

**I wonder if I can get Tiffany to sponsor it.