I’m tryin’ a thing… Would you rather listen to this?
Get me all up in your ears with a recording I made just for you.

Gah, my butt’s all wet.

Overnight showers soaked the cushion of my chaise longue, but it’s too beautiful a morning to stay inside. These homemade cutoffs will dry as soon the high-season sun hits them.

I’m mesmerized by the glimmering swimming pool and entranced by the chirps and caws of the avian kaffeeklatsch in the trees beyond the fence line — including a tufted titmouse, Merlin tells me, which you can bet your moist booty has me giggling.

And as soon as I schedule this email, I’ll swap my laptop for my Kindle.

At some point during this seven-minute year — seriously, Time; could you slow down? — I transformed from a Person Who Occasionally Reads Books to a Reader.

Can you blame me? Slipping into a fictional world built to sweep me away for a few hundred pages is a pretty tantalizing proposition these days.

I’ve finished two books since I arrived on Cape Cod on Friday night: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett and Funny Story by Emily Henry.

I realized as I dove into the latter — a frothy romance with some 🌶️Szechuan-spicy🌶️ scenes — that both stories take place near Traverse City, Michigan, just a couple of years apart.

But it’s where the similarities end.

Tom Lake is a dreamy, Vaseline-on-the-lens snapshot of a family coming back together in the early months of the pandemic. Three daughters press their mother through a convoluted love story that began after she spontaneously read for the lead role in her first production of Our Town.

The action follows a sinuous timeline, floating between a summer-stock campground and the fruit-swollen cherry orchards of the family’s farm.

The writing has a watercolor softness and intimacy to it. I could feel the stillness and tension of sheltering in place, the warmth and comfort and safety it brought — for a while.

Funny Story is tropes on tropes on tropes, beginning with a betrayal and broken proposal. I saw the ending coming from a nautical mile away, but that didn’t stop me from devouring every silly twist and turn that took me there.

The writing is a summer vacation Shot on iPhone and told in Instagram Stories, jangly and unfiltered, rarely pausing for effect amid the rapid-fire banter. It’s all farmstands and burger joints and kayaks launched from sticky-humid beaches. 

They’re novels set in the same place but written for wholly different readers looking for vastly different things out of their experiences.

And they both work: I felt a specific heartbreak when I flipped to the acknowledgements. 

I swear to God I have a point, Paige, and I’m going to get to it now because that pool and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches await.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Nobody cares what you do.

They care about how you do what you do, and they buy because of how it makes them feel. 

Your dream customers buy what you sell because it advances their plot and ultimately transforms them. (Even if the transformation is little — happy endings can be seismic or leave you with a contented sigh.)

How you do what you do matters. Your perspective matters. 

Your secret sauce will be delicious on somebody’s cheeseburger. Take their experience from “quick, decent meal in a greasy bag” to “transcendent first bite, forever emblematic of an unforgettable summer.”

Don’t sell your spot on the map. Sell what will happen when they arrive.

Sell them that.

Hey, would you rather listen to this?