It seems like every major step forward in the journey to open Greenlight Bookstore has been accompanied by a major setback. In early 2008, I won a cash prize for the merit of my business plan and I think I expected things to start to happen very quickly -- but for a long time, I was unable to raise the capital I needed. One morning, I was walking around the streets of Brooklyn in despair because I wanted so badly to be a part of it as a shop owner, and the dream seemed farther away than ever. But I never really gave up on it -- the bookstore was my calling, my quest, and I was going to see it through somehow.
When Rebecca came along, things looked hopeful again. We made plans, we connected with the Fort Greene Association, and there was a wonderful party to rally support in the community. That evening was like a grand opening in itself -- there was so much excitement and enthusiasm and hope. That was in mid-September 2008 – the very next week, the whispers of economic problems turned into a roar. People we knew lost their jobs, publishers and bookstores were struggling, and again, the dream seemed to recede. We sent a letter to our supporters announcing "a yellow light for Greenlight," explaining that we felt we might have to wait until the time was right to attempt to open.
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But then a retail space opened up that was better than anything we could have imagined: big enough for our needs, great street traffic, subway access, lots of great display windows. And we found that the flagging economy meant that we could get a really good deal on rent, and that contractors would be willing to work for a bit less. As we began to suspect, a recession can be a good time to start a business: in a way, the stakes are lower, so you can get started for less and have room to grow.
Now the setbacks are smaller, but more regular. Every day, there's at least one moment of total frustration and despair: the construction permits are delayed, or the loan paperwork is missing a vital component, or none of the wood stain colors for the bookshelves are quite right, or a publisher has sent the wrong catalogs… the difficulties are literally too many to count. But almost every day, there's also a moment of deep satisfaction, even elation: we're doing the thing we most want to do, and it's all, eventually, coming together.
In her recent work of literary criticism The Magician's Book, Laura Miller writes about how children's books like C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia take such deep root in us as readers, and help us to understand and write our own stories. In one of my favorite passages, she concludes:
"Adventure," then, is what might otherwise be called a hardship if it were attempted in a different spirit. Turning a difficult task or a perilous journey into an adventure is largely a matter of telling yourself the right story about it… This is surely the oldest of the many tasks that stories are called upon to perform.
Rebecca and I have been able to weather our setbacks, both major and daily, because we know that we are in an adventure story. The frustrations we encounter are like the hero's trials on a quest, and the goal is the achievement of our dream. A bit grandiose, perhaps, for what's often a very prosaic process -- but that's where the storytelling imagination comes in. I tend to think that our grounding in the world of books and stories is one of the things that make it possible for us to continue on our "perilous journey". But I think every successful entrepreneur has to learn the imaginative skill of turning hardship into adventure.