Thinking Outside Your Box - On KD Grace's Blog!

This is very, very cool: check out a brand new article/essay fun-thing I wrote for the wonderful KD Grace's blog!

Here's a tease, for the rest just click here.

 

 Thinking Outside Your Box...

Or Writing Isn't Always About Writing

Sure, we may all want to just cuddle in our little garrets, a purring pile of fur in our laps, leather patches on our sleeves, a pipe at the ready, and do nothing but write masterpieces all day and night – with periodic breaks for binge-drinking and soon-to-be legendary sexual escapades – but the fact of the matter is that being a writer has totally, completely, changed.

I’m not just talking about the need to be a marketing genius and a publicity guru – spending, it feels too often, more time tweeting about Facebook, or Facebooking about tweeting, than actually writing – but that authors really need to be creative when it comes to not just getting the word out about their work but actually making money.

A lot of people who claim to be marketing geniuses and publicity gurus will say that talking about you and your work as loud as possible, as often as possible, is the trick … but have you heard the joke about how to make money with marketing and PR? Punchline: get people to pay you to be a marketing genius and/or a publicity guru. In short: just screaming at the top of the tweety lungs or burying everyone under Facebook posts just won’t do it.

Not that having some form of presence online isn’t essential – far from it: if people can’t find you, after all, then they can’t buy your books. But there’s a big difference between being known and making everyone run for the hills – or at least stop up their ears – anytime you say or do anything online.

Balance is the key: don’t just talk about your books or your writing because, honestly, very few people care about that … even your readers. Instead find a subject that interests you, and write about that as well. Give yourself some dimension, some personality, some vulnerability, something … interesting, and not that you are not just an arrogant scream-engine of me-me-me-me. Food, travel, art, history, politics … you pick it, but most of all have fun with it. Forced sincerity is just about as bad as incessant narcissism.

Okay, that’s all been said before, but one thing a lot of writers never think about is actually getting out from behind their computers  or out of their garret to take in the opening to this. Sure, writing may far too often be a solitary thing, but putting yourself out there in the (gasp) real world  can open all kinds of doors. I’m not just talking publicity-that-can-sometimes-equal-book-sales, eithe. There’s money to be made in all kinds of far-too-often overlooked corners.

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