I haven’t blogged for a few weeks. I have a couple of good excuses – I’ve been crazy busy finishing the dirty draft of one novel and working on edits for another. Since I’m a writer, it’s good to be busy with writing.
However, since I’m a self-published writer, it isn’t so good that I’ve also been silenced by indecision as I’ve tried to create marketing words rather than book words. This hasn’t only affected my blog. I spent a considerable amount of money at the start of the summer on a marketing course. It’s now past the middle of October and I have yet to put the great ideas I’ve learned about into practise because I’m not quite sure what I should say when I’m pitching myself to my ‘audience’.
I’m calling it marketer’s block. Every idea I have is instantly shot down in my head as being not witty, captivating or commercial enough, whether it’s a blog post or a newsletter article or a Facebook advert.
Now, I don’t have any patience with writer’s block – if you don’t know what to write, just write something. Write anything, because once it’s down on paper you can knock it into shape. I think because my marketing skills are so new (I’ve been writing stories since I could write, whereas marketing only started this year) I didn’t have the confidence to do the same.
But that’s changing now. I’m not going to second-guess myself any more. Writing a blog post, or an author newsletter, or an advert is just the same as writing a story – get it down, whatever it is. It doesn’t have to sparkle from the start, because you can always make it shine when you edit.
katyhaye.com 
Well said. I’ve been feeling paralyzed about marketing my words, too. I just don’t know what to say. I guess I’ll start with saying anything. “Hey, this is a good read. You might want to check it out.” Maybe I can fix that into something usable. 🙂
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There you go -that’s your dirty draft ready for editing!
So glad I’m not alone in feeling tongue-tied.
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I struggle with marketing. I want to shout from the rooftops about my wonderful characters (and some less pleasant ones!), but I sometimes feel self conscious about going on about them. They are so real to me that I expect to bump into them in the street, and have conversations about them like they actually exist. I was sat at my desk at work last week and somebody walked past who looked like one of them, from the back!! That’s one very vivid imaginary friend! I want to share them all with the world so that they can talk about them too!! How do I ‘sell’ that?
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I feel like I’m offering for people to walk around in my head and see the people and places there – but that’s what the book’s for. I guess it’s just sharing that enthusiasm without tipping into lunacy. Hmm.
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You’re definitely not alone. I’ve also been learning a lot about marketing, although I hadn’t even thought about going on a course. Like you, I find it difficult to put it into practice. Procrastination is the order of the day. I see other people do things that I think are utterly cringe-worthy and then I see that they get results. Perhaps I should just let one of my characters do it for me.
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That’s a fabulous idea – a nice, brash character who doesn’t want to run and hide from people like us introvert writers do!
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