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 
6 responses to “Overcoming Marketer’s Block”
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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