Confidence: Selling Yourself

Last week I addressed what I think is the biggest cause of insecurity in writers: a lack of knowledge. This week, I am going to talk about marketing yourself, when you feel like you don't deserve people's attention.

Again, this is an area where I am talking about a problem I don't really have. So while I strongly advise you at least try my methods, take this blog post with a grain of salt.

It can be very hard to promote yourself and your writing. I am super confident when it comes to talking about myself, but I am not the sort of person who pushes sales or hounds people to read my work. However, I am happy to talk about it and I do love it when people read my work. That is, after all, the goal. A lot of people seem to really struggle with this though. They feel if they talk about their own work, they are being narcissistic and will risk boring people. However so much of being an author these days is about promoting yourself. There is a lot of competition in the market and you're crazy if you just leave discoverability to chance. So without further ado:

Promote Yourself As If You Are Your Favourite Author.

How many times have you encouraged friends to read a book you love? Hopefully a lot, since word of mouth is the most powerful success tool for books. If you want your favourite author to keep writing, recommend them to people, so they can quit their day job and write for you full time.

Remember the passion and excitement you expressed? You're not sharing a book you love for selfish reasons, you're sharing it because you are hoping it will bring your friend the same joy it brought you. You are recommending it, because you think they will like it.

And how awesome is it when a friend recommends a book to you and it's AMAZING? And you love it. And you recommend it to everyone else?

When you are promoting your book, I want you to pretend you are promoting a book by someone else. It's an author you love, a story you love. And if you use the same sort of language in promoting your own book as you do promoting other people's books, you'll have more success.

How do you usually recommend a book to someone? Usually with one or two lines that summarise the key appeal (or key sparkly, but more on that in another blog post). I'll give you some examples of me pitching novels I love to my friends:

'Three words. Gay slave prince. Its trashy, and angsty and fantastic. Its every guilty pleasure you ever wanted in one super gay fantasy trilogy.' (Captive Prince – C.S Pacat)

'It's grimdark, subversive, really intelligent political fantasy and one of the characters is a disabled asshole and I love him.' (The Blade Itself – Joe Abercrombie)

'It's world war one, but the Germans have mecha and the British have genetically modified animals and there is a girl dressed as a boy who runs away to join the air force and it is everything I ever wanted.' (Leviathan – Scott Westerfeld) 

How would you describe your book in one to two enthusiastic sentences? What are the key elements that would appeal to readers? Work it out, memorise it, and next time someone asks what you book is about, that's all you need to say. Pitch your book as you would your favourite book. Even pretend it was written by someone else if that helps. It will make a difference.

Be Aware Of What You Are Offering.

Obviously if you are going to pitch your story to people the same way you would your favourite book, you must be aware of what you are offering. If you have no idea, go back to stuff you love and write down why you love it. Just the basic, simple things. It's entertaining, you like the characters, you're hooked on the romance—whatever it is. Be honest. You don't have to be ashamed of what you like. You don't have to like things for high-brow reasons.

Now, it's more than likely, you write similar things to what you like. You're going to have similar elements in your books to the elements you love in other books. This is where you might get caught up thinking 'but I don't do it as well as my favourite author'.

If you ask 10 people what their favourite book is, you'll probably get ten different answers. If you ask ten people who their favourite character is, you'll get ten different answers. Opinions vary. A lot of my friends do not like one of my favourite authors. They find him elitist and inaccessible. And boring. They prefer my style of writing to his. He is inarguably richer and more famous, but if they had to choose between one of my books and one of his, mine would win every time. But I IDOLISE this guy. I think preferring my books over his is crazy. I think he writes like he was touched by God.

You can't really compare your tastes to everyone else's tastes. There are people out there who think your favourite author is crap dusted on a crap sandwich. So don't think just because you think you are terrible when comparing yourself to your idols, that everyone else does too.

It's egotistical to think your opinion on what is good and what is bad is more valid than everyone else's. Tell people what you love about your writing and then let them make up their own minds. Some people will like it and some people won't, just like they do with your favourite author. Which brings me to:

Love What You Have Written.

A friend of mine was looking for people to review his work on amazon. I said sure, and to toss me a copy. He didn't. I messaged him, a little confused, to ask why not. You can never have enough reviews, after all. Had he reached a quota? No. He confessed he didn't want me to read his book because he 'cared about my opinion'.

I was baffled. Completely stunned. I would PAY to have people I respect read my books. Nothing in the world would make me happier than having someone I respect ask for a copy of one of my books. I would deliver it to them on a unicorn with banners and a marching band.

Why? Because I love my books. I am proud of my books. What I want, more than money and fame and a harem of gorgeous polymaths is for people to read my books. Want to impress me? Want to get on my good side? Want me to ADORE you? Read my books. Tell other people to read my books. Talk to me about my books.

I don't want to be an asshole, but why would you spend hundreds of hours writing and editing a manuscript if you didn't want anyone to read it? Isn't that a huge waste of time? Or do you just want stupid, boring people to read it and praise you? It's good enough for the people you don't give a shit about, but not the ones you respect? That sounds pretty dicky to me.

Don't let anyone tell you you're not allowed to be proud of the things you create. Imagine if someone said: "Oh, you're proud of your daughter? I don't think you should be. She's not that great."

Would you let someone talk to you like that about your child? About your partner? About your parents? I wouldn't. I'd punch someone in the fucking mouth if they said that to me. Try me. Tell me I shouldn't be proud of my friends. I will fight you.

Your creative work is the same. You are the same. You are allowed to be proud of yourself and your creations. Just like you are your children. You created them too.

No more bullshit. I am giving you all permission to be proud and talk about your books with enthusiasm. Be excited to share them.

And if you still can't bring yourself to do it, be excited to share mine. They're awesome.

For more updates on how awesome I am, follow me on twitter.

Divergent Thinking and Writing Books

What is divergent thinking?

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking) says: "Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions." For example, if I asked you how to bake a cake, you can probably recognise there are thousands of cake recipes. However your instructions will probably include spoons, bowls and an oven. What if we use clay? What if we use lava to cook? What if we make an 'oven' using a super hot car in the sun in summer?

Sir Ken Robinson did an excellent talk on the subject which can be found here, on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzBa-frc2JA) which I highly recommend. The most important part, in relation to this blog post, is the section about the test they did on schoolchildren, examining their divergent thinking abilities. It found that children are best at divergent thinking in kindergarten and progressively lose the ability as they age. Ken hypothesises it is conditioned out of us by the school system and I agree.

You will always be punished for divergent thinking by peers.

For a short period, when I was 12, I went to a very fancy private school. I did not thrive there.

For mother's day, we were instructed to paint pots. An art teacher came in and gave us very direct lessons on how to paint the pots. The body of the pot was to be white, the rim coloured, then we were to paint a specific flower pattern on the white part. All of the pots would be virtually identical. Pretty, but mass produced.

I had a much more interesting idea for my pot. A sort of Inca mosaic. However when I tried to bring it to life, I realised we had not been given the right colours to realise my goals. We only had the white, the purple and small dabs of the 'flower' colours.

My pot did not turn out well. However out of the 28 pots painted that day, it was the only original. All the pots were on display at the front of the class and after a week of listening to my classmates ruthlessly mock both me and the pot, I quietly asked for paint in a lunch break and painted it white. With a purple rim. There was no time to add the flowers before I gave it to my mother.

I was glad about ten years later when she threw it away.

And so I learned, as we all do, that divergent thinking is a punishable offence when dealing with peers.

However I refused to stop. Every activity we were given, I found an alternative way to do it. Steadfast, through all the bullying. To this day I regret caving in. I regret painting over my ugly pot.

However you will be applauded when it works.

Around the same time, I went to an art workshop run by a very famous aboriginal painter. There was about 100 students there. This man's art sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and, as an example, he painted a killer whale on cardboard, right in front of us.

We were then all given paints and told to paint something. The artist would then judge our entries and the winner would get to take home the painting he had just created.

I watched everyone around me try and copy his whale. Poorly. I knew I couldn't copy his whale and I didn't want to. I think I painted a crocodile, in the style of the cave paintings I grew up around at Laura and Aurukun.

I could hear the kids around me mocking me as I painted. "Look at what she's doing! It's not even a whale!" You'd have thought I was eating the goddamn paint. I didn't care. I never wanted to copy, only to create.

I won.

And that was when I learned a second valuable lesson. The people at the top don't want clones. Divergent thinking will be rewarded when it works.

Divergent thinking rarely works.

You might be thinking: 'I bet your pot was better than the other pots and kids were just jealous'. No one was jealous of that pot. It was the ugliest pot ever painted. Mostly because I didn't have the resources I needed. Had I been more experienced, I could have worked with what was there. But I wasn't, and I didn't, and it was a hideous pot.

When I tried to make up my own swimming stroke at the school swimming carnival and my team lost, it was great divergent thinking, but a terrible time and place to test my theories. I was bullied for that too. So much, I remember the teacher having to pull another student off me who was trying to rip out my hair.

This all applies in a general sense to writing too. New genres, odd stories, things that 'break the mold', most of them suck. Then, sometimes they don't. Harry Potter springs to mind, and Blair Witch Project. Along with any other book or movie that 'spawned its own genre.'

Divergent thinking and you.

When you were five, you were really good at divergent thinking. I'm still pretty good at divergent thinking, but I don't expect you to be. I was spared the conditioning largely due to staying out of traditional schooling models as a child and partly because I lack a certain capacity for empathy that means I am largely unaffected by others. It has pros and cons.

You probably don't want to be good at divergent thinking for the same reasons I am. However it is important you realise once you were good at it, and that you are now bad at it because you were punished for it. Brutally. For years and years.

Now, when you feel a divergent idea coming on, you probably suppress it. Quickly. You quickly tell yourself it's too different, too odd, unmarketable. Whatever. You're really just trying to spare yourself the pain of what you have experienced in the past. Don't touch fire, fire is hot. Don't be too original, originality will be punished.

The problem is, if you see 'failure' as punishment, you're probably going to keep being punished. Because while divergent thinking leads to a lot of ideas, odd, original and new ideas, that doesn't mean they're good. In fact, they're probably not. But that is okay.

The key to winning with divergent thinking isn't to hope it's going to be successful, it's to say: 'Okay, this is likely to flop, but what if we tried it this way?' and be okay with the outcome, whatever it is.

For me, divergent thinking is about creation, curiosity and enjoyment. I enjoy the act of finding out if something works. The outcome is less important. Which is probably why I love writing, but am a bit blasé about actually selling books. They tend to go to whichever editor asks me for something.

And you know what those editors say when they read whatever handed them? 'Different' and 'not what I was expecting'. Which most of us are conditioned to think of as insults. They also say 'exciting' and 'loved it' and 'original'.

Which is nice. I love positive feedback. However I'm usually off painting another ugly pot by then.

Branding and Career - Part One: What is Your Brand?

Welcome to my five part series on Branding and Career Planning. I will finish my characterisation series. That’s next on the blog line up.  This week though:

BRANDING AND CAREER - PART ONE: WHAT IS YOUR BRAND?

What sort of career do you want?

When you’re thinking about your brand and career, you need to know what an author brand actually is, and what sort of career you want. Let’s start with the career part, because I think this is obvious to some and confusing to others.

There are many types of writing career. There is writing novels, one a year, every year. There is writing for TV or plays. There is writing hundreds of short stories and chasing award accolades. There is non-fiction writing. The ever mysterious children’s books. Writing for graphic novels. Journalism. Magazine articles. You get the idea.

All of these have their own career trajectories and many require very different skills to be successful. In this series, I am going to focus on novels (and novellas) and a path that is reasonably suited to indie published and traditionally published authors, or hybrids, like myself. However you should sit down and think about what you want. If you have no idea, pick an author you want to be like, and map their career path to give you some ideas.

What is your brand?

Firstly, what is a brand? An author’s name is not a person, it’s a brand. A logo, of sorts. Apple, Stephen King, Sony, J.K Rowling. They identify the quality and type of product being offered. In the case of an author a brand is, generally speaking, a combination of your genre and strengths.

In Stephen King’s case, you know you are likely getting a certain type of character driven horror, a little slow, and a little wordy, but beautifully developed with a lot of relatable characters and powerful motivations. It will also be off-beat, original and strange.

In J.K Rowling’s case, you are getting easy-to-read prose, very English settings, themes about class and financial inequality and identifiable, easy to connect with characters. Of course, most people hear JK Rowling and just think HARRY POTTER, however now she has done some other works, it’s easier to identify which elements have been maintained.

So when you are identifying your own brand, you need to look at your genres, themes and writing strengths. Specifically, what people enjoy about your work. I have diversity in my characters and themes that address disability, sexuality and identity. I am also well-known for my grimdark style. People who like my writing, like those elements. That is the Talitha Kalago brand.

Make a list of what you think your strengths are, and be sure to ask people who have read your work. Write a few paragraphs about your brand and what you want it to be, it will help with later exercises in this blog series.

My romance brand has different strengths and themes, which is why it is under a different pen name. There is not necessarily a lot of cross-over between the fan base. Which brings me to the last point: you may need more than one brand.

Some people will insist you need different brands for different genres. Some people lump everything together and do just fine.  I believe each brand doubles the work load, but gets you four times as many readers and your decision should be based on your time and your drive for success.

Why Have More Than One Brand?

Because it makes it easier for readers to find books they want to read. There is a scene in one of my horror novels where a monster cannibalises its own infants. It’s very graphic. There is also a scene in one of my romance novels where three band members have sex with a fan. It’s also very graphic. I suspect there are very few people who would enjoy both of those scenes equally.

So if all my books were published under the same name (brand) people who brought both books would be disappointed with one or the other. Because they have very little in common. Even if people love the first three books by an author, if they hate the fourth, they probably won’t by the fifth.

If you want a career as an author, you should always be aiming to create repeat customers. This is more effective with different pen names for different genres. However, two pen names is double the work. Three is triple the work, and so on. More brands make things easier for readers; it does not make things easier for you.

So what if you want to put it under the same name? That’s fine. It just means your pool of readers will be much smaller. Because (in my case) they will comprise of people who enjoy both scenes of graphic infanticide cannibalism AND scenes of erotic, sensual four-ways. And, let’s face it, that’s really just me and a few people who are in prison.

NEXT WEEK: Knowing Your Target Audience.