The Madonna vs. the (Label) Whore, or: I'll Self-Promote You Under the Table

We're going to start today with a little exercise.  Close your eyes and picture a writer.  Are you doing it?  Are they closed?  Ok, now tell me: what do you see? 

Do you see a desk?  A composition notebook and several broken pencils? A harried, possibly unwashed, certainly sleep deprived, spiky-haired young lass with bad posture and a wild look in her eye, scrawling frantically on various pieces of scrap paper?

In other words, when you picture a writer, do you think of a person engaged in the act of writing?

Oh, you naive soul! You sweet, innocent dreamer!

I used to be like you.  In fact, I was lost in an even more romantic ideal.  When I pictured a writer, I pictured Jane Austen.

Actually, I pictured myself as Jane Austen,  truth be told.

Think of it: A delicate mahogany writing desk beside an open window.  A beautiful day--sunny, breezy, a touch of sea salt in the air.  There's a woman at the desk.  She's dressed, not in silky finery, but in a lovely, simple morning gown.  She's bent over a thick piece of parchment, and she's writing with a fountain pen in even, careful strokes.  She is focused, but calm, and every once in awhile she pauses to dip her pen in her ink pot and steal a glance at the view outside.  Maybe, she thinks, she'll take a turn on the grounds later.  There's a prettyish kind of little wilderness on one side of the lawn that she will, perhaps, explore.  But for now, she continues to write.  She fills volumes in her delicate script.

Eventually, based on the strength of her writing alone, she will be published.  Her fame will spread and her stories will be loved by hundreds--maybe thousands, possibly MILLIONS--of readers.  She will look around in stunned amazement wondering, "Moi?  Really?  You love me?  Humble, quiet, writerly ME? Goodness, how unexpected!"

Sigh.  It's a pretty picture, no?

Turns out, that's not exactly how it works.  At least, not anymore, if ever it did.

Now when you picture a writer, you ought, if you are a realist, to picture a harried, spiky-haired young(ish) lass with bad posture and a wild look in her eye, trolling frantically through websites. She's reading other people's blogs and commenting on them, reading op-ed articles and commenting on them, reading celebrity gossip blurbs and commenting on them, reading anything and everything that she can find that concludes with a "leave a comment below," and commenting on it.

She has been charming, controversial, and fawning, depending on her audience.
She is sure, with every comment, to include the link to her own blog (http://www.looseleafwriting.blogspot.com/ --oh crap, now I can't stop!).

She has signed up for a twitter account, despite the fact that she still has no idea what twitter is or how to tweet.  Or twit.

She's developing a twitch on her left eye.

Yes, I'm a whore.  A whore for readership.  I'm stuck in self-promotion hell, and there's no escape.

Unless...

It occurs to me that self-promoting is like any other creative endeavor:  There's a whole lotta crap out there, but in the right hands, it's a fine art.  Just look at Lady Gaga.

As much as it pains me to spend my time promoting my writing rather than doing writing, there's an argument to be made for it. 

For one thing, as a reader, I want to learn about new and good writers.  So when the promoter in question has the goods to back it up, I actually appreciate it.  The trick is, of course, to have the goods to back it up.  But if I don't think my writing is any good, then why am I doing it in the first place?

For another thing, as the writer who is doing the self promoting, I'm getting to read and to communicate with a lot of great writers.  It's not as though I'm commenting on blogs that aren't any good, or saying things I don't mean just for the sake of exposure.  On the contrary, because I know the comments I'm making are published  with my face and name, it forces me to say exactly what I mean, which often forces me to figure out exactly what I mean.  And that's good practice, to say the least.

It's also good practice in the sense that, if half the point of writing comments on other blogs and on news articles is to get people to read the rest of my writing, I have to figure out how to say something intriguing.  And short.  And that's also good practice.

So far, I'm still not completely comfortable with the whole thing, but it's part of the job.  Fortunately, the blogs I'm reading and the people I'm starting to get to know are amazing.  They're all listed on the left hand side of my blog, so go ahead and read them.  And when you come across my comments, imagine me at my pretty mahogany desk, wearing my morning gown, calm, focused, and writing.