The 'Love writing, hate marketing' problem

C.R.J. Smith
Jun 5, 2016
2 min read

Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word, but i'm certainly not comfortable with the blog thing. Actually, it's not even that i'm not comfortable with it, it's just... kind of... I don't know. See this is what happens; I never know what to write about. When i started putting my writing out there (self publishing my novel, submitting my work to publishers, setting up various social media accounts) I thought it would be easier. I thought the books, short stories, and poems would be the hard part. Fun, but hard work. When they were done, i'd send them out into the world and with a few tweets, posts, and a very small marketing budget, i'd sell a few and word of mouth would take care of the rest. Needless to say, it didn't quite work out like that. I've had a bit of success, a short story called Púca was published by Muzzleland Press in 'High Strange Horror', a very proud moment for me. But everything else has stalled, and i know the problem: ME. I have no marketing nous. I can never get into the mindset to put myself out there in any sustained way. The blog i should have been writing a year ago never materialised. Sure, i'd think about it all the time. Actually started it a few times. Then deleted the few words i'd wrung from my brain and said, "I'll start it next week." Same with Twitter, Facebook, and all the writing websites i joined. Started out enthusiastic but let it slide and never really engaged with anyone, in part because I found it overwhelming, just the sheer amount of people jockeying for attention, and the fact that everybody else seemed to be so much better at it than me. There were cliques and friendships that i had no part of and didn't have the confidence to try and get into in any serious way. It was my real life writ large on my computer screen. But i'm done with feeling like that. I love writing and I think my stuff is good. I'm doing it and myself a disservice by hiding in my shell. So this is my first proper blog post. I'm going to write one at least once a week about whatever i feel like writing about. I hope it will have been worth the wait. Thank you for reading, and see you soon.