do what you love, but solve for distribution
time to get over yourself and engage in some cringey self-promotion
sari and
do what you love, but solve for distribution
When you believe the work before you is the single piece that will forever define you, it’s difficult to let it go. The urge for perfection is overwhelming. It’s too much. We are frozen, and sometimes end up convincing ourselves that discarding the entire work is the only way to move forward. The only art the world gets to enjoy is from creators... See more
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
As I prepare to transition from my “heads down building a product” era to “I’ve worked so hard to build this thing, get over yourself and engage in some cringey self-promotion” era I need to fully embrace Austin Kleon’s mantra: “it’s not enough to be good. In order to be found, you have to be findable.”
Along those lines, this quote stopped me in my
... See moreself-promotion is important:
In the months leading up to pub day, I sent approximately 8,613 emails out to friends, professional contacts, people I talked to once in a buffet line at a writing workshop 3 years ago, people who follow me on Twitter, and people who have never heard of me or my little book, offering them galleys and (in some cases!)
... See moreKafka would whiff on this, but the other two would excel if you told them this was a necessary part of achieving their artistic dreams. There is this idea that prolific, famous creative people are wilting flowers who are just accidentally dedicated to perfecting their craft and making work that is both authentic and widely popular. I think people... See more
Sasha Chapinsubstack.comBranding gets a bad rap, but it’s heart work, which writers already do by default. It’s asking yourself, “what is my work really about, what is its essence, what is its purpose, what does it evoke?” Branding is just taking the answers to those questions and making sure each decision you make about your work stays true to them.
Amanda B. Hinton • The Producer Behind Some of Substack’s Most Beloved Newsletters
My new X, is coming out in X(!) days and I am…shall we say? panicking just a smidgen. Perhaps because X has been in development for so long, I just kept pushing it to the edges of my mind, like “Oh, that’s ages away! I’ll get to marketing or promoting it or talking about it when it’s time.” Or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m not really great at
... See more