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
Promotional Principles for Creative People
docs.google.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
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 wh... See more
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
self-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!) dir
... See moreNobody can read your mind. Share your ideas. Tell people what you’re working on. Communicate your vision, even if it’s only half baked. Stir the pot.
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 moreWriter David Foster Wallace said that he thought good nonfiction was a chance to “watch somebody reasonably bright but also reasonably average pay far closer attention and think at far more length about all sorts of different stuff than most of us have a chance to in our daily lives.” Amateurs fit the same bill: They’re just regular people who get ... See more
Think of everything as work in progress and share it without the pressure of trying to make it perfect
Many of us spend our lives pursuing private acceptance through external success. But no matter the award or honor, our inner doubts will remain. True acceptance comes from inside us. It takes asking ourselves challenging questions like: What do I want from my work? What’s most important about it to me ? How would I create my work differently if I p... See more
Yancey Strickler • What if You Gave Yourself the Gift of Inner Acceptance?
i liked how Yancey mitigated his desires with publishing and creating for himself