Selling Myself

I love writing and performing. What I don't love so much is marketing myself. It makes me uncomfortable. When I reach out to create performance or book signing opportunities, I have to really sit hard on the part of me that is embarrassed by the self-promotion process and desperately afraid of rejection.

I think all writers and performers have fragile egos. We put ourselves out there front and center as a matter of course. But marketing yourself means being rejected. Available venues are limited and there is a lot of competition. I know that I do good work. I know that audiences enjoy my performances. I know that people say good things about my writing. Knowing all that, however, does not salve the sting of rejection. When it happens, every time it happens, an ugly cloud of self-doubt nearly smothers me.

If there is any one thing that makes me question what I do, it is this journey into self-promotion. I am afraid that people will become annoyed with my attempts to let them know what I am doing. This is when a blog really helps. It allows me to connect in a gentler way than I can when I am cold calling and hard selling myself.

When I invite you to share your thoughts with me on my comment page, it is because I really want to know what you are thinking and how you are responding to what I do. Those comments are truly valuable to me because they remind me that there are people out there engaging with my work. Keep those comments coming. They make the self-promotion part of my job easier to bear.