It’s one of the more humbling moments of writing. Sitting at a live event—yesterday it was the huge Los Angeles Times Festival of Books—and watching so many people walk by my spot in the booth, barely glancing at me after years of preparing the books I brought.
And the writers sitting next to me… we have some talented people in the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, but it can be startling to see some of them working the crowd like they actually belonged there.
Like Leslie Ann Moore, A great writer I’ve known for years, but to watch her leading people through her book (“It started with the idea, what if Snow White was a revolutionary…”) and connecting with them again and again… humbling. Or Deborah Pratt, just as at home there and someone I wish I’d had more time to get to know. Or Gerald Jones, boldly calling into the passing crowd, “You like poetry?”
–Yes, poetry, in a crowded festival. His confidence would be painful if it weren’t so… poetic.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”
One thing I’ve seen again and again in my fellow writers: most of us aren’t the loud, pitchman type.
Q: How does an introvert warn his friend that there’s an extrovert about to break into their conversation?
A: “Outgoing!”
Most of us are more of the Homo Secludus species. We feel the same thrills and chills that other readers do at a good story, but we’re most likely the ones who stop chatting at the proverbial water cooler and go off alone to distill our own form of that magic. Spending hours and years locked away with just a keyboard sounds like a good deal for us.
And then the last lap of that journey is to come back and tell the fans we came from why we left them, and why they should pay our bills while we leave again. Irony of ironies.
For me and for most rising writers I’ve met, it’s the stage of the business we try longest not to think about. And that’s if we do treat it as a business; the traditional publishing model promises we aren’t, that we only have the same momentary brush with self-promotion that any other industry’s employee has to face. We get through one successful interview (bonus: in writing it’s all query letters and manuscripts, no being judged on your smile), and then just do the work while the company handles all that nasty marketing to make us famous.
If only. That’s ancient history even on the traditional route, and of course in indie publishing our taking over the market role is the price of admission.
So…
So where does that leave the silent majority of us writers who aren’t Leslie Ann?
Most of it might be in the same mantra that already put the book on the table: do the work. We keep pushing, building those muscles, and looking around for what methods can refine what we’re doing.
–And, also like the writing, half of it is tapping deeper into the sheer Awesome of what we create. If we can hold onto the thrill or warmth or detail of a story long enough to reach the last page, can’t we have a properly juicy answer ready for “So what’s it about?”
And also like in writing, most of marketing’s work habits are our own to create. We’ve got blogs we can lay out, and other writers and bloggers we can find who share a connection with us. There are ads, and contests, and promotions in a dozen forms that we can analyze and perfect for our story… and for our own strengths.
(Hmm, you don’t suppose the people in that booth were there because they were the ones who liked working the crowd…)
So, we’re writers. We look around, and steal—research!—from the best, and dig deep into what we want and what we know. And then we dig deeper.
At the end of the day I found myself sitting next to Leslie, singing a few lines from Julia Ecklar’s merry little tune:
Ladies and gents at the front of the tents
You will note there is naught up my sleeve…
I’m not a “One-Man Magical Show” yet, but I think The High Road has a song or two worth writing.
It might even be the perfect pitch.