The Writer as Salesperson
It’s the difference between getting a massage and going ice fishing.
As long as I’ve been able to think, I’ve thought of the enormous chasm between creating something and selling it. When I was very young and being toilet trained, I would step away from the toilet and admire my creation. Do I have to sell this, I asked myself. No, it’s enough that I created it. But then I would yield to the urge to share this with Mom. After all, she was part of my inner circle (let’s face it –she was my inner circle) and she was invested in this too.
Later, as I created things that were a tad more sophisticated, I still wobbled on the dichotomy of creating-selling. I had dreams of myself standing on a street corner hawking recent pages to strangers. I wrote friends about the evils of capitalism and the forces of the market that “made” me sell something in order to have worth. It was painful. And part of that pain was a resistance I had not fully faced. I was whining about something that had to happen in some way if I was to reach any kind of audience.
I learned about reframing. What I had to do was look at what I was doing through different lens, see it for something different, call it something new. Lately I have looked at it as sharing. I like to share what I do. I get excited about sending folks a new essay or a new piece of artwork. Sharing is a lot easier and more fun than selling.
I also like for my creation to have impact. The worst response is no response at all. I am not one who writes or creates images, steeped in the pure pleasure of creation, and then stores them in a drawer. (So now, apparently, I have to reframe that.)
But the idea of sharing things works. I am still left with a dilemma. My inner circle is small, relative to say, 250,000 people that might see something on the Internet. How can I expand that circle so I can have some reasonable effect and so I can justify keeping this creative-response circle going?
Isn’t that why we do things with other people? Isn’t that why there are companies instead of just individuals as businesses? Don’t we enlist people to do things we could not, or can’t do well, alone? That’s why I have a publisher. That’s why I teamed up with an editor, proofreader, book manager and a book marketing manager. They’re doing things I can’t do alone and things I don’t do well.
So, I’m sharing this with you. You can share it too, if you choose. You don’t have to sell it.
John
