8 Secret Reasons You Hate Marketing Your Writing (Part 3)

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book, founder of Pitch University.

I have a goodie for you today.

You’ll either think I’ve been loitering around in the primordial soup of your soul, or smoking crack.

That’s because this one’s more personal, more hidden, more determined by personality type than career.

But I assure you that some of the best writers in the world will be raising their hands and saying, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what held me back for years.  You wouldn’t believe it now, but this used to be me.”

Read on.

Secret #5 -  My Writing Isn’t Even That Good

YOU: I’m fine, just fine. Until I start to do marketing. Until I start thinking about telling strangers they should buy my writing, my services, my book. Going out and getting business.

Then I realize something horrible.

I’m just someone who tries to write. An unknown person in a huge ocean filled with fish who get interviewed on Oprah.

I’m (sob) not that good.

• Not to put my writing out there.
• Not to bid on that huge contract.
• Not to say, “Look at me! I’m awesome sauce and a bag of chips and a valued resource.”

Ack.

ME: At this point, you’re full-tilt into a crisis of confidence. This is all about insecurity. Because really, how do we know we’re any good? Where’s the proof?  You know, unless someone else tells us.

Oh, yeah, and we believe them.

How many people does it take to tell us we’re wonderful, how many to buy our writing, before we allow ourselves to believe it?

Because if we’re smart at all, we know that the opposite of insecurity is insisting we’re the next American Idol (!), without realizing we can’t carry a tune.

Oh, noes, we’re the butt of the joke and don’t even know it.

Got to say, if you’re thinking runs along these lines, chances are you really do care about quality and strive for perfection in your work.

Perfection, beauty, elegance.

These are why I think of writing as a competition against your best self. And the cool thing is that your best self can keep improving.

And that, my friends, is also the problem. What if what you *think* is your best self, isn’t really that good.

“Stop!” your Internal Perfectionist says. “Step away from the marketing platform. You’re not that good.”

Your Internal Angst-ist adds, “Plus you’ll never be that good, and you know it.”

All of that — the insecurity, the crumbling sink-hole of worth – is triggered by the thing called Marketing Your Writing.

And this is why you hate it.

You hate your writing. You even hate yourself. And you’re certainly in no position with that much insecurity to market your skills.

MYTH: A crisis of confidence should stop you from moving forward.

TRUTH: Right now, there’s something you do well in your writing career. Something even YOU will agree you kinda rock out.

• Some writers are really, really good at writing posts for their blog.
• Some are good at talking with clients and really getting to what it is that’s missing on their websites.
• Some are good at re-writing client articles so they do a better job of building a personal relationship with the reader.

Market this.

Seriously, what if you marketed only what you could believe in right now.

And then, find some mentors. Because you’ve got to work on your confidence and get an accurate assessment of your skills. You can always improve. You can become more confident.

But it’s probably not marketing you really hate.

Just saying.

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