Self-Promotion [Creativity]

My least favorite part of being a writer and creator is self-promotion. It makes me uncomfortable. I’m one of those people who finds it hard to brag and sell myself. I have no problem in selling other people’s work, promoting them and their endeavors, but for myself, well, it’s awkward.

I feel that my writing should speak for itself. The problem is, my stories can’t speak for themselves unless they get noticed. The only way to get them noticed is to promote them, and myself, on social media platforms.

I don’t necessarily mind the online interactions, but it’s difficult to maintain the degree of attention this requires. For example, I found Twitter to be an excellent way to mingle with readers and other writers and I sold quite a few books. The problem I ran into was that I began to get a lot of followers, and the more followers I got the more difficult it became to keep up with them all.

It was becoming a full-time job just reacting to and responding to all these people. While I appreciate their interest and their kindness, I found it overwhelming to manage that account, plus Facebook and Instagram, while still finding time to actually write.

So I stepped away from it. And yes, my book sales plummeted. I was expecting that, but at the same time, I was relieved to have more time to spend on my creative endeavors.

What I face now is having to dive back into the social media pool. I’ve been working on new stories, compiling another short story collection, and that means I have to again promote it.

I’m thinking I should reach out to other writers and ask them how they do it. How do they manage active social media accounts while still having time to work, write, have a life. It seems like some sort of magical juggling act, finding the perfect balance and maintaining it.

But that’s in the future. For now, I have stories to edit and polish. First things first.

RB