{"id":2058,"date":"2012-02-09T07:22:24","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T15:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orcutt.net\/weblog\/?p=2058"},"modified":"2025-03-02T19:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T19:46:09","slug":"writing-vs-self-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/writing-vs-self-promotion\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing vs. Self-Promotion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The big problem facing writers today is finding a balance between writing and self-promotion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m currently doing a free promotion of my Kindle mystery novel, A Real Piece of Work<\/a><\/em>, and I\u2019ve discovered that it\u2019s easy for tweeting, posting to Facebook, and blogging and the like to take over your life. Meanwhile, in my own case, I think if given a choice between writing and promotion, I\u2019d choose writing every time.<\/p>\n

To my thinking, the best way for a writer to get noticed is over time by producing high quality work, and if he is spending all of his time promoting (a realm that thrives on instant feedback), then he isn\u2019t spending the requisite time on his craft (a realm that thrives on quiet and reflection).<\/p>\n

If the writer doesn\u2019t want to focus on the writing, he needs to ask himself whether he really loves the process of writing or if he does it so he can be known as an author<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The greatest rewards truly are in the process of doing it.<\/p>\n

In her book The Writing Life<\/em>, Annie Dillard tells the story of a student writer who asks his writing mentor if he could be a writer, too. The mentor says, \u201cI don\u2019t know. Do you like sentences?\u201d Ultimately all of this writing stuff comes down to sentences. I happen to love them.<\/p>\n

I do this because I can\u2019t not<\/em> do it. I am compelled to write every day, and have been for over 20 years.<\/p>\n

Every writer needs to ask herself why she is doing this. If it\u2019s to sell a ton of books, that\u2019s great, and greater still if she is being honest with herself. If it\u2019s to become the best writer she possibly can, that\u2019s great, too, so long as she understands that she won\u2019t necessarily become a bestselling author. I think it is nearly impossible to achieve an equal balance between writing and promotion, so each writer needs to decide where she wants to focus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NOTE: This piece came out of a reply I made to a thought-provoking article by Rachel Abbott entitled, “Using Twitter: Are You a Writer, a Brand, or a Salesman?” You can read her original article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big problem facing writers today is finding a balance between writing and self-promotion. I\u2019m currently doing a free promotion of my Kindle mystery novel, A Real Piece of Work, and I\u2019ve discovered that it\u2019s easy for tweeting, posting to Facebook, and blogging and the like to take over your life. Meanwhile, in my own … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,21,8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-real-piece-of-work","category-craft","category-kindlestuff","category-publishingandthemarket","category-dakota-stevens-mysteries-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2058"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9223,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2058\/revisions\/9223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orcutt.net\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}