Throughout our lives, we all wear many hats. We are wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, employees and friends. Each of our roles in life brings out different aspects of our personality and we use different skills in each relationship.
Writers need to wear many hats too. Writing is a solitary profession, at least for most of us, but marketing requires us to put on a different hat and, in doing that, to alter our personalities accordingly. For example, when I write I need absolute silence and solitude. No phone, no radio or TV. It's just me and my computer. I think, I plan, I dream, I write - alone.
Then comes that glorious day. Your book has been accepted! Once the book is published, everything changes. Now, a writer needs to change hats. To go from recluse to social butterfly in the blink of an eye. I feel like a chameleon changing colors each time I don a different hat.
No more sitting alone and creating. It's time to socialize. To schedule book signings, advertise on a blog and on several Internet sites and tell everyone about the book. We need to become "shameless self-promotors" if we want to sell our books. Even when we're at the grocery store, waiting in line, we're promoting. I always carry business cards and I'm sure to have copies of my books in the trunk of my car at all times because you never know when someone you meet - old friend or new acquaintance - will want to buy your book.
How true, how true. Besides all the writing promoting hats, I have wife, mom, grandma, great-grandma, program chair and newsletter editor for PSWA, newsletter editor for CRSA, Sunday School techer, chief cook and bottle washer, laundry woman.
ReplyDeleteMarilyn,
DeleteI've often wondered how you do it all. You're amazing! If you have a secret, I'd love to hear it.
Marilyn wore me out just reading her comment. Writing isn't for sissies, and you've put an interesting face (or hat) on all the things we have to do. Great post!
ReplyDeleteMarja McGraw
Thanks, Marja. Now if I can just figure out how to coordinate it all, I'll be in business.
DeleteMarilyn's activities always tire me. I am in AWE of that lady!
ReplyDeleteAs for your question of what am I...introvert! I can do small (under 6) groups for a few hours, then feel the need to escape. It's physically and mentally exhausting. Now, off I go - back to writing! :)
Anne,
DeleteDo you find it difficult to "get into" writing when you've been away from it for awhile? I'm having that problem. I know that, once I immerse myself in my book, it will take over but I'm not there yet.
Hats! Yes, indeed, us old Texans favor hats of different varieties. Must confess I don't like that Resistol trend, tho.
ReplyDeleteDac,
DeleteYou'll notice that I made sure to include a "western" hat for you in my post. :)
Good insight on changing hats, Pat. I have a hat tree full of hats, which I choose among depending on my mood or my activity: hiking, running errands, going to a ball game... But the only hat I wear when I'm writing is my thinking cap, while I imagine switching hats as I get into my characters' points of view. What really changes, of course, is not the hat, but the head underneath.
ReplyDeleteGood point, John. The hats symbolize what's in the head underneath. Wouldn't it be wonderful if changing our mindset was as simple as putting on a different hat?
DeleteGreat post for the start of the new year, Patricia. I'm the silent type, like you, when writing -- or even when I'm home alone -- thinking, dreaming, looking out the window. Writing, in other words. It's all part of the process, as we all know. Thanks for this and happy thinking and writing in 2013.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Eileen. I wish you the same.
DeleteIn past years I acted in plays, which is more of an extrovert activity, but now that I've devoted myself to writing I'm retreated farther into my introvert shell. Extroverts generally don't make good writers because they're socializing so much and a writer needs solitude. But some people can function well in both worlds.
ReplyDeleteSally,
DeleteThat's why I called myself an introvert/extrovert. As writers, if we want to see our books in as many readers' hands as possible, we have to be a little bit of both.