On giving yourself permission

A book marketing workshop this weekend and my DIY residency in Paris.

Salut, Friends!

I’m writing you from Paris. The first night I arrived I joined a friend who I’ve known for nearly twenty years for dinner. We met in 2006 because our toxic boyfriends were best friends at the time. We thankfully, eventually, ditched the toxic boyfriends and stayed friends, which has been a gift to my life.

My friend is a filmmaker, graphic designer, activist, and writer, and over a long, slow, carefully prepared dinner and a shared liter of natural wine our talk turned to writing after we caught up on our lives. My friend remarked that she feels that she’s a slow writer and that it takes her awhile to feel she has something to say, but when she homes in on an idea, she knows it has to come out. We both write about our lives and find we both still struggle with feeling that our specific stories are worthwhile to share. We both know that the more precisely we write about our own experiences, the more they resonate with our readers, but it still feels intimidating to write this way and to publish.

My friend and I both spent our adolescence and early adulthood in the punk scene. There, we learned the importance of claiming space and finding our voices, whether screamed into a microphone or photocopied onto the pages of a zine. In writing a personal zine for many years, I knew the deeper I plumbed the depths of my internal secrets and shame, the more my readers would respond. However, I find it difficult now to connect with that energy and necessary sense of self-importance that what I have to say matters and will have an impact. In fact, as I write to you now, I’m doubting whether I should be talking to you at all, especially given all the issues in the world right now that demand and benefit from our attention, energy, and action.

One of the purposes of my trip is explicitly to give myself time and focus to write. I’ve found it exceedingly difficult to do as I navigate unemployment and finding a new job. In Paris, I’m setting out to write for a few hours in the morning and early afternoon before going out to wander around the city and fill my cup with art, street life, ice cream, visits with friends, and steak frites. While I am deep in essay revisions for my feels-like-its-never-going-to-be-done book project, trying to untangle knotty paragraphs and ideas that seem clear in my head but convoluted on paper, I’m grateful for this time to reacquaint myself with the practice of giving my words space in my life.

In so many ways, this trip is about giving myself permission to write and also to simply be, to spend time in one of my favorite places as I reel from a year of unexpected loss and change and gear up for a new chapter. I had hoped to have a residency or fancy writing workshop this summer that would afford me an official kind of permission to focus on my writing, but none came through. So when I realized I could create my own residency thanks to airline points and generous friends who are letting me stay in their apartment while they’re away, I was reminded that no one needs to grant me the authority to write, I just have to take it for myself.

So much of not only writing, but sharing our work with the world, is believing that we are worthy enough to do so. In that spirit, I wanted to let you know that this Saturday and Sunday, August 9 and 10, from 11 am to 2 pm eastern (8 am to 11 am pacific or 5pm to 8pm central European time if you’re fancy ) I’ll be leading a workshop on zoom through the Center for Fiction on how to market your book and promote your writing in a way that feels authentic to you and true to your style.

In teaching various iterations of this workshop I believe ever more deeply that writers feel intimidated about promoting their work not because learning the skills and mechanics of it are difficult but because to do so, you have to overcome the real hurdle of believing your work matters and giving yourself permission to talk about yourself and your writing. Once you connect with your why, the rest, like writing a newsletter, planning events, or making a social media plan, are just techniques you can learn and refine. The “special sauce” of any book marketing campaign is you.

In this workshop we will cover the basics of creating a marketing strategy for your book or writing career, as well as fun and creative ways you can get your work out there. My goal for participants is that you emerge ready to tackle that “marketing” section of your book proposal with confidence, feel ready to support your book upon its release, and, if you’re earlier in the process, build a sustainable, supportive, literary community around your work. Beyond these practicalities, I think what makes this workshop really special is that we dig into who you are, what motivates you to write and share your work, and identify that many different communities that may connect with and champion your work. This kind of thinking and strategizing can serve as the basis, and motivation, for any number of marketing tactics, which you can decide are, or are not, for you. Once you give yourself permission to share your work, the tactics you can use to do so come more easily.

So, I hope you’ll join me this weekend! Take a break from the sun and the heat, log on with an icy beverage or two, and let’s get ready to share! The world needs your stories, your work, and your creativity. Let’s support getting it out there together!

And of course, if you can’t join the workshop, you can always buy Promote Your Book and the accompanying workbook for insight, exercises, and inspiration around book marketing.

There’s much more to say about rediscovering joy through art and friendship and how community and mutual aid is how we’ll get through these terrible times, but for now I just want to express my gratitude to you for reading and hope that you’re granting yourself permission to create, explore, and rest this summer.

xox,

eleanor

PS. A very fun book about permission, pleasure, feminist community, and Paris in August is I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol - if you’re looking for a vacation read that won’t insult your intelligence, consider it!

Currently reading: The Outrun by Amy Liptrot