I’ve begun to call marketing “reaching out to my natural audience.“ Sounds more palatable, doesn’t it!

The writing itself precedes book marketing

Today, I got up early and worked on my novel manuscript. The book is either a short novel or a long novella at about 43,000 words (so far). I did developmental editing from about 6 to about 7:20. The writing went well, and I was pleased with the edited text.

I really loved the tweaking that I did to this story I call A Focus of Affection. As I have been thinking about its theme—theme being the “soul” of a story, I realized that I wanted to make the protagonist more unsure of his direction for the first part of the book. What has been materializing on the page in the last three or four days of rewriting is a character who is more complex than he was in the previous version. This character has more doubt than before and is perhaps, at the same time, increasingly more honest with himself. We’ll see how this comes across to the reader—the final test.

The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without a doubt, but in spite of doubt. To believe fully and at the same moment to have doubts is not at all a contradiction: it presupposes a greater respect for truth, an awareness that truth always goes beyond anything that can be said or done at any given moment.

Rollo May / The Courage To Create

Mens sana in corpore sano

This next section is the corpore sano part.

At 7:20, I stopped working on A Focus of Affection in order to get myself to the gym as I do regularly. It’s another commitment I cherish. I had promised myself that, when I got back, having already written on my novel for almost an hour and a half—having had my “desert,” I would focus on reaching my natural audience—marketing—and that is exactly what I did.

Focusing on audience is book marketing.

What to do? I used the proven technique of asking “what one activity could I do right now that would most support me as a writer?”

The answer was fairly clear: I needed to identify more groups of potential readers and reach out to them. I wrote a query letter template for speaking venues, focusing on my most recent book, Here to Stay / Life in 17th-Century Canada, and looked up a few organizations (on the web) whose audiences, I thought, would be most appropriate for me. Then I began to send it out.

I felt this was almost too easy—but that’s fine with me!—when the executive director of one group wrote back within short time to say their programming director would be in contact with me soon. (Why can’t it always be this easy!) Yes, every book has a natural audience, and it is our task to connect with that audience through its organizations.

Yesterday, my one thing was to send out some requests for blurbs for another new novel (In Just One Summer) which is now ready for publication. It will be coming out perhaps sometime in late winter. I had selected a few published writers I thought might help me to support my book’s sales and I duly sent out requests. Today, almost by return e-mail, I got one of the writers asking me to send him a review e-copy. Perhaps I have a blurb in the making! I was quite set up as I was ready to believe that the return e-mail was a negative response. (Will I ever change?! I’m sure you never felt this way!)

This afternoon, I am indoors here in Maine. The temperature is in the low 90s F, and there is an oppressive humidity. All in all, this is a day to spend in an air-conditioned environment, and I am finishing this blog post, That, too, is a “one thing” that I can do to advance my writing as you, too, dear reader, are part of my natural audience.

What I’m reading to support my writing life

As you might have guessed from the quote earlier, I am reading Rollo May’s book on creativity, The Courage to Create. Published over 50 years ago, it has much to teach us. In it, he writes about the imperative for the artist to continue creating, no matter how hard it might be. I find myself agreeing as, when I write regularly, I am at my happiest—even as I might wonder if anybody will ever read these books of mine I am writing. I shouldn’t say that as I have written books that have sold thousands of copies, but it seems that, every time I sit down to write, I am once again assailed with the doubt of whether this latest one will ever reach its audience. This is not totally unfounded as I do have books that really did not do well. Essentially, you’d have to say they flopped.

Every book launch is akin to a bungee dive! You never know how it will end.

In conclusion

So, this is my writer’s life. I sense that my writing and my writing career continue to move along, even if slowly.

I am unwilling to be merely a writer who accumulates titles and does not market his writing, does not reach his audience. I want to be a writer who has marketed his writing sufficiently so each of his books reaches its natural audience. Since I am now living off retirement income, the revenue I can derive from the book sale is not important in itself, but it is an indication of the trust people place in me and into my writing.

Book sales are not going to support me but they are proof I am reaching my natural audience.

Tonight, I hope to pick up my novel again and tweak it—perhaps for an hour. We’ll see if I have the energy.

So, I did today what writers do: I wrote and reached out to my natural audience. (Writing “reached out to my natural audience” feels so much better than writing “book marketing.”

How about you? What is your writing life like? And how is your book marketing—oops, how are you reaching out to your natural audience?