#IWSG Is Ambition the Last Refuge?

It's time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group blog posting. IWSG was created by the awesome ninja captain Alex J. Cavanaugh, and you can find a list of all the other members of the group here

His awesome co-hosts for the January 7 posting of the IWSG are:
Elizabeth Seckman, Lisa Buie-Collard, Chrys Fey, andMichelle Wallace!

  Be sure to visit the
Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website!!!

 

I must confess, Social Media overwhelmed me.

After joining several sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads, I started blogging to promote my published novels. I interviewed other authors and participated in a variety of blog hops. At some point, I lost traction as the social world moved too fast for me to keep up, especially if I wanted to write more novels. 

Writing, research, and editing are fun for me. Meeting other writers and marketing my books are also on my list of fun activities. If it was possible to do everything, I would. Admitting I couldn’t was the breakthrough that rendered instant relief. My stress level declined once I learned to strike a happy medium by staying within my abilities. 

At first, I withdrew almost completely from online activities. The withdrawal corresponded with the year-end holidays. I took time to determine what I enjoyed doing most in terms of lifetime goals. 

If ambition is the last refuge of failure, as quoted by Oscar Wilde (and Gil Grissom) then I feel justified in swapping ambition for happiness by living at my own comfortable pace. 

Of course, my pace varies. I currently have three more novels written and in various stages of development. These projects were not created as a result of ambition but from a need to write. This, to me, is the definition of happiness.

 

MARKETING THROUGH the SET-BACKS

 

It is the first Wednesday of the month and time for the Insecure Writers Support Group, a group of writers I've watched from afar for some months and finally joined last month. Insecurity doesn't always display itself surrounded by pink neon lights. It creeps up or jumps out of closets at the most inopportune time. Marketing brings it on for me.

Do you know what is harder than marketing a novel? Continuing to market a novel after you get a less-than-stellar book review or when someone points out a seemingly “fatal flaw” in your published story.

It doesn’t matter how expert I’ve become at rationalizing, I still wake up in the early morning hours trying to justify my work so I can confidently move forward again.



The difficulty of merging into
marketing mode again

It wouldn’t be so bad if I'd gained some traction with a time-tested marketing strategy. But doing the actual writing puts me so far into the brake-down lane that it is difficult to get back up to speed and merge into marketing mode again.

One area of social media that feels more like a game to me though is Pinterest. When I came across a suggestion (from Lori Sailiata on Google+  http://bit.ly/1i0kMr4 ) about using the picture boards to market my novels, a thought popped into my mind almost in the form of a dialogue bubble:

Soon I was having fun again, knowing the hours “wasted” gathering relevant photographs was actually strategic marketing time well-spent. Compiling the boards has also rekindled my interest in the characters and story plotlines, so my marketing is more focused on significant scenes. 

One of the new boards, for my novel DEADLY AS NATURE, is available for viewing on Pinterest: http://bit.ly/1fnJsYH 

How do you get past that “sinking feeling” after hitting a stumbling block in marketing?