Ive spent the last couple of days wondering what to write here, ever since Ruud Hein asked me for a guest post. Then I thought, hey, he contacted me after he saw my comment on Mandys post, so that should be a good starting point, right?
Im not a great fiction writer (and sometimes I wonder if Im even a good one.) But I keep writing and putting up my work on my blog. Ive just completed one novel there, and am putting up some short pieces while I muster up the courage to start another.
I thought my marketing work and writing fiction were mutually exclusive: I love both (though the first has got way more love from me lately), but I thought of fiction as a creative outlet and marketing as more hard work. Lately, Ive realized they are similar, and the lessons I learn in one apply to the other.
Heres what creative writing has helped me do better in marketing.
Great post Unmana 🙂
I always have a tough time with revisions. Editing my own work after awhile can be so difficult – I feel like I’ve read over the same sentence 100 times!
You know that when you spend the morning agonizing about changing a semicolon to a comma, and the afternoon agonizing about putting it back to a semicolon: then you’re done.
Amanda: Yeah, I used to do that too. I had to stop because I just didn’t have the time (as I wrote in my post on prioritizing, linked below.)
I am like no other with Mandy, I always run out of time during revisions stage. The hard thing in blogging is that we all have to do all the stuff from research, content creation, up to proofreading, editing..ALL! But I’d fun doing it.
Anyway, I’d like to thank you for sharing these tips here, very helpful really. I work within the Internet marketing scheme that’s why I don’t have any worst problem with my marketing skills.
Thanks, Kira. I agree, there’s never enough time to make it perfect. That’s really my lesson #8.
Thank you, Mandy! And I agree totally. That’s why I usually have someone read it over for me when I think I’ve read it enough times: a friend if it’s fiction or my boss if it’s work. And then I give it a day and read it again. Sleeping on it usually works. Dang, that should have been #9.
If it is of any help to anyone, I once compiled a huge (yes, that’s the right word) compendium of writer quotes on the craft, which I then made available for the those interest to read and/or download as a pdf file. You can get there from here: http://anandawolf.com/essays/on-craft/the-elements-of-fiction.
Fun to see the similarities.