a question i ask myself
wwld?
a few weeks ago, an author friend asked me how i remain so egotistical about my work (she did not phrase it like that!) when it’s so easy for doubts to creep in. i have a two-part answer.
part one: i’m sorry to tell you this, but the “secret” is you have to fake it til you make it. many years ago, before i was even trying to get published, i decided to simply behave as though i thought i was the shit. okay, it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but i decided to take myself seriously and it worked.
(this method works on a lot of aspects of one’s life, as long as those aspects are otherwise healthy. for example, when our boys were small and i was having a hard time liking my husband, but it had nothing to do with his behavior and everything to do with how tired i was, i decided that i was going to treat him like someone i cherished; like he was my favorite person. and what do you know! in the course of doing so, i remembered that he’s my favorite person! please do not try this on an unhealthy relationship.)
an important thing to note is that part of taking myself seriously, now that i am trying (and sometimes succeeding!) to get published, is only writing what i desperately want to read. i don’t believe in writing to the market! or, put another way, i am the market! i spent most of 2022 writing books that attempted to make me feel the way a particular favorite book made me feel. i wrote two novels that year, the second one got me an agent, and it’s going on sub soon. i wrote that book 100% for me (okay, and also for amanda, my intrepid first reader who read it a chapter at a time and has read every draft since).
my friend’s question, though, was less about liking oneself or one’s work and more specifically about promoting said work. (it was originally an instagram story, so i can’t refer back to it, but we had a great conversation in DMs.) i told her my secret, and now i am going to tell you.
when i have to talk about myself/my work, i ask myself a simple question: what would lyndsie do? my brilliant friend lyndsie (whose brilliant novella just came out from psychopomp!) constantly encourages me to brag more about myself. “you’ve been in asimov’s,” she reminds me. “twice. you had a reddit-style story go viral on reddit twitter. you’ve been nominated for the pushcart prize and the rhysling. brag!”
so my method is: write the bio (or whatever it is) the way i would, and then go back and add at least one thing lyndsie would say about me. it’s sort of a reverse coco chanel. anti-nazi and pro-accessory.
when i recently redid the list of publications on my website, i added reviews and award nominations to every entry. why? it’s what lyndsie would do.
so, my advice is to figure out who or what your lyndsie is.
(don’t have one? now it’s me! wwad? i’d tell you to add an accessory before you go out.)