Sometimes Winners Quit

I got an email from an John Anealio’s mailing list with the title “I Quit”. It was jarring since I’d been following his career for some time and I enjoy what he does. Upon reading the email I saw that he wasn’t quitting his creative pursuits. Instead, after a series of emails, I understood that he was going to quit chasing after notoriety. Between striving to get the word out about his creations and trying to follow the latest trends in his niche, it seems he was losing track of why he did this in the first place. His plan is to refocus his energies on creating and on communicating with his audience.

Now that I properly understand what he’s doing, I applaud it. As a creator, there’s a lot of temptation to get the word out about your stuff. There’s also a lot of temptation to try and make your work “fit” into the current trends. Whether you’re an indie or you’re part of an organization that’s supporting you and putting out your stuff for you, there’s more pressure than ever to be your own marketing and PR department. Depending on your goals, you have to do just that. There’s a danger though, and this person recognizes it. You can lose focus on why you do this in the first place.

I started writing, podcasting, and blogging because it was fun. I had no notion that I was going to make any money at it. In the years since, my mind has turned to making money. There’s not a thing in this world wrong with that. I put a lot of hours in and I believe that my art is worth something. The problem entered in when I started to think more about that and about self promotion and getting the word out than I did about the act of creation itself. Some of the fun that I experienced in the early days was gone. I began to think about what would sell and about what people could do for me to that end.

In the process of emailing John, I came to the following conclusion. I want to quit. I want to quit worrying so much about chasing numbers and trends. I want to quit burning up hours thinking about how to market myself. I want to quit being “that guy” on social media that talks more about me (he said, aware that he’s writing a blog post about himself) than I do about what other cool things are out there. I want to quit looking for every opportunity to promote my latest thing and start looking for more opportunities to create my next thing.

I’ll still be writing and spending time having fun. I’ll spend more time talking about what you awesome people are doing. I will still think about how to get the word out about my fiction, but it needs to take a backseat to creating the fiction itself. So, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to just that!