Selling with Passion

If you feel uncomfortable selling, you lack faith in what you sell.

OMG, when I saw that line it stopped me in my tracks. I had to read it again. Then I had to read the rest of the blog post. The post was called Why You Should Embrace Icky Sales and Marketing and is from Men With Pens. The piece made sense, and I enjoyed it even though it centered on marketing "stuff," but nothing hit home with me more than that line. 

 Some writers are going to get mad at me right now, but some readers are going to think what I have to say is spot on. 

Look at that bold line above. I preach this in a nonfiction book for writers I wrote eons ago, The Shy Writer, and had long forgotten about the lesson. I tout that we overcome our shyness in front of people when we speak about something we feel passionate about. The strong emotion propels us past the reservation, and we become better communicators. 

If you feel uncomfortable promoting your writing, stop and ponder why. Chances are you aren't quite as confident about your writing as you need to be. Not that you write poorly. It's just that you haven't found that happy place where you feel you did a fine damn job after a long time of perfecting it. It needs more work. Passion is contagious and captivating. When you feel that way about your work after all its edits and amends, as if this were your firstborn and the prettiest baby in the world, willing to hold it up to everyone to see, then you're there. 

I'm not saying you'll see a gazillion copies or even that the work is Pulitzer material, but if the creator isn't excited about the writing, the reader never will be.