Er, um, Do You Want to Buy Something? Maybe?

It is said that most people would rather go to the dentist than speak in public. A close second on that is the prospect of selling something. Asking someone to buy a product or service and being told no. That is too much for some people, even in the most controlled of situations.

This confuses me when we are speaking of writers. Being a writer, especially of fiction and even more so of poetry, is a courageous thing to do. You are opening your heart, baring your innermost feelings and perceptions, and then asking someone else to read it, invest their time in it, and to pass judgment on it. (You might not be asking them to pass judgment on it, but they will. Trust me.)

The best writer in my critique group is the worst salesperson. Why is this?

A recent piece in the entitled Can Entrepreneurs be Made?, in Harvard Business Review has some answers to this riddle. The title says entrepreneurs, but whenever you read that word in the article, change it to writers who sell themselves.

There are many parallels. The writer, Anthony K. Tjan, co-authored a book entitled Heart, Smarts, Guts and Luck. These are the traits they cite as important to successful entrepreneurs.

Luck. Tjan has an interesting approach here. He points out that “you can cultivate Luck by being open and humble, by having the right attitude and approach toward relationships and by building Lucky Networks.” That is another way of saying luck favors the prepared mind.

Smarts are something we as writers hone through education and experience, and lots of rewrites.

Heart is something all serious writers have. The heart to wake up at 4:00 every morning to write for a few hours before the rest of the family stirs and you have to go off to the day job. The heart to write and rewrite and then rewrite again. The heart to edit and hone and question every word until your prose is perfect.

Which leaves guts. We already know that as writers we have guts, but when it comes to promoting ourselves, it takes a different kind of guts. As Tjan puts it, “guts are about having the courage to initiate, endure and evolve around an idea.” That’s something we do all the time with our writing. Now we just have to do it when it comes to selling our writing.

Read the article. It’s worth your time, and whenever it says entrepreneur, change it to writer.

See ya’ later.

WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.