Being my own third wheel: The Bio

Welcome back to my weekly series about Life After the Contract where I talk about the things that happen after you have a contract that largely go untalked about. Last week I talked about how as soon as a contract exists you need a bazillion things previously not needed, causing a huge emergency time rush. One of the most agonizing things is the biography.

Under normal circumstances, I don’t mind talking about myself. In fact, I tend to think of myself as a key eyewitness in my life. Perhaps my deductions into the reasoning behind certain actions are somewhat amateurish leading to the occasional emotional outburst (hey, if I were a professional, I’d be able to channel that stuff properly), but otherwise, I’m something of an expert.

But once there is a needed to describe myself to other people as though it isn’t me doing the describing… let’s just say it got interesting. Oh, and did I mention that I basically needed it yesterday?

In a nutshell, the bio has to tell the world who you are, why anyone should care, and what you’ve done. And you have a very short space to do it in. Oh, and did I mention that there are literally millions of people who have written bios, and no one is ever going to pick up your book base off your bio? But everyone knows that some people might pick up your book based off your bio, it just depends on if it can stand out (which is different for every person, because, you know, some people like Papyrus font and some people would like to burn Papyrus from every word processor).

And it’s traditionally done in third person.

I talk about myself as though I am not myself? Which sort of makes me feel like I should wear a sign along the lines of “Pay no attention to the writer behind the curtain. She is in no way biased about this bio currently being read.”

In short it makes me crazy to talk about myself like that. Worse, if a writer had been at all prepared—and as people will no doubt recall, I was not—this should already have been written. Which means a writer with contract in hand has a sudden need to talk about themselves as if they were someone else bragging about themselves and might potentially be suffering from the solid sting of embarrassingly knowing they should have done something sooner. This knowledge that you should have written it already REALLY give the imposter syndrome some nice material to work with. And, because you’re rushing, it’s not your best work. Which means, you might be pushing that imposter alarm a few more times. *sigh*

In short folks, learn from my fail.

V for Variable Results: A to Z challenge

Insecure just talking about myself

It's that time again, so close the circle and join with the ninja captain, Alex and his cohosts, Sandra Hoover, Mark Koopmans, Doreen McGettigan, Megan Morgan, and Melodie Campbell as we take another journey through the lands of insecurity and writing:

 

One thing about self promotion: you talk about yourself a lot. Which sometimes is good, and sometimes, well, it gets uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t want people to go out and buy the book. It’s not that I don’t think the book is worth talking about or not worth getting attention. But if it’s not the book, then what is it?

Which sort of led me to a startling realization:

It’s me. I’m the one I don’t think is really worthy of being talked about. The whole insecurity around my self-promotion is that I feel like I shouldn’t be hogging all that cyber space and that I might really need to keep my mouth shut and listen to other people. What gives me the right to take up all that time and space with something “Oh look at me, I wrote a book and published it! Aren’t I a super special snowflake?”

Of course, it is hard to write. Publishing is a major milestone in any writer’s life, so why am I sort of hesitant to take up that lime light and pour it over myself? I’ve never had a hard time taking up all the space in any room I was in, but I’ve never asked people to pay for something either. I’ve never really worked retail or marketing. I’ve always been the person with the zingers or the funny story. I’ve never been the person who stands up front and says “This is awesome and you should all buy it. I can tell you that it’s awesome because I wrote, so I am completely unbiased.” Despite living my whole social media career as a wallflower I’ve been tweeting, facebooking, and generally sending spam into the world in the hopes that someone will see it and connect with my book.

This makes my tummy turn, this marketing, and it makes me doubt myself and my ability. So yup, that’s what I’m insecure about. How do you handle the unhappy feels that come with not just being in the spot light but gobbling up all of it (and hoping people buy your book)?