Quantum Storytelling

Following up on my last post whether creative people hate marketing, Buzz, Balls, & Hype has a great session with the doctor this week, helping a woman who suffers from the very problem I described. She’s despised self-promotion her whole life, and felt it was a compromise to artistic integrity.

The most beautiful part is where the doc addresses her issue with this brilliant sentence;

“Your revulsion at others’ self-promotion may, as you suggest, be proportionate to the degree to which you have suppressed your own need for attention.”

This is a golden observation. I could not have said it better myself. Any time artists rage against crass commercialism, and boast the superiority of being obscure, I can’t help but see the lonely, isolated, nerdy, awkward teenager who isn’t popular, and doesn’t quite fit in the group. Worse, such individuals often feel bitter about their social standing, and lack of attention.

The obvious attitude for a person in that situation is to say things like, “Well, I didn’t want to be popular anyway!” or “Popularity is overrated!” or the age-old “That’s being a sell-out!”

Deep in our hearts, we all know this is a simple rationalization for lack of success. Deep in our hearts, we all know it’s an attempt to compensate, an attempt to justify obscurity and sometimes even mediocrity.

One of my favorite things that Heinlein said was, “Obscurity is the refuge of the incompetent.” Some might find that quote offensive. But look at it this way;

You may be a master of your craft, but if your work is not out there and nobody knows who you are, then how will anyone know that you are the master of your craft?

It has nothing to do with the work. The ‘incompetence’ Heinlein spoke of has more to do with how you handle yourself and your work than the quality of the work itself.

You can be a competent craftsperson but an incompetent PR person for your work, or an incompetent brand manager, or an incompetent business person.

If you are incompetent in these areas, nobody will know or care how great you are as an artist.

When you boil it down, the goal of artists and business people is the same; To share their work with as many people as possible.

Using that yardstick for measurement, obscurity *is* the refuge of the incompetent.

But not all is gloom and doom. Obscurity can be used as simple feedback towards positive results. If you’re not getting the attention you crave, try harder! Set up a book signing, or go talk to a reading club. Start a blog! Start doing things to promote yourself.

You don’t have to settle for obscurity. And you don’t have to feel dirty about self-promotion!