I was working quietly today - not! - when an email popped up with a link to an article. Most days I don't have time to read all the links that come my way, but this one caught my eye.
Christina Katz had written a piece titled "Elements of a Successful Fiction Platform", and since I'm sort of in that particular market, I decided to take a peek. Actually, I printed off several pages of great info to read in detail later, but it was what I saw right at the start that completely turned my day around.
Christina began with "To really make your name, you need to put it out there". Some of you might say, "Well, duh!", but those 12 words sparked a long-held-dormant realisation.
For months, I've been struggling to navigate the murky waters between doing what I love and doing what I have to do to stay afloat. And the wrong side has been winning, at least from a self-esteem perspective. What I took from Christina's words is that even before I put my name out there, I have to know what I want that name to say.
Right now, my name paints a picture of someone wearing too many hats and covering too diverse a territory. Not being committed to one hat or one genre is mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting because I am spread so thin that I can't be truly effective at any. And then constantly chastising myself for not "making time for what I love" serves no one, other than the "what I have to do to stay afloat" pundits, who benefit from my inability to act.
In other words, if I want to be a speaker and a writer, I have to tell myself that is who I am and then put my name out there for all to see. And if I'm going to tell myself who I am, I have do a better job at navigating those murky waters and finding my way to what I love. Hence, it's time to discard those things that weigh me down and only serve to make me feel bad about myself.
And when I do that? Well, I will either talk about it or write about it, or both - but that will be my choice because it will be what I love to do!
