The Admirable Art of Self-Promotion

For anyone who is hesitant about promoting her or his own work: take a look at this piece of encouragement in the New York Times.



I am one who is blessed with what my politician brother calls microphone fever. I like promoting my work. I respect others' efforts to promote theirs.



The only time I ever cringe in embarrassment is when my husband leaves my business card, with book credits and contact info, etc, at a restaurant table for the waiter to pick up with the credit card. That's my limit. Maybe it's the fact that he's doing it and not me. I'm not sure. (I keep giving him cards, because he puts a lot of them to good use when I'm not around.)



In any event, I think most of us have some shaky moment about advancing our own passionately-held cause. I believe that, on the whole, holding back from telling people about our work is a bad idea. It leads to resentment and poor sales, and who knows what else.



You might also have a look at the book refered to in the article: Brag: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It. One review says it defines bragging as an act of authenticity. Seems right to me.

Obsession Update; Obsessive Art

The project to paint huge blue morning glories on my car has taken tiny steps forward. The custom-cut stencil has arrived from England. I borrowed an electric sander from one of my brothers. And I've acquired a thrift-shop file cabinet to practice on. (Keep in mind: I'm a writer not a visual artist.)

The idea of painting my car this way has dogged me for years. There's a very good chance that it will look awful. But I must proceed. It's in my DNA. Or my karma. It was the same way with the idea of setting a novel in the city of Varanasi, India; it was clear years before I ever visited the city that I had to write such a book. That turned out to be Sister India, which grew out of notes I took after spending a winter there.

I am possessed in the same way now, not only with the morning glories, but with research on a biography of a strange and little-known painter who died in 1947. It's a good thing it's possible to be ferociously pulled by more than one project at a time; I'd be in trouble if I devoted all my time to car painting.

The feeling I--and so many of us, at one point or another--share is that of the guy in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He's obsessed with the shape of a mountain he has never seen. He even sculpts the form in mashed potatoes at the dinner table. He has to find that place.

That's one kind of obsessive art. The other is the kind that is meticulously repetitive: Campbell Soup cans, for example. No doubt, the two types of obsessiveness are related.

I do have a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And I don't want to romanticize that. It's no fun at all. But this passion for a project feels like an obsession of a different sort. It feels like love.

SIX LINKS, cool in extremely various ways, to more on art obsessiveness:


!Obsessive-Compulsive-Artistic Geniuses?

Why Do We Like to Watch Obsessive Art

On Being Eccentric

Inventive Art Created from the Mundane

Insect-Obsessed Artist

Obsessed with Painting vs. Finding a Balance


And A QUESTION: Do you ever get obsessed with a project, maybe one that you know is weird but MUST PURSUE anyway?