Writer in Residence Jaclyn Moriarty discusses self-promotion.

A long time ago, I did a Masters in Law at Yale.

On my first day, I made a new friend.  We went to get a coffee, and she said this to me:

‘I am very intelligent.’

She emphasised each word.  If I’d known the direction that punctuation would eventually take, I’d have realised that what she actually said was this:

‘I. Am. Very. Intelligent.’

‘Okay,’ I agreed.

Self-promotion means telling other people that you’re great.  Either in a general sense, as in  I am awesome!  I can’t even BELIEVE how ESPECIALLY awesome I am!  You’d better get over here and see this––okay, just stand there, perfect, and NOW take a look at this ME!, or more specifically: Listen, I make great songs (or pictures, poems, books, cherry strudels, etc) and therefore I urge you to purchase the complete set.

Usually, when you’re talking about how great you are, people leave the room.

Nobody wants to hear how great you are!  For one thing, it’s boring.  For another thing, we’re all especially awesome in our own way, or we would be if we had the time!  For another other thing, you are conceited, vain, arrogant, boastful, proud, narcissistic and swaggering when you tell me that you’re great!  You’re so self-absorbed you can’t see anybody else!  You think you are the cat’s pyjamas.  But you’re not!  The cat doesn’t even wear pyjamas!

And so on.

But I think it works.

I mean, I think that (unless you’re terrible at something – in which case, word gets around), people believe you when you say that you are great.  They assume you know what you’re talking about. Who has the time to investigate these days?  Who has the time to ask the hard questions? (I see that you believe that you are great, but are you sure?  Is it a sound belief?  Is it based on verifiable facts?  Are you the person best positioned to judge, one way or another, your own greatness?  In some ways, of course, you may be, for who can know you better than you?  In other ways, however, you are not, for how can you be objective about people close to you, and who is closer to you than you?  Nobody.  Do you follow me? etc, etc).

So, if you want to sell books, tell people that you are a great writer.  They might not like you very much––they might make fun of you behind your back–– and also, if you go on for too long about your greatness, they might begin to dislike you so much they won’t want to read your books.  But if you don’t mind the mockery, and you get the balance right, you’re all set.

It worked with my friend at Yale.  She told me she was very intelligent.  I believed her.  It’s true that I liked her a tiny bit less for saying that, but I also developed an instant, healthy respect for her intellect.  From then on, every time we spoke, the respect would light up, casting its golden glow over her words.  Sometimes it might flicker (‘Hang on, what she just said made no sense,’) but, ‘Hush!’ it would resume, glowing strong again, ‘You must be missing something.  She’s very intelligent, remember?’  (Now, years later, I think that some of what she said was quite daft, to be honest, but there it was.)    

28 March 2014