Stop being 'demure and mindful' when sharing your creative work

Promoting without caveats

There is a place for this energy, but its not in promoting your creations. Credit: Jools Lebron

Hey there! Stop headlining your work with easy opt outs!

What am I talking about?

If you are like me, you might have a tendency when discussing your creative work with friends, colleagues and strangers to include weak opt out language without even realizing it:

“Maybe if you’re not busy on Saturday, you can…”

“Hopefully you’ll like this, but here is this thing I made…”

“I’m so nervous that its not any good, but if you want to see the thing that I’m writing…”

and the irritatingly innocuous— “…..if not, no worries!!!!!”

STOP THIS.

You may think you are being humble but you are shrinking yourself away.

As women-type-people especially, we’re taught to be gentle and sheepish, and not seek or command attention.

This is why we default to anemic language when sharing and promoting our work.

I did this too, until I did not—

A week ago I had a show, and it came up rather suddenly so there was not much time to promote it.

I was opening for a Norwegian indie-rock duo who had never performed in Atlanta before. Though their social following was sizable, this does not necessarily equate to real fans who show up to shows.

Meanwhile, the people I would expect to be at my shows are not exactly scrappy young kids. They are mostly people with busy lives and they do not do things “last minute.”

Yet, I had this thing that I was going to be asking them to do last minute—during the holiday season, mind you!

Whereas I had been very demure and very mindful when mentioning my creative output in the past, I’ve also played to some empty-ish rooms and it’s not ideal.

This time, I decided to utilize a more direct approach.