THE QUIET COURAGE OF SAYING : I MADE THIS, or thoughts from a shy writer learning to speak up

I devoted yesterday to doing promo. I hadn’t decided to do this, it happened organically, because I wanted to make a little video of myself talking to a group of young women in California who are reading my romantic comedy, Just Like A Movie, for their book club.

Knowing that they’re reading my book out of the gazillions of romantic comedies on the market -not to mention all the big names (hello, Emily Henry! Hi there, Marian Keyes!) writing great stories - made me really happy. Admittedly, I know the mother of one of the girls. She’s an old friend and editor who, decades ago, was the first person to ever truly believe in my writing (apart from my mama, obviously!). But nevertheless, having this group of young women read my romcom is still a big deal to little old invisible me.

I also completely surprised myself by recording a coherent video in one take, where I told them how excited I am that they’re reading it, introduced the book, and then read a page and a half of Chapter One!

Afterwards, I figured that since the light was pretty good under the sunblind in the patio, maybe I’d do some promo. I went through Illicit Croissants at Dawn, my poetry book, and chose a poem to read. This took a few more takes. Reading aloud is hard, don’t you think? I so admire authors who can narrate their entire books in a vivacious manner! Marian Keyes is brilliant at it, but I’ve bought other books on Audible, expecting the voice to be as bubbly as the writing, and had to stop listening because, well, bleh.

Also, I always think I sound about six. But I believe few of us enjoy hearing ourselves, right?

But it’s all very well recording yourself reading a poem, or a chapter of your book. Then you’ve got to find cool, snappy words to explain what your book is about and make it sound amazing for, say, a post on Threads or Instagram. And that’s really hard! Because that’s what marketing specialists do in big publishing houses, isn’t it? Not the person who wrote the book. As an indie writer, I guess it might help if you’ve got a background in advertising or copywriting or whatever job is involved in writing these things. And although I know it’s controversial - and by the end of this sentence there might be people clutching at their beaded necklaces and gasping - ChatGPT is really good at this. As in, amazingly good. Sure, it gets it wrong a lot of the time, suggesting things so way off that it can be quite entertaining. But once it’s close, all you need to do is take what it gives you and adapt it to whatever it is you want. You fiddle, change words until you’re happy. AI is a tool. It’s here. It’s not going anywhere, so we may as well use it to our advantage.

I don’t use AI to write my poems (which hopefully should be obvious, as they’re all “mega me”). I’ll sometimes ask ChatGPT for a spell check on a long piece, or if I’m writing something and a word I want to use only comes to me in French, I’ll ask it for the word in English. I’ll ask it to translate an email to my Spanish gastroenterologist. I often ask it for information on how to bake a cake I make all the time (a Santiago cake) and have forgotten whether the oven temperature should be 160 or 170 (it’s 170 if it’s a fan oven, in case you’re wondering, because I asked the question yesterday). I ask it for directions, or for information about a city. I ask it about what might grow in a shady, dry spot in my garden. I’ve used it to translate some of my longer non-rhyming poems into French, and some turned out quite well—once I went in afterwards and had a fiddle! My French-speaking friends were happy to also be able to enjoy How to Tame Your Tulips. I asked it to translate this poem into Spanish too, but I’m not fluent enough to go in and edit afterwards, and I didn’t want to look like a total twit.

Anyway, this brings me to what I intended to write about: promo. Or bragging, as it feels like to me. OMG, bragging. I hate bragging. I hate hyping myself (hello, Lucy Werner!). I’m shy. I’ve always lacked confidence, so reading a poem and sharing it feels like a big LOOK AT ME! LOOK HOW CLEVER I AM! Far more so than just hitting publish, which is weird really, don’t you think? Because it’s the same. I’ve never considered myself particularly clever. I’ve never worked in a corporate environment, at least not in any sort of decision-making role. I have to psych myself up to say boo to a sparrow, let alone a goose. As I mentioned above, I don’t have too much of a problem hitting publish once I’m happy with a poem, or whatever it is I’ve written. But I can start hyperventilating in the middle of the night because I’m scared something I wrote as a comment to someone else might be misinterpreted and I sounded like a brat (hello, Patricia Cusack!). I’m insecure like that.

I’m currently working on an interview. It’s nearly done, but my goodness it took me ages to sit up straight, pull my shoulder blades back and stick my boobs out. Writing about myself in an elevated way doesn’t come naturally. And while I don’t think my husband would have a problem writing about himself and his achievements (he was highly successful in the corporate world), I also think it’s more of a personality thing than a woman-or-man thing, because my son would probably feel queasy about showing his six-pack (and he actually has one because, apart from being an amazing filmmaker, he’s a phenomenal snowboarder and skateboarder too), whereas my daughter has been promoting her brand for so long that showcasing her talents has become second nature. She will, however, occasionally have a little-tiny-turtle-retreating-into-its-shell moment when she’s feeling particularly attacked and vulnerable. People can be so mean and ridiculous (like the “lady” in the poem I read yesterday!).

Come to think of it, even posting good reviews of my books kind of gives me the ick. But I do it anyway.

How do you feel about putting yourself forward, showcasing your talents? Does promo give you the heebie-jeebies? And what are your thoughts on using AI to help with wording promotional material or anything else? Has it been useful to you? Or are you a die-hard never-in-a-million-years, Sauvage? (That’s a line from the film Johnny English, by the way, which is a classic in our family)

I look forward to hearing your thoughts. And I’m going to leave you with the reading of my poem, She Means Well, in case Notes hasn’t plonked it beneath your spectacles yet.

Love,

Francesca