Brandstipated

Ever since No Missing Tools came out, I haven’t done much writing. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I’ve done a lot an awful lot of writing, it’s all gone into emails, submissions, applications, bios, descriptions and all the stuff involved in trying to market and sell a book.

What I haven’t been doing is writing the kind of stuff you normally see, blogposts, tweets and articles. In the first seven months of 2015, I couldn’t even manage one post a month that wasn’t related to the selling and marketing of the book!

In that time I’ve been putting some effort into this site, getting it redesigned and thinking hard about the work I want to do and the direction I want to move in. But, even as mission felt better defined I was struggling with what to say. It’s like all the definitional work, the “brand identity” stuff, was blocking the writing.

Put simply I’ve felt brandstipated.

I’ve written before about personal brands, marketing for creatives, trust and authenticity. For anyone who has a blog, social media presence, online business, creative career or any combination of those, these questions about how we present ourselves never really go away.

And, they can become all-consuming, if we let them.

So, no heroic attempts at life-changing advice in this update, just an acknowledgement that it feels good to be out of the weeds. And that, as much as I try to get this whole branding/marketing/online thing right, it just never really falls into place.

Sometimes the website looks better than other times (I’m pretty happy right now, thanks Paul!). Sometimes, the sense of what my “business” is feels clearer (it’s a little murky at present). But, it’s always just a big work in progress.