Sales, relationships and writing sex scenes

I need more coffee now!!!!

Whenever I write a post, it never ceases to amaze me, how the world of writing relates so easily to most things in life. I guess it’s because in a sense writing is what I want to do with my life, and like any other job or project we take on, the principles are the same. To do anything well we have rules we need to follow.  If we didn’t have this, we would meander all over the road without any way to measure our progress. Succeeding as a writer involves my understanding of sales, relationships both within my stories and with readers and other writers, and of course it involves the way I actually write.   To do any job well you need knowledge of the craft, the environment you work in and the means to show the quality of what you produce.

Originally I had thought to post some more teasers from my novel.  In the interim I have been reading, and it has given me a lot to think about, helping me reach certain conclusions.  My work needs a little tightening particularly in writing the sex scenes.  However more to the point I need to fine tune my knowledge of the sales process.  Both these things involve understanding more about the relationships I discussed above.

Putting out teasers comes from my desire to encourage people to read my books. As you know I follow Mareo McCracken because I am very interested in the concept of emotional intelligence, and this revolves around our behaviours.  The way we approach things is crucial to success.  His last post in LinkedIn was about a book he highly recommends called “The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need” by Anthony Iannarino.  According to the author there are 9 key elements required for the right selling mindset.  These are self-discipline, Optimism, Caring, Competitiveness, Resourcefulness, Initiative, Persistence, Communication, and Accountability.

On closer scrutiny I found the author’s words applied to anything we want to make a success of.  This includes all professions and writing is only one of them. It also applies to any new project we may take up. Writers, like so many other people, need that self-discipline to put pen to paper.  They have accountability to editors, publishers, family and friends and their readers.  I have chosen to self-publish but the demands are no different.  Books are stress, sweat, tears but ultimately they are products.  To do it right we need to consider all those elements. Once you conquer that mind-set it is easier to face self-doubt.

It becomes about you the writer doing your best for your readers.  The hiccups come if the writer doesn’t see him/herself clearly. I am in the middle of re-writes and some interesting points have come up.  I had to take what was said on board.  Do I agree with it?  Good question, at times I do and at times I don’t and not because of ego. It is about the vision the writer has in their head.  However, communication is a key element in successful selling, and if my communication is limited then so is my caring, another key element.

Am I there yet?

So I am making some small changes, and exuding self-discipline by not screaming when all of this is not going as fast as it could be. Some paths take longer than others to navigate, and patience is needed. Anything less though would mean I am not up-holding my share of the relationship I hope to have with my readers. Who would have thought it could all become so complicated?

Now this brings me to the sex scenes and an article entitled Top 7 Tips For Writing Sex Scenes in Fiction.  My scenes are necessary to my story and this comes at a price.   There is a certain fear of what people may think firstly of me and secondly of my ideas and semantic choices even if spoken from the mouths of my characters. There is a certain perception that it may be confessional and based on fact.  It took me a while to stand back and remember that as a reader I don’t think this of other authors.  I need to trust in my readers for the same. I do however have preferences in how things are expressed and my focus is a balance of the explicit and the emotional.

The way we write a scene and the choice of words in this arena is a nightmare. Including scenes for the sake of it doesn’t satisfy the reader and to be honest doesn’t satisfy the writer either. The scene has to reveal something about the characters, and the choice of vocabulary needs to reflect them as people, different people. The language is as much about their emotional responses as it is to describe the unfolding scene.   Is it comfortable to write these scenes? It is if I distance myself, and let the characters lead. Still I found it hard to remember this logical approach

The article helped me accept the fact not every reader will like what I do, and that my proof-readers and the people helping me edit that have known me forever might be faced with the same thing – not liking what I write and the way i write it and that it may change their perception of me.   Well, that’s the chance I have to take and I guess if I follow the 9 elements I may just convince my readers to travel my romantic fantasy with me because they will understand .  We’ll see what happens.  Teasers next time,

Barb