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Brag About Yourself
Where do you find topics to write about? Both beginning bloggers and other types of nonfiction writers often ask this. Instead of my usual "everywhere, all around you" response, I'll detail exactly how this post came about: social media networking. A member of one of the groups I belong to in LinkedIn posted a link to the Psychology Today article as a discussion topic. I saw that item listed in an updates email that LI sends me regularly. I clicked, read the article and thought, "Whew. I'm doin' it right," as the LOL Cat People say. Just last night I'd been adding information to my Amazon Author Page biography section, bragging really. And in third person. Feels weird.
Sooner or later every kind of writer is required to provide a blurb or bio. For me, it's the most difficult writing of all. Worse than a synopsis. It's the same for pitching your services (yourself, really) to potential clients, or bragging about yourself in your website.
If this is difficult for you too, read How to brag about yourself without being seen as narcissistic | Psychology Today by Joshua D. Foster and Ilan Shrira. The secret, it seems, it to mention ONLY yourself, your accomplishments, and not compare them to others. I thought of the latest round of campaign ads in which one politician tries to run down the opposition. Makes me want to vote for the latter.
How about you? When you are dressed to impress, do you denigrate a competitor's accomplishments? Are you positive you write better than ...
Sooner or later every kind of writer is required to provide a blurb or bio. For me, it's the most difficult writing of all. Worse than a synopsis. It's the same for pitching your services (yourself, really) to potential clients, or bragging about yourself in your website.
If this is difficult for you too, read How to brag about yourself without being seen as narcissistic | Psychology Today by Joshua D. Foster and Ilan Shrira. The secret, it seems, it to mention ONLY yourself, your accomplishments, and not compare them to others. I thought of the latest round of campaign ads in which one politician tries to run down the opposition. Makes me want to vote for the latter.
How about you? When you are dressed to impress, do you denigrate a competitor's accomplishments? Are you positive you write better than ...
Labels: promotion, writers, writing
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posted by Georganna Hancock M.S. | 9:37 AM
3 Comments:
I never dis anyone else's work.
The bio was tough for me. It is difficult to 'brag' but someone has to do it.
Announcements are easy, like the one I did for my release today. I shout with excitement better than I brag with pride!
I find it so much easier to boost others, to write a synopsis of someone else's work. Too bad no one knows me well enough to write bios for me!
I agree, Diane, that announcements are easier. I have no problem tweeting about a new article I have on Amazon (Kindle Store), but if I win an award ... someone else must post the news.
It is very weird to write about one's self, in third person no less. I just try and treat it as a funny, but true spoof.
Now I do tell (sometimes) if I get something, that is because I think of it as getting or a gift, not because I "won" something or did better than someone else.
Well I suppose I did learn some bragging from my 2nd husband who was all "the world rolls around me" and now in my 40s the world is almost all about moi!
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