The Marketplace – 200 words project

Here is this week’s 200 words project:

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“Some artists need to create in complete peace, but all artists are now empowered by technology to open the front door and chronicle their backstage and behind-the-scenes working processes. More importantly, they’re equipped to distribute the work themselves, sharing their writing, their music and their digitally reproducible wares infinitely and at their own will – without printing presses, without CD manufacturers, without movie theatres. The art goes from the artists’ lips or pen to the audience’s ears and eyes. But in order to share directly, the artist still has to leave The Garret and head down into the bustling marketplace, and that’s the catch: the marketplace is where you have to deal with people. To many artists, people are scary”**

– Amanda Palmer in The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help >

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This is a wake up call for me. As a photographer and as a writer and as a person who does other stuff which needs people, stuff I make and write for an audience, I am chronically incompetent in marketing. Reading Amanda’s book and actually thinking about her words, what is clear to me is this –

I suffer from the impostor syndrome – I fear that I am a “fake” photographer who photographs, a “fake” writer who writes, a “fake” coder who codes.

I suffer form “privacy” issues – my fear of criticism when I open up to the world is more than my love of people and my trust of people.

What she says in her book hits a nerve – I need to market myself – and when I say market, go down to the market place, show myself here, and when people come and look at my wares in curiosity – see them, smile at them, engage them in talk, and wave to them when they leave my stall -not skitter away like a crab when I see a person walking towards me. It is not going to be easy – it’s going to be quite hard actually. But it is something I definitely need to try.

This discovery about myself leads to further questions. Am I a shy, person by nature or have I become that due to circumstances? What circumstances? Or is it because I have always admired the strong silent artist stereotype whose work speaks greater than words – I don’t know? But whatever it is, I must pop my head out of my cocoon and engage with the world like another human being

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About the 200 Words Project

Once every week, on Monday morning, I will post my ‘200 Words Project’ post where I will ruminate on some idea which caught my interest in the current book I’m reading, or maybe (sometimes) from a blog post or podcast – in 200 words or more, never less!