Three Reasons Why Branding Shouldn’t Make You Lose Your Mind by Guest @CStreetlights

I am in a really weird place on branding. For over 20 years my husband and I (he currently is in hospice) have been known as Marble-T Design. We closed the business when we moved back to Vermont, but we have kept some of the essentials. I now find I have to rebrand myself as a solo marbling artist. Plus, I am very into writing nonfiction (on history education, art, mathematics) so I really am not sure how to combine the two – or just brand myself as Renaissance Woman – which is in my Medium bio. So it would be nice in the midst of grief and denial and death to have someone to bounce ideas with. Lots to think about in this article – Thanks!

LOVED this soooo much! And I needed this positive kick in the butt this morning. Thank you!

Fresh style of delivering an old message works!! Reading this is a delight–“never thought of it that way” kept popping up. The 3 basics are so cleverly laid out, at –with no filling, no “you should” (except in the title ;>))or “YOU need to” (just what CS needed to do, which resonates). Sooo helpful–and, by the way, did your sister get the pot pie with broccoli in it? Cliffhanger!

Branding honestly still drives me nuts, even though I do own my shit. 🙂 Right now I’m more or less going with the flow, though I do think about branding in many areas. I’m just me, whatever that happens to be. Authenticity maybe? :p

Love this because it is so very easy to get too wound up to make progress. Thx for posting!

Cee,

“Thou art the shit,” and a badass too! You fit right in with Rachel, Lisa, and Beth. There’s something to be said about success and “badassery” as you put it.

I understand your dilemma and hesitation over redesigning your website. I went through the same hesitation weeks ago, but I finally went with it knowing I wanted much more than I had. I have, from the time I could hold a pencil in my small hands thought of myself as a writer. You know what you know.

After twenty-eight years of military service, I knew I would have to approach writing from a different place. I found it challenging to work on the manuscript I wanted to work on, and still do, based on two back-to-back deployments that changed my life, but not who I have always known myself to be. However, I knew I had to approach my writing from another place.

I began writing book reviews, and I am still writing book reviews, and journaling to help me find my way back to the sanctity of my writing heart. I’ll get there, this I know because I am a badass. I have a ways to go before manuscript coaching, will benefit me. However, I wanted to thank you for your straight talk and participating in #NaNoProMo 2019.

Sincerely,
Donna

I will be bookmarking this article for later. I know my branding is a mess. I’m a YA author who seems to have focus on only coffee & cats. LOL Which I guess would be good, if most of my books weren’t YA Thrillers. I do need to have a more focused approach & I want to be able to focus my career in a sustainable direction. Thank you.

I’m currently connected with co-authors who have no desire to pursue solo careers or frankly write beyond our collaborative projects. I DO! I’ve known for a while now I need to distinguish my shit from theirs. Frankly trying to brand “us” is kind of a pile and there’s not even a white speck on top to brag brag about. The books are good, but the brand is…meh and attempting to create this mishmash brand has tested the sanity boundaries and ruined at least one friendship for me. My tolerance of one partner is solely contractual. While I’m surrounded by support for going solo, every push in that direction is a divine signal. Thanks!

Oh, man, I am the shit, and even though I love broccoli, I seriously want to own my shit.
A

This post couldn’t have appeared at a better time for me. I’m a screenwriter and huge film buff. A year ago, I was working to develop a couple of sitcoms. Hearing so many people share their stories of sexual assault dislodged a terrible memory-the rape and murder of a fifteen year old girl I knew. I began to think about doing a novel about the rape and murder of a teenage girl and donating from the proceeds to organizations that help rape survivors and their families.

This project began to take precedence over my work on the sitcoms. I wrote a couple of drafts and began developing an author website, but the issue of branding eluded me. It still does.

To a great extent, I write comedy because of my health issues. I have fibromyalgia and chronic neck/shoulder pain from a car accident fifteen years ago. Laughter may or may not be the best medicine, but it’s a great coping mechanism. To give you an idea, I was robbed once at a writing conference. It makes you feel so vulnerable. I started thinking about superheroes like Spider-Man and Captain America, both of whom started out as people who were beaten up. The result is one of my sitcoms, which deals with a menopausal tax attorney who goes on hormone replacement and becomes a superhero.

I hope you can begin to see the issues before me in trying to establish a brand. It’s all me under there-the challenge is finding the common threads.

Thanks so much for your article.

Sincerely,
Dana Lemaster

Branding is one of those things I still don’t have a handle on after all this time (8 years and counting) as a writer. In part because I made so many mistakes starting out, in part because having decided to focus on one genre and re-brand myself, I still feel like I’m missing the boat.

I have a coordinated look across my social media platforms. I understand the basics of making yourself easy to find and follow. I post to my blog regularly (I like writing blog posts) and I’ve finally gotten around to sending out a newsletter semi-regularly.

But as far as brand, I’d be hard-pressed to describe it.