What is your author brand?
Talking to Myself: Vol. 1
Building a Brand
I debate all the time how to begin my career. Should I lead and put focus on the stories that I continue to fall in love with each and every time I create? Or should I focus on the lovely words I create through poetry, which have been an everlasting habit of mine throughout the years? Or maybe I should separate the two? Leave the creative moniker of D.C Memoir as the poet and finally let my name be seen when I write as an author.
I was speaking to another fellow poet, one who happens to own a publishing house, about branding. He uses and views his book to get speaking engagements and make his voice heard. In other words, the books are just an extension, a physical manifestation of his personal brand. So when he spoke to me, he gave me a simple task, “you have to be known for something people want to come to you for. Some experience or knowledge you bring to the table.”
To be honest, that scares me. My poetry doesn’t usually stem from ideals I want to associate with my personal brand. Although I’ve put a focus on writing more positive poetry recently, my poetry doesn’t grow from what I’d call my core. It stems from the Jungian “Shadow” archetype. That which I’ve tried to keep hidden and silently expel. For years, my poetry habit has been based off writing when I get to the worst of places. When the “shadow”, (anger, anxiety, depression, and isolation) has made itself home in heart.
Find Your Experience
What is a deep experience I can speak on and others can relate to strongly? Everything I hate speaking to directly. I can speak to the experience of having death touch me, before deciding to leave me torn on the floor. Thinking you’ve recovered just to come back to campus and get buried by PTS.
I can speak to the experience of having your passion, something you valued and worked for beyond anything, being taken away. How you try to avoid its sight, forget the feeling, and act like you understand why it happened. I loved the feeling of going over those hurdles and every race with them felt like love.
Athlete’s depression isn’t just relatable, it’s common. Combine that with the state it left my body in, how it continues to take far after I’ve finished. It’s a story worth telling, but what do I say when they asked how I moved on? I moved on in the worst ways and even now I recall those memories so much and hold on to those moments so tight, I question if I did.
Finally, I could just speak to the community of people dealing with anxiety and depression. Remember the days you were too scared to walk through the dining halls to get something to eat so you just told yourself you weren’t hungry? Or nights you woke up screaming held hostage by your panic attacks?
The Responsibility is Yours
I know what would be easiest to talk about. The athlete’s depression, the transition, the Varsity Blues, are pretty much in the past. But what’s needed to be spoken about? Mental health is far more spoken to than ever right now, but that doesn’t mean another voice, one that might relate more to you, isn’t needed.
There’s more to me than this, but these are all central to what I write poetically, whether positive or negative. Looking at it all, maybe I should divide my works because these don’t align with the cultural awareness that I want to be the brand of my fiction stories and novels. For now, I’m just talking to myself though.
D.C Memoir
