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Failed Writer's Journey: Be Not A Brand; or Branding Is Not Context Switching [1]

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Date: 2025-04-25

Yeah, I reread some Shakespeare. You now get silly but super serious sounding headlines. Lucky you. Also, this one is kind of ramble-y, so feel free to get refreshments before you settle in, and don’t necessarily expect a stirring, heartfelt conclusion.

I have been thinking about this Lyta Gold piece since I read it a couple days ago (I did say that reading Lyta Gold’s book was like having a beer with your smartest friend. You should go buy the book — it really is that good. I want to write like her when I grow up. Well, her and Terry Pratchett.). She makes the very good points, among other observations, that branding yourself makes you uninteresting, and that branding doesn’t really help sell books. Luck and good writing do. And while I have no basis to comment on selling books — failed writer, remember? — I do think that branding is a scourge. But I also think that the branding gets wrapped up in the idea of context switching, and I do not think they are the same.

Everyone must be a brand, say the marketers and sales gurus. And more, they say, everyone is already a brand. The face you present to the world is a brand, so you should make sure that you present the face you want in order to sell yourself and whatever you make. I don’t think that is true. Gold points out that the people who take the most care to brand themselves are the ones that present the least interesting face to the world and thus are the least likely to intrigue anyone. Social media, she says, has turned a lot of writers into little more than pitch and marketing machines. And she is not wrong.

A lot of brand people will point out that those people are doing it wrong, that they should post “in their own voice” a lot before they pot anything about what they are selling! Yeah, maybe. But they also advise that you pick a branded voice, and that in and of itself is at least slightly false. If you always have to be relentlessly on brand, you aren’t going to be very interesting. Some people claim that branding is merely context switching, showing a marketing friendly face for public consumption. I don’t think that is the case.

In context switching, you change your communication style to fit in better with the group you are amongst. Now, in some cases, this does mean suppressing aspects of your personality and/or opinions. Work, especially, is an area where people are most controlled, least likely to be fully themselves. But I think that it applies in other, less fraught realms. We all adjust ourselves to the audience to some extent. Branding, however, is the submergence of you in favor of marketing you. Branding, in the way it is advised, is an all-consuming personality transplant in all areas — make yourself appealing to buyers, readers, executives, everywhere you go. Context switching is using different language at work. Branding is the LinkedIn account that shows its dedication to “hustle” and “drive” and “company profits” by detailing how to cook a pigeon you hunted on the coffee maker in your hotel room so as not to spend the company’s time and money on eating out on business trips.

The worst thing about all of this, of course, is that it probably doesn’t work anyway. Gold points out that the big BookTock-ers didn’t get big by pushing themselves — they got big when certain influencers found and liked their books. Gold herself discuss the work of a writer she finds enjoyable but has never motivated her to purchase one of his books. Branding, then, is a mug’s game. It makes you a less interesting person, because you are attempting to steer the conversation to a point — a sale — instead of just letting the conversation happen. It doesn’t work and it tends to make you boring or even annoying. If you are going to be boring or annoying, you should probably just be the same kind of boring and/or annoying you are in real life. At least then, you might have some real conversations.

Weekly Word Count

Nothing. Still working on the re-outline. I am at that irritating point where I cannot make the thing come together and realize precisely why I am a failed writer: I suck at writing and have no idea how to put a story, or even a sentence, together in a way that won’t make people expire from boredom. I have reached all new levels of bad, badness never seen before. Badness that makes Plan Nine from Outer Space feel good about itself. A badness so putrifyingly bad as to redefine bad for all bad going forward.

It is somewhat less than my best work.

With that said, I want to talk a bit about why I like Gold’s voice so much. She manages to be authoritative without losing her sense of humor when writing, or her sense of exploration. I am sure, since this was a book, she knew where her arguments were going. But it never feels like she is leading you by the hand. It feels more like she is exploring the ideas with you, walking though the landscape for the first time, working out the implications of her thoughts. That is a hard thing to do. — to know where you want your arguments to end up but still present the path there in such an interesting, honest way, grappling with the good and bad of your thoughts without sounding like a salesperson for them. It really does feel like you are watching her think in real time and are along for the ride. Like, as I said in the review, you are having a conversation with your smartest friend over a beer.

Go buy her book.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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