Can the Creator and Marketer Coexist?
Does self-promotion come at a cost to the creative act?
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Doing everything is great, until it’s not. Yes, I realize the whole premise of this newsletter is to sell the opposite idea, but here we are.
Life is one big paradox upon another, and this is no exception. Doing it all can come at a cost, and that cost—in my opinion—is the depreciation of creative work when the creative has to be their own marketing team.
There is something contradictory about being the one to make the work, as well as being the one to promote the work. Is there not?
Personally, I feel conflicted by it. Self-promotion isn’t something I enjoy, not because I don’t want my work to be shared, but because I don’t want to be the one to make the case for it. It feels desperate to me, phoney even, and lacks the humility that comes with creating in the first place.
When I create, I do so as a form of translation. Of expression of whatever it is I am capturing in that moment. To have to sell that ruins the essence of it, in a way.
But whether I like it or not, that’s the way the world turns now. You either shamelessly self promote, hire someone to do it for you (which costs money), or stay quiet about the whole thing and either get lost in the shadows or strike gold.
The dissonance I feel between these two roles I play is gnawing at me.
It gnawed at me when I watched the Bob Dylan movie and he said:
“Two hundred people in that room and each one wants me to be somebody else. They should just let me be.”
“Let you be what?”
“Whatever it is they don’t want me to be.”
Mr. Dylan, a figure we now associate with legendary fame, never cared for it. In fact, he had an particular aversion to it. He didn’t want to fit the mold and hysteria others had built for him. He just wanted to exist. To create. To be, without the expectations or projections of who he should be.
It was that very lack of interest in fame that drew people to him. The more he resisted being molded into someone’s image of him, the more people longed for a piece of him.
Charismatic, magnetic and unusual people have that thing about them. The nonchalance and complete oblivion of the effect they have on others.
It’s like one of those impossible riddles we hear all the time, like “the person of your dreams will appear when you least expect it”.
The idea of it is obvious and infuriating. You realize your desire is in the way. Then you try to muffle out the desire but it only becomes all the louder, and you get trapped in your own vicious cycle of desire.
The thing is, this desire for something external—a person, validation, success, money, etc—is all just a distraction.
It eats away at the simplicity of the work you could be producing, were your mind clear from such densities.
To have success you have to not want it. To be noticed, you have to not care about being noticed.
And the tricky thing about this is, once you achieve these things, and perhaps land on success, it won’t mean what you thought it would when it mattered to you.
It’s an odd puzzle. Especially because we’re constantly told to market ourselves—to sell our work, our ideas, image, story, hell, our very existence! Sell everything you have. A picture of your dog, your face when you’re sad, your bedroom, your stats and progress. Sell it all, because that’s what people want to see in order to then be interested in your work.
But then—what is your work?
Is that what your work becomes? Does your creativity become reduced to the creative ways you can successfully market yourself? What about the actual work? The one that’s not about selling? The one that’s not about your brand?
What is the actual work?
Creation and promotion belong to two completely different flow states.
Creating something—whether it’s art, music, writing, or anything else—requires being present with your work, getting into the heart of it, and allowing it to grow in its own time. You have to lose yourself entirely in order to access it. The focus is inward, on the act of creation itself.
But promoting it is a different beast entirely. Marketing your work requires visibility, strategy, and performance. You have to be on your toes 24/7, show up like an algorithm chasing butterfly, position yourself appropriately, and rearrange your narrative every time people’s attention span gets smaller, so that they can consume your work easily. The focus is outward, on making sure the world sees you and your work.
These two states don’t naturally coexist, in fact, they’re often at odds (unless you’re using creativity for your marketing, of course).
The more you focus on promoting your work—on building your brand, staying visible, forming your “personal narrative”—the more you risk losing sight of why you created what you created in the first place.
It becomes all about the consumer and not the product of creation.
Visibility is everything right now, but we are also —paradoxically—more and more blind to quality. We consume recycled plastic, often manufactured by AI, and enjoy this very predictable, streamlined experience of creativity. The kind of creations that follow trends, yet strive to be original. The kind of creations that are applauded with words like “authentic”, when really, we’ve seen it all before in a different color scheme.
What we are seeing is what
so eloquently described as “mediocrity (going) mainstream”.The more we hustle to get noticed, the more it feels like we’re moving further from the essence of why we create.
So this brings me to my burning question: Can the marketer and the creator coexist?
When you’re constantly shifting between these two roles—creator and marketer—where does the work go? Does the act of self-promotion dilute the very thing you’re trying to share? Does it pull you away from the pure, bare creativity that sparked your idea in the first place?
I’m still working through this conundrum myself, so I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Can we really do it all by ourselves? Can we really be everything everything?
P.s. yes, I did self-promote at the start of this newsletter. I need to pay my rent, and I’m not Bob Dylan. I’ll take anything I can get.
You nailed this: “ It feels desperate to me, phoney even, and lacks the humility that comes with creating in the first place.” Every time I share my Substack on FB, or even send a link in text to close friends, it makes me cringe. My career was in sales and marketing, and I can sell most anything I believe in, with one exception— I NEVER wanted to sell my own shit. Now I’m a writer and here we are.
Such a good question! Many of my creative friends struggle with marketing and selling themselves. We're trying to promote ourselves and earn money but we don't want to become the sleazy sales person or marketeer.
I believe it's like Martina says, it's a muscle we have to train and the first step is always the hardest. But eventually we'll get better at it and hopefully one day we can read this post again and feel confident marketing ourselves!