It feels wrong not to write -- forget about "How do writers do it?" How does everyone else not?
Realize that I'm not talking about some small thing here. The written word is the very structure upon which we hang our complex thoughts and communicate them to each other. While human culture may precede structured writing, history doesn't. History is made of writing, every letter an atom. Molecules of complex ideas are brought to clarity through the power of written words.
I know, a picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, but there's little chance that every person viewing the picture is going to have the same thousand words come to mind. If that had been a truly successful system, we'd still be sketching hieroglyphs to each other and comic books (aka graphic novels) wouldn't need letterers. This blog would just be a bunch of pictures. Can you imagine trying to craft a complicated legal deal into a contract composed entirely from images?
The written word is such an integral component of our lives and culture that I think we would do well to increase writing as a focus in education. The benefits of training young minds in not just abstract thought or linear thought or the use of imagination or researching information, but also in organizing all those things into a coherence that can then be communicated to others could be so immense as to be unquantifiable.
Quantifying things is the realm of math. I enjoy math. I respect math. It's what our brains use to understand the universe. Writing is what we use to explain what we've learned to each other and to understand ourselves. Despite the danger of unleashing endless hordes of pretentiously self-absorbed wordsmiths upon the Earth, imagine the impact alone of living in a society where more people chose their words carefully, thinking before speaking. Imagine people taught from youth to be mindful, examining the world and themselves, doing more than crashing about on a lifetime quest for food and pleasure.
Even a bad writer is making an effort, taking measure of their successes and shortcomings. With practice and guidance, probing the darkest reaches of the soul with such confrontations as to yield any manner of improvement. It sounds like going where the pain is and poking at it. I suppose it is. I still call it personal development.
After a couple of generations of mindful, thoughtful people working to actively raise more of the same, there might be a lot less dark to find prowling in those corners and corridors. Working the brain creates the potential for a better brain and better performance. Who couldn't use a better brain?
The written word allows our thoughts to transcend time and space with clarity and depth. We've been gifted, thus, with the power to communicate with those we may never meet. With it rests our hope that some future explorers won't sift through the dirt and rubble of our remains and have to piece together speculations about what use we made of pizza cutters, wii-motes and ten thousand other modern oddities that have come to populate our world. It means there's hope that someone might even make sense of Beanie Babies, Justin Bieber and YouTube videos one day.
I don't make claim to being a marketing expert, but I do feel like I have some good ideas and insights that don't seem to be coming to everyone. Well, that's OK because I'm willing to share my thoughts and it gives me the chance to tell stories. Fortunately, these are good things for writers.
Something else that I recently realized wasn't obvious to everyone was this: have confidence in your product. This applies to writers and whatever they're writing, car makers, toy makers, etc. Sales and marketing is not the venue for humility. If you're a politician, I would expect you to vote for yourself. It's as simple as this: if you don't believe in your own product, why should anyone else?
It's your book (I'm a writer, so we're going with "book". If you're not a writer, you can replace "book" with some more appropriate noun of your choosing. Go ahead.) so you know it better than anyone else. If you don't think it's something worthy of everyone else to come running to experience, then why subject the market to it? Is it something you want to sing from the rooftops about or not?
What sparked all this was an encounter I had during one of my recent excursions out of the Fortress of Solitude. I met a guy who was wearing a t-shirt for an Italian restaurant specializing in New York pizza. I quickly realized that the restaurant was his. So...
"Where's your restaurant?" I asked him.
We proceeded to do the near-this-south-of-this-on-this-road verbal tango followed by him telling me, "You should come check it out."
"Yeah, cool," I said. "I'm from New York so I'm always on the lookout for good pizza."
"Well, you should like it," he replied, suddenly sounding a little shaken. "A lot of people say it's...close."
Wow. Really? In that moment, I lost all interest in seeking out this pizzeria. This man who should've been the restaurant's greatest advocate had become almost apologetic before I'd even gotten to his eatery. For those of you who don't see this as an issue, let me elaborate: I have found amazing Chinese food in New York and found it matched in San Francisco's Chinatown. I have found pizzas of varying style and quality all around the country and in Italian restaurants in Europe that have unfailingly fallen short of being comparable to New York pizza. When I was a toddler, I would scavenge pizza from the plates of my parents' friends so fast that they questioned whether or not I was actually being fed. I've had two-day-old New York pizza that was better than most other place's fresh. You can't tout your pizza in one breath and then go weak on me in the next. It simply isn't done.
It certainly isn't done if you want to sell me a pizza. It's either New York pizza or it isn't. There is no close. Carob ain't Chocolate no matter how many times you rub the lamp and make a wish. Close means that it isn't. To me, "isn't" isn't worth the trip. I can stay home and not eat New York pizza. So that evening, I did.
What's the lesson, class? Don't undersell your pizza.
That also means that you don't undersell your book or whatever else you're working to move. It's yours and it's unique. Believe in it. Be the proud parent with the silly bumper sticker. Be the grandparent with the endless pictures. Be Hugo, the exuberant-and-never-disappointing owner of the Italian restaurant that was next door to my family's business. Be willing to make every person you meet aware of your glorious creation. Help it to thrive. Give it all it needs to be great and shine so everyone else has every opportunity to love your work as much as you do.
Don't undersell your pizza.
It feels wrong not to write -- forget about "How do writers do it?" How does everyone else not? 
