What Would Anne Lamott Do?
A few years post-college, I accepted a job with a local hotel and restaurant as their Marketing and PR Manager. Social media had just come on the scene—in terms of brands using it—which means my tasks back then involved a lot of what we’d call “old school marketing” now: real-life networking, local collaborations, in-house campaigns, and a handful of print magazine ads.
Even once Instagram entered the picture, I had no planning software, no editorial calendar, no policies or strategies to consult. Rather, I simply walked around the property snapping photos and editing them with the in-app filters, publishing content in real time—more or less—on a whim.
Down in the kitchen of our farm-to-table restaurant, my friend Brad* could regularly be found butchering his own meat. He was always a bit of a freak about it, in my opinion, taking a little too much joy in slicing open dead animals before 9am. I can’t tell you how many times I’d wander down to the kitchen for a behind-the-scenes photo, only to be greeted by Brad holding up part of a pig carcass in one hand, a cleaver in the other, enthusiastically offering to pose for Instagram.
(I’m happy to report I had enough common sense to know Brad’s serial killer vibes** weren’t the type of behind-the-scenes content anyone was looking for.)
The full extent of my digital media efforts included a little bit of social media, email campaigns through Mailchimp, and a simple Wordpress blog promoting our wedding venue to potential brides. I had a good handle on the very few platforms I managed, and did my best to stay creative and innovative with what I had to work with. I was good at my job, and quickly got promoted. Later on, I’d proceed to win “Marketer of the Year” in a company-wide award ceremony, earning me name recognition not only within my own hotel, but in the entire hospitality group, a chain of 37 properties in all.
I remember being so proud of that award at the time, gleaming, convinced I was definitely on the right career path. Marketing seemed like a perfect fit for me.
That is, until I had to start marketing myself.
***
I often tell people, by way of introduction, “I used to work in marketing. Now I’m a writer.”
As in: I used to do this, but now I do that.
Then again, if I think about how the two are connected, I would not hesitate to tell you that writing is definitely, certainly, undeniably part of marketing.
I’ve been a lot slower to embrace the idea that marketing is part of being a writer.
***
In 2020, feeling somewhat disenchanted with social media, I decided to start a newsletter. The more and more I looked into different platforms and options for sharing my writing online, the more I started to understand the benefit of channeling more energy into an outlet I could have more control over. After all, social media is technically rented space. The landlord can change the rules in an instant, and often does.
Starting an email list from scratch is a humbling process. I’ve been sending out a monthly newsletter for two whole years, and my email list is still 15% of my Instagram following. Every time I get ready to send an email out, I re-share the link in my Stories. And every single time, I feel like I’m standing on the corner of a busy intersection wearing a sandwich board, yelling into the abyss.
Hi! Hello! Yes, you! Wanna sign up for my emails?!! Anyone?? Anyone??
Regardless of the slow growing numbers, I would not hesitate to tell you how much I genuinely enjoy creating a monthly newsletter. I enjoy the privacy of it, the intimacy of sending a story directly into people’s inboxes. Over the last two years, I have grown so fond of my monthly newsletter, I’d even go so far to tell you it’s one of my favorite creative outlets.
Because of this, a while back I started Googling, researching, and chatting with friends about pivoting some of my creative energy.
I asked around, “Hey, if I want to spend less time on social media and more time growing my newsletter, how would I do that?
The search results and forums and my own peers in the industry offered up the same answer, the same secret sauce: If you want to grow your email list, you need to make a lead magnet.
***
This directive becomes a buzzing in my ear – lead magnet, lead magnet, I gotta make a lead magnet. Every month I have what feels like a hundred tasks to complete, and “make a lead magnet” becomes that one thing, like calling the dentist, that keeps getting bumped to the next day, the next week, the next month. But it’s always in my head, the golden ticket to growing my email list, the hack I desperately need to implement. Lead magnet, lead magnet, I gotta make a lead magnet.
I start paying attention to other people’s lead magnets, and begin to see them everywhere. Jenna Kutcher has three offers, right on her home page. Get my awesome worksheet! My free download! Free presets! The more and more I poke around, the more I realize how many writers offer lead magnets on their websites. Everywhere I look, there are freebies and guides and downloads. Sign up here! Sign up here!
I suddenly feel dumb, and insecure, and woefully behind. What have I been doing this whole time?Lead magnet, lead magnet, I gotta make a lead magnet.
***
As I am prone to do, I want my lead magnet to be good. Really good.
I start thinking about it while I drive. While I take a shower. While I walk around the grocery store. Finally I land on what I think is a relatively good idea: five creative hacks for getting out of a rut. It’s helpful, addresses a felt need, and feels very in line with my own work and passions. Check, check, check.
I begin writing the material. Because this lead magnet is about creativity, obviously it should look beautiful. Obviously I need the perfect template. I spend five, six, seven (okay, ten) hours researching templates across Canva, Creative Market, and Pinterest.
(Part of those hours involve loading some of my content into said template, deciding I don’t like it, and then starting over with a different one.)
Finally I land on a design, and start creating my PDF, page by page. I dutifully copy and paste paragraphs from a Google document, only to realize I have written way too much text for the space allotted in the perfect template I have spent ten hours designing. So I copy, paste, and then delete half of what I wrote. Repeat. Then I need photos to accompany each page. Export images from Lightroom. Upload to Canva. Repeat.
Another seven, eight, nine (okay, twelve) hours later, I finish the PDF.
Export the file. Find a typo. Fix typo. Export the file again.
Now I have to figure out how to actually create the lead magnet flow in my email provider. The process is somewhat intuitive, but it still takes me one, two, three (okay, four) hours to finish setting everything up.
Then I realize I need to build a form to promote the lead magnet, and I’m not going to tell you how many hours that took but it was more than one and less than six. It takes me something like seven tries with different images and graphics to get the form looking good on both desktop and mobile versions.
Finally, FINALLY, the lead magnet is built, set up in my email provider, with working forms on my website and social media bio.
This process, in total, took me roughly 31 hours to complete.
***
The night I finish my lead magnet, I wonder who else, of my personal writing heroes, might have a newsletter I am not yet subscribed to. I go searching for Anne Lamott’s. Surely Anne Lamott has an email list to share book news, interviews, workshops, etc, right?
Within minutes, I discover not only does Anne Lamott not have an email list, she also does not have a website. And it’s there, sitting on the edge of my bed, holding my phone in my hand, browser open to the domain www.annelamott.com, which is currently for sale, that I begin howling with laughter.
My husband looks at me as if I am drunk. The joke is getting funnier by the minute. I cannot contain myself. I laugh and laugh and laugh, until my stomach hurts, until tears are rolling down my face.
***
Most writers these days (well, except Anne Lamott) have websites, newsletters, and social media. None of these things are inherently bad, of course. If anything, most of these platforms serve as the avenues and outlets in which people find our work, a connecting point between writers and readers.
This month I’ve been reading Andy Crouch’s book, The Tech-Wise Family. I’m not all the way through it yet, but I appreciate his clear mission in the beginning of the book, which is to help families “put technology in its place.”
The more I marinate on that phrase, the more I believe it can be applied to so many things. Lately, for example, I’ve been contemplating the importance of putting marketing, and even social media, in its proper place.
I have been writing my entire life, and have been fortunate enough to even make writing part of my career, a privilege I do not take for granted. And while I desperately want to be a writer’s writer, I can’t tell you how easily I can sometimes get swept up in the tornado of marketing advice out there.
In Rembrandt Is In The Wind, Russ Ramsey writes,
The mastery of something leads to a greater enjoyment of it. Singers, musicians, painters, writers, athletes, and artists of all stripes know this. The harder we work at something, the more we are able to enjoy it. Annie Dillard said it another way: “Who will teach me to write? The page, the page, that eternal blankness.”
There’s nothing wrong with building a lead magnet, of course, but spending 31 hours building a lead magnet is not going to make me a better writer. Developing a well thought out social media strategy is not going to make me a better writer. Creating a Pinterest plan and listening to the Jenna Kutcher podcast and doing whatever X, Y, Z advice promises to help me sell more books one day is not going to make me a better writer.
The thing that is going to make me a better writer is the act of writing. Practice, practice, and more practice. (Also reading.) (Also having my work critiqued by peers.)
Here’s something I am learning and re-learning: part of being a writer’s writer is knowing how to put—and keep—marketing in its place.
Listening to marketing experts does not lead to the mastery of what I actually want to master, which is the craft of writing. I want to master the craft of writing for my own enjoyment, as Russ Ramsey suggests, but also for the delight and fulfillment of obediently stewarding my God-given creative gifts.
I believe this is a good and important question for us to come back to, time and time again, as writers and creatives: What, exactly, do we want to master?
And if you need a little help answering that question, maybe start with this:
What would Anne Lamott do?
Journaling prompt:
Write about a time you got swept up in a tornado of advice about marketing or platform-building. Be honest. Be funny. Lean into the ridiculousness of it all. What did you learn in the process?
*Brad is his real name, and he is a famous chef now.
**My sincere apologies to any vegetarians reading this.
