5 Things I Learned About Marketing from Writing a Novel, Part 3

Two weeks ago, on May 22, 2018, I officially published my debut novel. Writing and publishing The Reluctant Coroner was a frenetic, messy, wonderful process, and I learned a whole lot—especially the way writing and publishing a book correlates to B2B marketing. This is the third of five lessons about what I learned during the writing of The Reluctant Coroner.

Lesson 3: Find the right motivation.

I’ve had the idea for The Reluctant Coroner in my head for eight years. I signed up for National Novel Writing Month, where every November thousands of writers start writing their new novels and by the end of the month get 50,000 words closer to finishing. That first year, I didn’t even get past the first chapter. But I had the coroner’s name (Fenway Sorenson, at the time), the rich estranged father who’s a big Red Sox fan, and the identity of the murderer. (I didn’t even have the identity of the victim!)

And then… nothing. Years passed. And then Facebook, in the midst of some horrible Russian bot and fake news scandals, did something wonderful: it reminded me that I promised myself I’d write this book. Eight years ago today, the Facebook reminder said, you were super-excited about writing this murder mystery. (Well, that’s paraphrasing.) I realized that I had finished my creative writing degree almost twenty-five years ago and had nothing more than a few half-finished novels and a couple of published short stories to show for it. My life was speeding by, and I still hadn’t written a novel.

That lit a fire under me, and seven weeks after seeing that Facebook reminder, I completed my first draft.

With B2B marketing, passion and motivation are equally important. It turns out that people produce higher quality work when they believe in the...Read More