Anne Truitt Zelenka

I’m wrapping up the manuscript for Connect!, Web Worker Daily’s Guide to a New Way of Working. The manuscript will be done by Friday — at least ready for production and copy editing — and so I’m transitioning over into the promotion phase. I know this phase will likely be as or more difficult than the writing, but I think I’m up for it… mainly because it’s yet another way to Connect! with people. [Aside: please shoot me if I start doing that every time I type “connect.”] If I looked at promotion as a way of coming out on top in terms of sales or reviews or whatever I’d probably feel pretty anxious.

[Actually, I do feel pretty anxious right now]

I’ve come across two quotes lately that summarize how I want to approach promoting this book, aside from looking at it as a chance to connect and reconnect with people:

“Bring the message, but *be* the message. And by message, I mean conversation that you participate in with passion.” [Chris Brogan]

“If you freed up advertising dollars to be spent elsewhere within your marketing budget, how best would you allocate the money to focus more on being and doing rather than saying?” [John Moore’s Tribal Knowledge via Joe Wikert]

It’s not enough to just say what you think. You have to demonstrate it — live it — if you want people to take you seriously, and if you want to take yourself seriously. If I wrote a tech tutorial book, that’d be easier, maybe. At any rate, people wouldn’t know if I was using the tips or not. I didn’t write a tech tutorial book though. I had to inject some philosophy into and underneath it all, sort of like the mudjacking we had done on our front walkway recently. I’ve been trying to mudjack my life for more than 20 years, and it’s not overstating it to say that the connectedness of the web finally gave me a metaphor and way of thinking and a science (network science) to do it. A way of living too: I am more connected, online and off, at this point in my life than I ever have been. And I am happier, too. I don’t think those two things are unrelated.

But while I’ve been writing the book I stopped living the message. As I focused on finishing the manuscript, I became more isolated than I wanted; I became disconnected from the world of people and ideas online that has been my inspiration and my motivation. In my drive to finish the book, I stopped connecting online and off as much as I wanted and needed to. Not only that, but as my stress levels exceeded my ability to handle them, I was an atom busting out of its bonds with other atoms. Pow! Slam! Kabam! That’s pretty much the opposite of the book’s message.

The good news is there are all sorts of do-overs and start-overs and start-agains, and next week that’s what I’ll do. Besides, even in my time of seeming isolation, I’ve made some new connections. I am greatly enjoying Len Edgerly’s videos and Sonia Simone’s remarkable communications blog — and knowing that they’re both in Denver makes me feel less hermit-like [Sonia: do you twitter?] I serendipitously rescued an email from Joe Cascio from my spam folder and gained a new Twitter friend. In fact, I have a bunch of new Twitter friends, but I’ve refrained from tweeting much because it would be all the same: writing chapter 11, worrying about the book, revising chapter 5, worrying about the book, writing the acknowledgements, worrying about the book, and on and on. [With credit to Penelope Trunk, who confessed to me that the reason she doesn’t Tweet is because it would look like this: worrying about posts, worrying about post, worrying about book, worring about book, worrying about book, eat eat eat, worrying about book. I can so relate!]

Now I’m worrying that this post is too personal, too much about me, too self-centered. But Web 2.0 is people, people being authentically themselves, even when that means showing emotion and vulnerability or less appealing humanity like self-centeredness. What the hell: being authentically yourself online is part of the message of the book too. So here it is, here I am, and I hope to (re-)connect with you soon.