To 'be a Creative'
- or to simply 'be Creative'; is that the question? A brief examination of the implications of chasing 'a brand' for writers.
A good friend with whom I have been discussing my Substack site on-and-off has just sent me the quote below. It comes from Prospect magazine, and is a contribution from Alice Garnett (a columnist for Prospect) to a discussion with Sheila Hancock and Alan Rusbridger:
While I use it a lot to share my work and to build a personal brand, I still think the Internet is a force for evil because it kind of obliges you, if you want to be a creative, to spend your time cultivating an online persona. You can’t just wite, you can’t just make art. You’ve got to “be” a writer. You’ve got to exhibit this personal brand. You have no choice – you’ve got to be online. You must be an influencer before you can be a creative. It’s all about clout.
“Some food for thought there,” says Jim, “particularly around the idea of an identity (being a creative) usurping a role/vocation (being creative).”
The meat is in the last two sentences of Garnett’s quote.
Is it all about ‘brand’?
For the last few years - ever since I started taking myself seriously, I guess - I have been aware of the need for ‘brand’, this identity or persona (or fiction!) that other people will recognise as belonging to ‘a writer’. It’s the reason I started my website, and why I’ve flirted with Facebook, Twitter/X, a podcast, and Instagram along the way. Flirted with and mainly abandoned… And it’s one of the reasons I embrace other writing-relating activities: hosting poetry events, mentoring, editing anthologies.
And, in a way, it’s a motivation for being on Substack. Just writing - if you’re ‘serious’ - isn’t going to be enough these days.
So while I think Garnett is correct, and that the modern world (‘the evil Internet’) demands that - as ‘a creative’ - we have ‘a presence’, it’s only part of the story. Or part of the conundrum.
Brand vs. Celebrity
To broaden the topic for a moment…
It used to be that someone became ‘a celebrity’ because they were good at something: an actor, a politician, a sportsperson. It was the excelling at that special and often enviable talent - boosted by having the right kind of personality - which made people a celebrity, and which got them gigs hosting quiz shows, appearing on TV, opening supermarkets… You name it.
It seems to me, however, that these days - thanks to ‘reality’ TV in the main - more and more people regard ‘celebrity’ as demonstrating the ability to con others into agreeing that you are one. As if that’s a super-power of some kind. The people who become famous off the back of ‘Towie’, or ‘Made in Chelsea’, or ‘Love Island’ have chosen to become a celebrity - and their celebrity arrives on the back of achieving nothing but that goal. They’re not actors, or politicians, or sportspeople; they’re ‘celebrities’. If you like, status and profession are one and the same thing.
Where am I going with this?
So, yes; if you are gong to be a writer these days you need a brand - but you do also need to be a writer too!
Scratch at the surface of a ‘TV-celeb’ or ‘internet sensation’ or ‘influencer’ and there’s often nothing but veneer to see; but scratch at the essence of an ex-sportsperson who is now regarded as a celebrity (most often ‘a pundit’) and you can still find the world records, the Olympic medals, the goals scored. My essential point is that there is a solid foundation there. Kudos.
So if one wants to be ‘a writer’ - and to be recognised as such (that’s the ‘celebrity’ parallel) - then build a brand by all means, but you must have the foundation too. “Here’s my book, my collection of poems, my play.” If you can’t say that, then how much are you akin to reality-TV fodder? How many self-proclaimed would-be ‘writers’ have actually written nothing? The intent to write simply doesn’t count.
And at the other end of the spectrum, there are those in the public eye who are recognised in their field, have garnered celebrity from it, and now achieved status of such register that one day they can choose to turn around and say “I’m a writer now” - and we believe them. And we buy their books, even when they’re not very good. The exemplars of ‘brand first’, perhaps? Garnett’s ‘influencer’ before ‘creative’?
It’s all about balance.
So build a brand, ‘yes’. Demonstrate to the world that you’re ‘a writer’; persuade us that you stand out from the millions all chasing the same dream. But do the work too; put in the hard yards; build the foundations. Write that novel, those poems, that screenplay, so that when someone says “show me”, you can.
There are clearly writers on Substack who use the platform more for brand than anything else; it’s a marketing tool. Perhaps they have their oeuvre in place, already recognised. But perhaps some do not.
Many established writers use Substack to share valuable insight and experience with their readers - George Saunders and Jon McGregor spring to mind. They’re ‘giving back’ in a way, while also confirming their brand.
For me - and I suspect for many - Substack offers an opportunity to do multiple things: to build brand, to give back, and to prove that I’m a writer by sharing my work. (More often than not, I think the last of these is the most important, which may be to the detriment of my brand.) Surely there is a need to demonstrate that you’re not a con, or some Johnny-come-lately celeb-writer, or a reality-writer who’s just Internet-froth and nothing else. And at then end of the day, if writing is about one thing, then surely it’s about sharing.
So as far as a Substack presence is concerned, the balance conundrum is how much one promotes ‘the brand’ - like this article - and how much it should be used to demonstrate one’s craft…
To be or not to be? Well, it’s both actually. And forgive me if I get the balance wrong from time-to-time.
Always struggled with the "brand" thing. For me, a writer, it's about being present, but "present" is offering work, as you mention, you have to write. I use Substack and Medium to stay in the "eye" -- Substack for personal essays, Medium for craft pieces, since I am also a teacher and writing mentor. I get very tired of the "brand first" people. You see it in American politics now. Very little gets done, but, hey, I'm on Instagram! Still got to pass the bill, work for your constituents. And for the creatives...you still have to create.
Ian, I've really enjoyed reading this reflective piece on how a poet and poetry gets communicated in a media dominated age. You write so clearly and thoughtfully about this, as you have done in other posts. Rather than 'brand' I prefer 'profile' which suggests a position taken to the reader, an angle which doesn't reveal all of you but which presents a calculated presence.
I hesitate to encourage you to write more pieces in case they distract from your primary writing task of being creative.