Q&A with Kiini Ibura Salaam discussion

Are you an artist? If so, what are your issues with self-promotion? Are you a committed reader? What types of promotions to do you enjoy receiving from authors?

I'm finding that it is a gift to be doing this in a digital age--everything can be recorded and shared. And you can try out new tools. My new word for self-promotion: EXPERIMENTATION.

I'm experimenting with this form of connecting with audiences and I hope you will join me.

I am at heart an artist, even though I have embraced history as a happy medium between art and the other end of the career spectrum. With that being said, I've found self-promotion is a must in this world. Every day I have to push past my discomfort with "ringing my own bell."

So I'm just back from Atlanta. I planned the whole trip and so many things came from it--it just reminds me that self-promotions is really just showing up. It's an intimate act that you are doing for you and for your work... telling your work that it's important, telling the world that your work matters.

It can feel put on or forced if you don't have your own relationship to self-promoting. It's taken me some time to position it in a way that it doesn't feel like a chore. The point is that you're being you--and sharing yourself with the world. That makes it a little more vulnerable and scary--but also natural.

I went to a branding workshop--working on the vague notion that as I'm interacting with the world, there might be something of value there. At the workshop the branding guru was saying it isn't your job to remake yourself into something someone wants to be a part of, it's to be you, and find your tribe. There are people who want what you have to offer--exactly because of exactly who you are. Your struggle/your pain; the way you talk (or don't talk); the you-ness of you is your God-given message.