6.1 Relationship chemistry
What is positioning?
In 1981, Al Ries and Jack Trout published Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. In it they explain that to position a product or service in the marketplace means…
You find a need or desire already in your prospect, in their mind or heart, and you speak to that.
I recommend reading their book. Some of the examples are dated, but the principles are still sound.
Except…
I think we writers can do better.
I’m sure you’ve heard writing teachers who say you have to write for yourself. That’s the key to success.
And there are writing teachers who say that you have to write for your readers. You have to put them first. That’s the key to success.
I think if one of those two sides works for you consistently and well, go for it.
But primal play gives us another option…
Write for yourself and for your reader at the same time.
So you can…
Create partnership chemistry.
If you’re writing something serious, primal-play positioning means that you do two things at once and in partnership with each other…
You find your way down to what’s deepest in your heart and you connect with what’s deepest in the heart of your reader.
Or if you’re writing something for entertainment…
Find what gives you the most pleasure to write that matches up with what gives your reader the most pleasure to read.
Ries and Trout say you should find something that’s already in your prospect’s mind instead of trying to put something new in there, which is a much harder thing to do.
But writers are not just selling, we’re creating. And maybe you’re writing something that the reader doesn’t know about or desire…yet.
But once you bring it present and make it visible and alive, now your reader really, really wants it.
Or…
What if you write a story unlike anything your reader has ever seen before, but she gives it a try and loves it?
This is the kind of thing that can happen with primal-play positioning.
Okay, but how do you do positioning? What’s the practice?
Here’s what I recommend. When you open a file on your computer to write your book, at the same time you open six other files, and label them: Amazon description, proposal development, title, cover, blurbs, and comments.
So at the same time you’re writing your actual book, you’re also playing with…
How you’re going to talk about your book with potential readers.
Why not wait till your book is finished before you start working on your publicity?
Two big reasons.
When you finish the last sentence on the last page of your book, you might be tired, exhausted even. And now instead of going out to celebrate, you’ve got to get to work on your marketing materials, from scratch.
And for many writers this is the hardest stuff to write, because they don’t like promoting themselves and are not that great at doing it.
And second, what if you discover as you develop your marketing descriptions and blurbs, you discover that your book doesn’t measure up to what you’re promising.
Or that you didn’t get to the heart of your book during the writing, and now you’re going to have to do a lot of rewriting. When you are tired and though you were done. Ugh. Yuck. Not fun.
The point of doing primal-play positioning all along the way as you write is that…
First, you will play your way deeper into the heart of your message or story.
And…
Second, you’ll play your way into sharper clarity about the wants and desires of your reader.
What you’ll find in the next four sections may look a lot like brainstorming, but I prefer to think of it as playing.
And since there is a serious dimension to it, a relationship urgency, I think of it as primal play.
I remember times when I was part of a brainstorming group, and we were supposed to be playing, but really we were still trying hard to find the answer to the problem we were wrestling with as quickly and efficiently as possible.
There was pressure on us. So the process was partly fun and partly not fun.
I recommend diving into the positioning of your book on the same day you start writing, because then you’ll have lots of time to play with absolutely no pressure.
You’ll get to give yourself the blessing of time. And this will allow your creativity to flourish. And then your positioning will end up more engaging.
Now it’s playtime!
