Saturday 23 February 2008

Learned Helplessness and the Writing Life

Roger Morris has an absolutely fascinating post on his blog about trying to promote your books (and the possible pointlessness thereof).

And Dr. Ian Hocking dropped a line in Roger's comment trail directing us to his marvelous post on the "locus of control."

Now I understand why I'm so depressed. Doesn't fix anything, but at least I have a name for it: Learned Helplessness.

1 comment:

Len Tyler said...

I agree, Roger's post raises an interesting problem. We want to promote our books but can't be sure anything we are doing is actually helping. As somebody once said: everyone knows that half the money spent on advertising is wasted - the problem is that nobody knows which half. I'm sure his conclusion - that we just have to concentrate on writing the best books we can - is right.

Roger (and Frank Tallis) had a really good review today, by the way, in the Sunday Times. Congratulations!