‘Be the Gateway’ and the Relational Nature of Creativity (Reading Notes 2)
On Dan Blank’s human-centered approach to sharing creative work
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Dear Living Dark readers,
Ahead of the specific meat of today’s post, which is about a book I finished reading this week, there’s this:
A couple of months ago, before Writing at the Wellspring was published, I entered it in the annual nonfiction book contest held by BookLife, a service of Publishers Weekly. The final outcome remains to be announced, but each entry receives a report from a professional BookLife critic. The one for Wellspring arrived a couple of days ago. The critic’s response was highly positive toward both the content and the prose:
Plot/Idea: Writing at the Wellspring takes a refreshing approach to the craft of writing by recentering on the ancient concepts of the muse (or demon) as a force of inspiration, perseverance, and passion. Less a work of practical advice for writers, Cardin’s book is a philosophical treatise on creativity, its purposes, and its mysteries.
Prose: Cardin’s prose is at once academic in tone and richly lyrical; the subject matter and the wealth of references and allusions make for invigorating reading.
Originality: In a sea of titles offering tips for outlining and scaffolding a piece of writing, Cardin gives readers permission to embrace the beauty and uncertainty of the creative process, while pulling from a primal source, and arriving at a place of personal and/or spiritual renewal.
Character/Execution: Cardin balances autobiographical material with literary history, philosophy, and mythology. Writers who may feel they have lost touch with ‘the muses,’ but are discouraged by more conventional writerly advice, will be emboldened to ‘write into the dark.’
I especially appreciate the correct identification of Wellspring as “a philosophical treatise on creativity, its purposes, and its mysteries.” If a book like this sounds appealing, scroll to the bottom of this post for ordering information.
And now for some positive comments on another book.
Be the Gateway by Dan Blank
A heartful guide to sharing creative work for creatives who are allergic to marketing
Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience by Dan Blank (WeGrowMedia, 2017) is framed as a book for writers, artists, and creatives who may feel uncomfortable, ignorant, or inept when it comes to marketing and sharing their work. Blank is an author consultant and digital strategist who has worked with many prominent names and brands in the publishing industry, including Publishers Weekly and Writer’s Digest. And for my money, his book nicely delivers on the promise of its subtitle. I’m currently in my third decade of writing and publishing, and I found Blank’s approach to be uncommonly insightful, not least because I have always felt the discomfort and aversion to marketing and self-promotion that he describes.
In many ways, Be the Gateway lives in the same general space as Austin Kleon’s bestselling Show Your Work! Both books outline useful strategies for attracting an audience by letting them in on your creative process. But whereas Kleon’s book is focused entirely on this theme, Blank incorporates it into a wider framework. In the words of the Amazon description, “If you want to share your voice and inspire people with your writing, art, craft, or creative idea, you must unlock new experiences for them—not just through what you create, but through the unique way in which you share it with the world. That is the gateway, the one you lead people through to introduce them to your world.” You do this, he says, by keeping an eye on the core fact of narratives and their importance in our lives. This includes the narratives that both you and your readers are living and the narrative and vision that you seek to advance and embody in your work. Get this right, he says, and you and your readers will naturally gravitate to each other with the help of a little practical execution.
It’s a fascinating approach, and one that feels like it has real value, at least to this reader. As I said, I’m someone who has never—ever, at all, for the least infinitesimal fraction of an emotional second—found anything attractive or enjoyable about the prospect of marketing and promoting my writing. This has put me at odds with the way things are supposed to be these days. By now it’s passé to state that the publishing world’s playing field has shifted from what it used to be, and that today’s writers are required to serve as their own marketers, publicists, and promoters in ways they previously ignored because back then it was all the responsibility of the publisher. Those halcyon days, which have been a bit misremembered—most writers always had to do some of their own signal-boosting—went away with the birth of the internet, the rise of blogs and social media, major shifts in general economic conditions, accompanying major shifts in the publishing world’s ecosystem, and so on. Publishers now reserve the majority of their marketing budgets for the fraction of a percentage of writers who constitute their biggest sellers, with everyone else being required to bring their own audience and foot their own bill.
But then, as Blank cogently notes, this all means the work of making people aware of your art is really just the cultivation of relationships. And, as it so happens, this is nothing new. “Again and again,” he says,
I hear creative professionals bemoan “the good old days” when authors and artists didn’t have to worry about marketing.
This is a lie. It is an excuse to try to avoid the same challenges that creative professionals have always had to face.
When you read about the publishing world of the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, you realize that letters and lunches were a significant part of making connections to get one’s work published or noticed. . . .
What you find is that if you dig into the story of someone’s success “back in the day,” you find a web of relationships, of persistent effort on the business/marketing side, and, of course, a lot of luck. (65)
He goes on to say it’s actually easier to connect with your ideal audience today because of the greater number of communication channels that are available. And the really important thing when using those channels—email, social media, blogs, and so forth—is to take the right attitude, the one that not only preserves the integrity of you and your work, but that arises right out of it: “Instead of launching a ‘brand,’ you are simply seeking out small conversations, tiny ways of helping, and having meaningful conversations with people who will care about your vision” (66).
Blank’s interesting innovation here, which I welcome, is to redeem our marketing efforts by framing them as part and parcel of our creativity itself, and to tie this to an approach based not on massive general marketing campaigns but on building human relationships one at a time. Don’t separate your creative work from the work of helping it find and connect with its audience, he says. Recognize these as aspects of the same drive and purpose. The latter is the extension and fulfillment of the former. And it functions best in the context of connecting with individual people in meaningful ways.
In other hands this might come off as sophistry, just a clever move to anesthetize our justified sense of resistance to selling out and exploiting our muse, just another co-opting of primary creative truth and motivation in the service of the “creator economy” (a term that I will never be able to use or hear without ironic scare quotes around it). But in Blank’s hands, it really works. Over the years he has developed and shared an approach that he calls “human-centered marketing,” a way of identifying and connecting with one’s audience that’s natural and genuine, serving as an organic part of the creative process itself. I only learned of this two or three years ago when I discovered his newsletter, The Creative Shift. And I have truly enjoyed and, I think, benefited from paying attention to it, even though I’m someone whose writing career is fairly advanced. For more than 25 years, I have been figuring out who my audience is, who will resonate with my writing and the unfolding vision that drives it, and how to connect what I write with those individuals. And I still find fresh and valuable insights in Blank’s book and newsletter.
Lest you think this is a book primarily made up of philosophy and theory, I’ll add that Be the Gateway is chock-full of concrete, practical guidance. Blank gives advice on studying other people’s work, and also reader responses to it, to clarify what people may find valuable in your own work. He explains how to write your bio and how to link this to your primary creative purpose and vision. He outlines an approach to identifying and articulating your vision so that you can more insightfully and accurately identify your ideal reader and how your work will appeal to them. He talks about befriending and learning from other writers and creators who share your orientation and embody the level of successful audience connection you’re seeking. He offers advice on building a platform. Throughout, he uses the metaphor of building a “gate” for people that will bring them into the world of your creative vision. As indicated by the title, the core insight at the foundation of his system, its secret magic, is that you are the gateway. In fact, this is the title of Section I, which is followed by two more sections on opening the gate and walking people through it.
I finished reading this book at a particularly apt time, when my own experience is mirroring its message. As you know, I published Writing at the Wellspring only a month ago. And I’m presently involved in multiple conversations with readers who have contacted me to express their heartfelt gratitude at the sense of confirmation, clarification, and identification they’ve been receiving from it. I’ve been told the book is having a catalyzing effect, that it’s helpfully articulating people’s own deep sense of creativity and the self, that it’s helping writers to understand blocks and barriers or to finally intuit the meaning of themes that have been threaded through their work for years. This kind of feedback is invigorating and humbling. It’s exactly the kind of organic response that I would have hoped for, and it’s in line with things that other readers have told me with increasing frequency over the past 15 years or so. Naturally, this has shaped the way I think, feel, and act when it comes to sharing my writing. Be the Gateway thus serves as a welcome confirmation and extension of these things.
Here are my top short passages from the book, including page numbers for my own reference. Bold emphases are mine.
“Instead of framing the value of your work by how it performs in the market, you define it by how other people experience the world through your creative work—the stories and experiences you share, the topics you talk about. This simple idea radically shifts the value of what you create. Instead of selling a product in a marketplace, you become the gateway for how your work can shape the world for others, and inspire them.” (7)
“It is about understanding the connection between what you create, why you create it, and how it will engage others. This is the ‘secret’ to engaging others, which is not really a secret at all. It is as old as human culture and how we are wired.” (12)
“Let’s face it, this is why someone crafts creative work—they become a gateway for others. . . . You are a gateway to the identity that someone wants for themselves, or that highlights an aspect of themselves they want to be more clear, more in the forefront, more real.” (20)
“Your audience lives by narratives. This is how they express their identity. They want a narrative that makes sense of the world. It is not just a reflection on the world, but their place within it. It justifies their decisions. It allays their fears. It motivates their hopes. . . . You are not creating a “fan,” or a customer [with your creative work]. You are providing someone something much deeper, which is a sense of themselves and the world around them. When you understand the narratives your ideal audience seeks, you know how to engage those people. You know how to grab their attention, you know how to get them to lean in, and to become so enamored that they can’t help but tell their friends.” (25, 30)
“When you follow your dreams, it can disrupt the world of those around you. You force them to confront their own barriers. They may have a creative dream that they haven’t pursued. They may feel that they have good excuses as to why they haven’t, and when you go ahead and pursue your dreams, it breaks their excuses.” (52)
“Creative work fails to find an audience when the creator assumes a specific intrinsic value within it that their ideal audience is never able to see or experience because the creator didn’t make it clear to them. Walking someone through the gate is a process of helping others experience your work, by having empathy with how they see the world.” (151)
I know many Living Dark dark readers are writers and artists themselves, so if you’re interested in exploring both a new perspective and new practical methods of connecting with the people who will organically gravitate to your work—the people your work is naturally suited to inspire, entertain, and/or help—I think you’d probably find something of value in Be the Gateway. The book is available at both Amazon and Bookshop.org.
Warm regards,
P.S. The Amazon and Bookshop references above are both affiliate links, so I’ll earn a commission if you click through either and make a purchase. I have an affiliate status with both stores but haven’t made much use of them. I figured I’d start doing more of that in 2026.
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Published in December:
“[An] intimate journey into the mystery of creativity and spirit… Cardin weaves practical methods, personal stories, literary references, and mystical insights into a lyrical meditation on what it means to create from the depths of the soul… both deeply personal and universally resonant.”
— BookLife review (Publishers Weekly)“A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning.
— Joanna Penn“I can’t think of any [other books] that link the creative act so uniquely or persuasively with spirituality.”
— Victoria Nelson“A meditation on the silence and darkness out of which all creative acts emerge....A guide for writers unlike any other.”
— J. F. Martel“Important to any writer ready to see through the self illusion and realize the freedom this brings to any creative work.”
— Katrijn van Oudheusden
Available from all the major stores, including Amazon, Bookshop.org, and Barnes & Noble.
Uhm, Matt, esteemed author colleague, are you going to persuade me purchase a book with every one of these reviews? 🤓 Because I just did. Again.