© Rodolfo Clix

I’ve been playing with the most wonderful marketing idea for EssentialWriters.com.

Generally, bright ideas come easily to me – it’s making them work that’s the challenge. My initial flush of inspiration never takes feasibility into account.

That’s what it’s so important for me not to be working alone on a project as big as this website. If I was left to my own devices I would probably have fluttered along writing and uploading news stories, interviews and blog entries, with never a thought about whether anyone was reading them.

Now though, prompted by my collaborators, I have swung in the other direction and want to insist on everyone I meet, now to mention random passers-by and train conductors (“You want to check my ticket? Then promise me that you’ll take a look at EssentialWriters.com”) visiting the site.

But what remains true at the heart of this is the urge to create a happy, friendly, unconditionally welcoming website, which is the ethos my latest impractical marketing idea bloomed from.

Of my two collaborators, one was full of enthusiasm, and the other, the more experienced, more cynical of the pair pointed out all the hurdles, the potential costs and the limited benefits for the site. I suddenly understood that the idea appealed me more because it sounded like fun than because of any real, solid marketing benefits.

But it’s not all bad. The idea is for something I can’t quite share yet, but it’s something that I, as a writer, would love to come across as a literature festival. And that fact, coupled with my stubborn nature, means that it may yet come into being, provided I’m able to iron out all the concerns of my cynical collaborator.