You don’t start Sundays talking about psychoanalytic theory. But here we are…
I’m feeling a little more human today but my brain still feels like it’s been punched from the back of my skull.
Anyways.
It’s 1953. Donald Winnicott. British baby-whisperer, Freud’s angrier cousin, dropped a nugget of truth that still rings true today 72 years later.
Kids need security blankets.
Not just fabric. Transitional objects.
Crutch-shaped love for tiny humans learning to not be parasitic meatsacks (his words, probably.)
And yes 72 years later, you’re still clutching your blankies. We all have them.
It’s what I like to call our own little personal religion of stuff and here’s a few examples:
Wedding rings (shackle-chic, baby)
Grandma’s brooch (smells like guilt and mothballs)
That “lucky” shirt you haven’t washed since the Bush administration (it’s alive now)
Tattoos of dead dogs/quotations you regret/geometric shapes that “mean something, okay?”
Phone photos of your ex’s cat (you monster)
Or if you look in to your hobbyist coping mechanisms:
The coffee mug that’s 40% calcium deposits (it speaks to you)
Your Peloton, aka “the guilt-hammer” (Lol 2020 was wild with Peloton Guru’s…)
Vinyl records you don’t play (plastic security blankets for beardy boys)
Your first car. Rusty chariot of teenage hubris, now a driveway shrine to entropy
The thing is. These aren’t objects. They’re you. Flayed bits of identity stapled to dollar-store knickknacks. You think that prayer bead necklace protects you? Nah. It’s a worry-stone for the existential dread badger gnawing your spine.
Winnicott called it “transitional phenomena.” I call it emotional duct tape. We’re all just toddlers in adult-costumes, dragging our blankies through divorce court, panic attacks, and Zoom funerals.
And hey. Look at your hands right now. What’re you death-gripping? A phone? A whiskey glass? A ratty paperback with dog-eared pages that smell like 2019’s poor life choices?
Exactly.
But this is where the fun starts and you should look at creating your content around transitional objects.
So here’s how to forge transitional objects for your fans:
Embed artifacts in the work itself.
Write a short story where the protagonist’s cursed locket is described down to the dents. Then sell replicas on your website (95% tin, 5% haunted printer ink.)
Hide a QR code in your novel’s appendix that links to a 10-second voicemail from your antagonist: “I know what you did last Thursday.” Let them screenshot it. Let them panic.
Print your poetry on disintegrating rice paper. Tell readers to plant it in dirt to “grow new poems.” (It’ll just sprout mold. But it’s art right?)
You could also create relics of participation
Host a “ritual” where fans mail you their childhood nightmares. Burn them. Send back ashes in vials labelled “Unicorn Bone Dust” with a certificate of exorcism. Charge $19.99.
Turn your book’s typos into limited edition crypto-tokens called OopsGremlins™. Assign each a personality. Watch eBay wars erupt.
Carve your initials into a stump, film it, then sell chunks as “Authentic Author Angst Splinters.” Bonus: Soak them in dollar-store cologne you call “Eau de Writer’s Block.”
(I took this idea from legendary PR man Paul Hartunian who sold the Brooklyn Bridge piece by piece way back in the day)
Release a “Trauma Trinket” collection: Cheap rings engraved with “This Could’ve Been a Paragraph”, stress balls shaped like your protagonist’s severed head, mugs that say “My Favourite Author Gaslights Me”.
These are just far out there examples but I’m sure you get what I’m saying.
When you’re posting a piece of content online. Don’t just post that content and let it die. Figure out how you can bake it into your whole world. It allows your customers and fans become addicted to you and what you do. It can even be as simple as recording a custom audio file. I don’t mean a voice note or voice message. I mean good old fashioned MP3, popping it on an cheap as shit USB stick and a little hand written thank you note posted off to their address.
If you look at how the world is transitioning too, especially cause of A.I. and all of the bullshit out there. The old fashioned things are making a massive comeback.
Back in 2020 when the world was locked down. I was fixing up typewriters and hand typing letters and stories and posting them all over the world. Between 2020 and 2021 I wrote and posted just shy of 1000 to all four corners of the world and people loved it.
To this day I still get the occasional message from the people that grabbed a letter for $5
Well this has gotten a little longer than I expected but it’s a topic I’m incredibly interested in and I’m always looking for new ways to make my work stick.
Don’t forget to check out D.W. Winnicott’s book here
Stephen Walker