Category: Uncategorized

What buying a typewriter taught me about writing

A couple weeks ago, I bought three typewriters:

They were all used by the same woman who had passed away 20 years ago. I answered an ad for them on Craiglist and went to the home of her son to pick them up. He lived in a large house, which was now empty because he was moving. There was a small pile of furniture in one corner, and in the empty dining room, these three typewriters sitting on the floor. He referred to them as family heirlooms, and he clearly couldn’t bring himself to throw them out (the junk collector had left just before I arrived.) But he also couldn’t justify keeping them — they are big, heavy, and to most people, useless.

He was thrilled I answered the ad, and without prompting, immediately offered me a great price if I took all three. I agreed, and when I told him one would be for my 8-year old son, I could hear a quiver of relief in his voice. These objects that meant so much to him would be used again.

I wanted a typewriter for my studio to better understand the tools by which people wrote years ago. All I do each day is either write or work with writers, and many express to me how overwhelmed they can become at all of the apps and tools they are told they must master in order to succeed today.

When I looked up the history of these three typewriters, I noticed something. From left to right in the photo above:

  • The Underwood #5 is from 1920, but this exact same model began production in 1900. In those 20 years, there were almost no changes to any aspect of the machine.
  • The Remington Noiseless is from 1937
  • The Royal is from 1950

What that means is astounding: for fifty years, this primary tool for writers had barely changed at all. I want you to imagine using a laptop to write your next book that is from 1968. Or a version of Microsoft Word from 1972.

Compare this to how we feel about our mobile phones, social media, apps such as Canva, or hashtags; where we are always on the lookout for a new trend. How, when you read advice on creativity and marketing from 3 or 4 years ago, it somehow feels outdated.

Yet, for more than half a century, the typewriter remained largely unchanged. The big innovation in typewriters wouldn’t come until 1961 when IBM released their Selectric model. (This is on my “want” list!)

I was looking at the cover of Stephen King’s book about the craft of writing, and noticed something that related to this:

He’s writing longhand, with pen and paper. That was not how he wrote all his books, but it reminded me that a writer with these tools — pen and paper — could just as easily write a book as someone who used a laptop. Evidently, J.K. Rowling wrote the first draft of Harry Potter longhand, later typing it out on an old typewriter.

You and I each have those tools at our disposal. If you are pulling your hair out trying to keep up with all of the new trends, all of the new apps, you don’t have to.

You can just use the tools that successful writers have used for decades. They are still available. They still work.

Oh, and my son does indeed love his “new” typewriter:

He keeps asking if he can write school reports on it this Fall. He and I have been figuring out all of the functions, and exploring how each lever leads to a gear or spring that makes something happen.

I spend all day talking to writers, and I find that many are overwhelmed with all they are told they have to do. Often, this focuses on tools and trends. Their heads are spinning from hearing things such as: “Have you heard of this app that automatically creates an image from a quote from your book and then posts it to three of your social networks automatically, including that brand new one that everyone is talking about — the one that an author used to become a bestseller?”

Ugh.

When I interviewed Dani Shapiro, she bemoaned that our primary tool for creating, the laptop computer, is also our greatest distraction. More and more, I have been focusing on how writers can reach their goals by focusing more on developing skills around their creative process that are universal and timeless.

If you are a writer, I would encourage you to focus on:

  • Gaining clarity on exactly what you create and why. Focus on one thing with vigor. If you have trouble choosing because you have so many ideas, simply pick one and work on it for a year.
  • Honing your creative process. Identify what practices help you create, and which hinder it. Experiment with new ways to create amidst your already busy life. Consider what tools and activities you can get rid of, instead of what “trendy new apps” you can add in.
  • Connecting your writing to real people in meaningful ways. This means collaborating, reaching out to people who love books as much as you do, and having colleagues. You don’t need to spam the “like” or “follow” buttons to do this, in fact, some of the most effective ways don’t require social media at all. They involve letters, email, the phone, and a conversation over coffee.

Develop processes and support systems that actually work to move your writing forward, and also feel good. The ones that fill your life with a sense of creative purpose and connections to others, not spammy marketing trends.

Develop the processes and the relationships you need to create the work that matters most to you, and connect it to the lives of other people in truly meaningful ways.

-Dan

Writing Spaces: Where You Create Matters

Craft comes first. But when speaking with writers, I often find that they struggle to create. They can’t get in a good writing routine, and other important priorities (job, family, home) distract them from writing.

Today I want to talk about how where you create can help you write more.

A year ago I took a big leap: I signed a lease on a private studio where I would do all of my creative work and run my company. At the time, it felt like a scary commitment. But now I realize, it wasn’t the commitment to my landlord that scared me, it was the commitment to myself.

Dan Blank

This studio challenged me. I would have to live up to this space.

To do that, I decorated one wall with images of creators who inspire me. As much as I could, I chose photos of them in their creative spaces. Here is JK Rowling in a cafe writing Harry Potter:

Ray Eames designing in her studio:

Kate Bush at the mixing console at what looks to be Abbey Road Studios:

Alexander Calder in his studio:

Vivian Maier on the street taking photographs:

In each of these instances, the creator carefully chose where they created and used this to fuel their creative process. As I look across the room at them, I am reminded that creativity is a process, and that I must invest in it.

With your own writing, I imagine you simply make due with the space that you have. Perhaps this includes a desk in the corner of a spare bedroom, or maybe you have carved out two feet of space on a kitchen counter to place your laptop to write in spare moments in the day.

If I consider the goals of a creative space, they would include:

  • Provide clarity on what you need to do. For years, I would write at cafes or libraries. There are many times that I would ensure I had clarity by turning my laptop into a machine with a single purpose. I would remove all other files from the desktop of the computer except for the one document I was currently writing. In my mind, this machine had a single purpose. It was no longer a computer that could do 1,000 things, it was now only a tool to work on a single piece of writing.
  • Remove you from distraction. For well more than a decade, I have been able to have a private office at home in a spare bedroom. This space has a door that not only closes, but locks! Of course, my studio has the same thing. But when I wrote in public, at cafes and libraries, I would choose my seat carefully. Sometimes I liked the white noise of being right in the middle of a busy space. Other times, I would go to a library two towns away, and sit in a corner facing the wall. I would also wear headphones while writing, listening to music. The music would remove me from my physical context, and focus me on the task at hand. Headphones are also a wonderful signal to others that you shouldn’t be disturbed. Don’t just use earbuds, go and buy those big headphones that cover your ears! Author Tim Ferriss says that he will often wear headphones when working out, but won’t be listening to anything. He wears them as a signal to others that he is concentrating and shouldn’t be disturbed.
  • Incentivize you to create. You want to feel a sense of accomplishment when you create, right? For me, I write using Scrivener, and it has this wonderful little meter that I can setup. I can choose a goal for a writing session by word count, and the meter will change from red to orange to green as I come closer to my goal. If you are ideating or editing, it may be more difficult to quantify results. Consider hanging a simple calendar in your creative space where you get to mark a big bold X on every day that you create. When I wrote at cafes, I would sometimes buy myself a treat if I reached a certain writing goal, such as writing for an hour. Brownies an be wonderful creative tools!
  • Remove all barriers to entry for getting started. Do you write on a laptop that takes 7 minutes to boot up, has a desktop filled with 100 files, and it sits on a crowded desk with all of your bills, recipes, and mail? If so, that means that just to get to your writing means you are forcing yourself to wade through all of that muck first. Why put your writing space in the middle of a crowded jungle that has no clear roads to it? Schedule time with your family if you need to where you can write distraction-free. Block off that time in your calendar so that it is as unmovable as an important doctor’s appointment. Up above I said that I had to live up to my studio space. Find ways to do that in your own life — make your creative work an obligation that is as important as any other in your life.
  • Have all of the tools you need at the ready. When I spoke to author Dani Shapiro she talked about how the tool that most writers use is also the source of their greatest distraction: the computer. People struggle to not be distracted by email, social media, or the news. Consider buying a used laptop that is just for writing. During a Mastermind session I ran last year, three writers in the same group admitted that they wrote on an old-fashioned word processor! Why? Because it didn’t have a web browser, and didn’t even connect to the internet! Consider all of the tools you need to create invest in them. For the first few months in my studio, it was largely empty. It took awhile to give myself permission to invest in books, supplies, other materials that I can use in my creative process. Each expense felt like a debate in my mind about whether it would have a return on investment. But then, I would look to the photo of Calder’s studio and see raw materials scattered across his floor; I would look at photos of Ray Eames’ studio and all of the shelves of materials that she kept in case she needed them; I would look at Kate Bush in the studio, with thousands of dollars of gear ready at a moments notice.

What difference has a private studio made in my life? I create more consistently, I create for longer periods of time, and I feel more focused while writing.

But what if you are someone who simply can’t carve out your own creative space? You work long hours at your day job, you have a long commute, and your home is a one-bedroom apartment that you share with your spouse and two children? Is a creative space essential?

Nope.

But I would encourage you to consider how you can re-create the list of goals above without a dedicated creative space. When I interviewed author Michael LaRonn, he told me that by installing a writing app on his phone, he would steal small moments throughout the day to write his novels 100 words at a time. He would do this while on line at the food store, while waiting for his wife at Target and in other small moments that most of us would simply check Facebook or the news. He turned distracted time into creative time.

Likewise, author Tammy Greenwood told me (here and here) how she would write scenes from her novels in her mind while waiting in the car to pickup her kids at school. When she got to the keyboard later in the day, all she had to do was put down what was already written in her mind.

Stacy McAnulty told me that wrote her first book one-handed, without punctuation or capitalization, because she wrote while breastfeeding her first child using her other hand.

In each instance, these writers developed a writing routine that worked with the resources they had at the time.

I’d love to know: where do you create?

Thanks!

-Dan

 

 

 

The best advice that many writers fail to take

This week I saw a series of Tweets from author Delilah S. Dawson in which she tried to demystify the reality behind what leads to “huge traditional publishing success.” The entire chain of approximately 30 Tweets is amazing, but here are a couple to frame our discussion today:

Delilah talks about how our expectations of success can riddle our lives with a feeling of being let down. Instead, you must keep writing and keep sharing.

The Tweets above reminded me of my interviews with novelist Tammy Greenwood:
Tammy Greenwood

I often talk to writers in my Creative Shift Mastermind that the sweet spot of your creative work should be somewhere between excitement and fear — to take a creative risk that you care deeply about. I think that is why I often go back to my interviews with Tammy, and why “terrifying” is somehow in both titles — Tammy’s career is amazing to me.

This week she released her newest novel, Rust & Stardust. On Amazon she already has 46 reviews with an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, and on Goodreads there are 409 reviews, averaging 4.25 out of 5 stars. Why use numbers to describe a book? Because it is always wonderful when readers have their voices heard by leaving reviews. Because when art effects someone’s life is when it is complete.

Last night on Facebook, Tammy reflected on her experience this week:

Her week was spent with readers and working on her next novel. Her life is filled with creating and sharing, and all the magic that each brings.

What will bring success and fulfillment to your career as a writer? Filling it with real human experiences. Where you follow your own curiosity to create something special with your writing. To share that work in a way that gives it a chance at connecting deeply with someone. And to (hopefully) feel a sense of fulfillment in experiencing these processes.

I’ll leave you with the best advice that Neil Gaiman says he has ever been given:

“I thought what is the best piece of advice I was ever given. And I realized that it was actually a piece of advice that I had failed – and it came from Stephen King, it was 20 years ago, at the height of the success of – the initial success of Sandman, the comic I was writing. I was writing a comic people loved and they were taking it seriously. And Stephen King liked Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he saw the madness that was going on, the long signing lines, all of that stuff, and his advice to me was this: “This is really great. You should enjoy it.” And I didn’t.”

“Best advice I ever got but I ignored. Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn’t a moment for the next 14 or 15 years that I wasn’t writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn’t stop and look around and go, this is really fun. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. It’s been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit that I was on.”

“That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places.”

Thank you to Delilah, to Tammy, to all of the readers out there supporting their work, and to you for supporting mine.

-Dan

Conduct an audit of your author platform

I get emails like this all the time from writers:

“All the literary agents are telling me: ‘If you had a platform, I would represent you.'”

Why do they say this? A lot of books are thrust into the marketplace with a quiet “thud” — no readers, no sales, no reviews — and the agents want as much help as possible to prevent that from happening

Today I want to talk about how to assess your author platform in order to find clear, meaningful actions you can take in order to improve it and better develop your audience.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been conducting a “brand audit” for my company, WeGrowMedia. As I went through the process, I realized that it would be useful to reframe it for writers as an author platform audit. Even if you feel you don’t yet have a platform, this guide will help.

I will encourage you to do this way before you think you need it, and to do it on a recurring basis. I’m 8 years in to running my company, and I have done a brand audit like this many times. It is a great way for me to hone my radical clarity of what I do and why, and identify how I can best help the writers I serve.

Let’s dig in…

Remind Yourself of What Your Audience Wants Most

If you are a writer, your goals may be specific to the book you are writing or the place you are in your career. If you are 100% focused on getting an agent, consider what agents and publishers want and why. The short version is that they want you to:

  • Write a great book.
  • Identify the ideal readers are for your book. Don’t rely on vague demographics or descriptions. Be able to describe them in detail — why your book will resonate deeply with them.
  • Have a keen sense of the marketplace. Publishing is a business, and if you are asking for collaborators to invest in you and your work, then take the marketplace seriously. Identify comparable books to yours.
  • Develop relationships with colleagues who are connected to your ideal audience.
  • Establish channels to reach your ideal audience. This could be social media, but it may include many others as well (more on that below.)
  • Based on the list above, have ideas on how you can reach these ideal readers in more proactive ways — marketing, outreach, partnerships, events, collaborations, etc.

That is what a literary agent means when they say, “If you had a platform, I would represent you,” or even when they say “Come back to me when you have 10,000 Twitter followers.” They don’t really want that (you can literally buy followers, so that wouldn’t help them with their goals), they want the list above.

Regardless of whether you are seeking representation, you likely want to grow your audience. In that case, the list above applies as well. If you are self-publishing the list is probably even more important because you won’t automatically have a professional editing, marketing, and publicity team working on your behalf.

Remind Yourself of What Makes a Great Author Platform

Your author platform is not the number of social media followers you have. I can’t stress that strongly enough. Stop chasing the follower count number. I have seen so many writers or artists who have this super impressive social media follower count, but nearly zero connection to an actual audience who knows them and likes them.

What’s the difference?

When that person launches their book, it lands with the “thud” I referenced above. No one buys it. No one talks about it. No one reviews it.

I define an author platform as having two elements:

  1. Communication
  2. Trust

These are timeless and universal things that were just as applicable to an author in 1920, 1960, or 1990 as it is today.

Communication is about empathy and clarity: knowing who you want to reach, what they care about, and considering the best way to truly engage with them. It is as much about listening as it is talking.

This is why we even talk about social media. Social media is just a tool, but your focus needs to be on the person and how to truly connect with them.

I think people get distracted by the technology, and miss the point: this is about people. Let’s have Steve Jobs explain it, here is an excerpt from a 1994 interview:

INTERVIEWER: You’ve often talked about how technology can empower people, how it can change their lives. Do you still have as much faith in technology today as you did when you started out 20 years ago?

STEVE JOBS: Oh, sure. It’s not a faith in technology. It’s faith in people. Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them. It’s not the tools that you have faith in — tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not.

The second part of platform — trust — focuses on how strong that connection is. When someone chooses to follow you on social media, that is one indication of trust. They want to hear from you consistently. So are actions such as signing up for your email newsletter, attending your book reading, pre-ordering your book, sending you an email, or even recommending your book to a friend.

Trust is also why marketers have talked a lot about the phrase “influencers” in the past decade. I don’t like that term because it feels too transactional in nature, and trust extends beyond that. But the crux of it is (please read this next line in a robot voice in your head): “You have a book that INFLUENCER X may enjoy. INFLUENCER X has a big audience who trusts them. If they recommend your book, you will get more sales. Befriend INFLUENCER X. Repeat with INFLUENCERS Y, Z, A, B, C, and so on…”

The Author Platform Audit — What to Analyze

Okay, now that we have reviewed what your audience wants most and the foundational elements of an author platform, let’s dig into the audit.

Chances are, you feel like you don’t have an author platform at all, or the one you have is not what you want it to be.

You are wrong.

I always remembered the advice I read years ago about what to do when you get laid off from a job: go home and update your resume. List out not just what you did in your previous work, but the impact it had on the people and organizations you worked with. It’s a huge confidence booster.

In the same vein, you likely have more of an author platform than you realize, it simply may not be organized in a way that feels actionable.

Create a document. I did this in a spreadsheet, but you can use a regular document or even just a sheet of paper. We are going to list out all of elements of your author platform.

Do NOT write down how many followers you have on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. That number is useless, so ignore it.

Instead, I want you to:

  1. List out each place online or off that someone can connect with you. So may include your website, social channels, an Amazon profile, etc. Go ahead and Google yourself. (scary, right?!) See what comes up and make note of places you are featured online that you forgot about. Oh, and if you Google yourself and nothing comes up, that is a good reminder that you have work to do. Do people use Google to find books? Not really. But do they hear about a book recommendation from a friend, and then Google the name of the author to find it? All the time! This is the “communication” aspect of author platform. If people can’t find you, that is a problem.
  2. How do you proactively reach out to people, how often, and how effective is each? This includes email newsletters, the content you share on social media, speeches you give, podcasts you publish, etc. A lot of people feel that they are on a social media treadmill that takes up a lot of time and feels completely ineffective. Give this a good hard look to see where you are adopting a vanilla strategy and how you can connect with people in more meaningful ways.
  3. Analyze each place that people can find you: all the things you just listed out. Note obvious ways you can update or improve each of these places. Does your Amazon profile incorrectly list your books? Does your LinkedIn bio still not mention your last two books? Does your author homepage still say, “Preorder now! My book launches Sept 8, 2015!”
  4. Collect all of the various ways you describe who you are and what you do. I see this all the time: an author describes themselves in 4 different ways on 4 different channels. If you can’t effectively communicate these things, how can you expect people to truly hear you?
  5. Write down your professional collaborators. These are people you have worked with in your life as a writer: editors, book cover designers, proofreaders, etc.
  6. Then list out professional colleagues who you know. People you could email and they would reply. This likely includes other authors.
  7. Identify ideal readers for your books that you actually know or could reach out to. This is a biggie. If you don’t understand your ideal readers, how can you reach more of them?
  8. Note the people you know who support writers and books. This could be booksellers, librarians, those who run writing groups or literary festivals.
  9. List out comparable authors — those who write books similar to yours. Even if you don’t know them personally, write their names down.
  10. Identify communities that your ideal audience connects with. This could be an online forum, a physical conference/event, a person they love and follow online, etc.
  11. Review your writing practice. Everything here begins with your craft. If you struggle to find the time and energy to write, note that. Consider how you can make the creative process a core part of your weekly schedule.

People tend measure the wrong things, they only measure social media followers, and always conclude their single takeaway as: “Get more social media followers.” But that isn’t the answer.

Now Take Action

Likely you are now sitting here with these big lists and thinking, “Um, now what, Dan?” Do this:

  • Ensure all of the places people can connect with you are radically clear about who you are and what you create. So that may mean updating your website messaging, your Twitter bio, your LinkedIn summary, etc.
  • Reconnect with collaborators and colleagues who you haven’t reached out to in awhile. Just say hello, ask them what’s going on in their life, and give them a brief update on your writing.
  • Reach out to other authors who write work similar to yours. These should be your professional colleagues. Too often, I ask writes if they know other authors and they say “No.” Fix that. How can you succeed in a profession if you don’t know anyone else who does the kind of work you do? Send an email to people whose books you admire. Tell them you like their work. It’s really that simple. Who wouldn’t want to receive that email?!
  • Consider how you can create or revise your social media and/or outreach strategy so that it focuses on communication and establishing trust with your ideal audience. Sometimes these things are simple. For instance: “I write literary fiction, and I find that my ideal readers love being reminded of the power of books to heal. So I’m going to share photos when I go to independent bookstores, images of books I love, and little stories of how a book changed someone’s life.”

For each step, focus on the person you hope to connect with, not about the tools you use to do so.

This process may raise a lot of questions about what direction you should take. When possible, do it with a collaborator. I do audits like this all the time in my one-on-one consulting with authors.

Let me know how I can be of assistance to you.

Thanks!

-Dan

How to Kickstart Word-of-Mouth Marketing

This week I asked author Allison Leotta how she found her literary agent. The answer? From her existing network.

Allison didn’t spend weeks researching agents, creating spreadsheets, and then spending months emailing dozens of them. Instead, she considered anyone she knew who was a published author, and reached out to them for advice.

In her case, this was a former college classmate. It wasn’t someone Allison knew very well, but they both were in the same college class, so she figured there was enough of a connection to reach out.

The result? This connection lead directly to Allison signing with an agent. From this, her debut novel published with Simon & Schuster, as were the four that followed, another that is now prepping for publication, plus another she is currently writing. She also made the huge creative shift from working as a federal prosecutor to full-time novelist.

Too often, writers ignore their one of the greatest resources in their careers: the people they already know. I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken to writers who desperately wanted to NOT tap into their network of friends, family, and colleagues when they started out. Instead, they wanted to ignore those people, to avoid telling them about their writing aspirations at all possible costs.

But what they don’t realize is how high that cost actually is. It may cost them their best shot at becoming a published author.

Their reasoning is simple: “I don’t know anyone in publishing, and no one I know reads the kinds of books I write anyway.” But I always sense that there is a deeper reason: they don’t want to be judged by those who know them, and they especially don’t want to ask for help or be perceived as though they need help.

So they hide their writing. They ignore their network. And they struggle, alone.

If you want my advice for how to succeed as a writer, I would say these are the first two steps:

#1 Put craft first. If you aren’t investing in your craft by sitting down with the blank page each week and filling it with words, start there. (More from me on this topic here: Craft vs. Platform: Which Comes First?)

#2 Leverage your existing network of friends, family and colleagues. I’ll bet everything about that sentence made you cringe. The word “leverage” feels so cold and business-like, right? But you know what? When you get a book deal with a major publisher, the marketing and publicity departments send you an “author questionnaire” to fill out. I’ve seen many of these from my clients. They are long lists of questions that seek to explore every single corner of your existing network: Sororities you belonged to 30 years ago, boards you on were on 15 years ago, schools your kids went to 20 years ago, anyone you know that may work in media, any companies you worked for. They are mining your network because they know that these people have a stake in your success. They already know you and trust you, so they are easier to engage and use as amplifiers than total strangers. I think that many authors are excited to work with publishers because there is the hope that they will connect the author’s book to the masses. Yet, one of the first thing the publishers dig into is your own existing network of friends, family, and colleagues.

I want to share a compelling example of this with you, how one author kickstarted word-of-mouth marketing via their friends, family, and colleagues. This is Teri Case at the launch party for her novel, Tiger Drive — Teri is in the tiger shirt getting hugged, and just look at the long line of happy people waiting to hug her:

(photo by Gretchen Lemay Photography)

Dozens and dozens of people showed up to the event. I asked Teri about who was there, and she described how it was full of people from her existing network:

“I had a line 3/4 of the way to the door within the first five minutes. From that point on, it was out the door for 2.5 hours.” She knew many of these people directly, but not all of them. Here Teri describes how word-of-mouth marketing happened:

“Even the people I didn’t know were excited to tell me about the “degrees” of finding out about the book or connecting with me. For example, I met a co-worker of my oldest brother’s (he couldn’t come due to a previous engagement, but his co-worker did!). Or there was a woman who worked in dispatch in the Sheriffs Department. My brother’s son-in-law is a sergeant there, so this woman in dispatch heard about the book and came. A mother of my sister’s childhood friend came — I’m not connected to her in Facebook, but she heard about it via shares of Facebook.”

“I met so many new people that night, but for each person, we could track how we were connected. Word-of-Mouth Marketing STARTS with your friends, family, and colleagues. And at the risk of sounding self-absorbed, they do want to be involved and a part of it!”

As a part of the event, Teri raffled off copies of books donated by authors. When I looked at the photo, I noticed something fascinating: every single book was from someone she met in my Creative Shift Mastermind or course one of my courses:

(photo by Gretchen Lemay Photography)

These include names very familiar to me because I have worked with all fo them: Kelsey Browning, Cathey Graham Nickell, Pamela D. Toler, Lisa Manterfield, Mary Jo Hazard, Kathy Ramsperger, Dawn Downey, Carlen Maddux, Carrie Ann Lahain, and Nancy J. Nordenson.

Teri met these people and stayed connected with them. She followed up with them and supported them. Teri centered her book event around generosity and celebration. She started with the people she knew, and extended outward from there.

If you want to know exactly how Teri did this, she created a wonderful resource that she is allowing me to share: “Lessons Learned From My Book Signing.” What you see here is her incredible attention to detail and caring. You also see how this is work. Teri sweats the details to make it easy for people to connect with her novel.

You can find Teri and her book here.

Also, I just posted an amazing interview I did with Allison Leotta here. In our chat she describes how writing a book is more difficult than law school, running a marathon, or climbing a mountain! Oh, there’s a video too — the screenshot is from one of many moments where she totally cracked me up:

Oh, and if you want to know more about the first steps to share your writing or art, and connect it to an audience, check out my book, Be the Gateway. It shares the methodology I use every day with authors and artists.

Thanks!

-Dan