Author: Dan Blank

So many writers and creators tell me about the challenges they have in sharing their work and growing their audience. Today I want to talk about how to get good at this and overcome the most common challenges people face. Okay, let’s dig into today’s topic of getting good at growing your audience…

Feel Confident That Your Voice Matters

I have to start with this, because it comes up so often with writers and is foundational to the idea of sharing your work:

Your voice is unique.
Your voice is valuable.
Your voice deserves to be heard.
Your voice will connect with someone.
Your voice matters.

When it comes to the concept of sharing your writing, so many people are confronted with inner narratives that they have had their whole lives. These are myriad, and tend to go very deep. Some examples:

• “It’s not polite to talk about yourself.”
• “If my work was good enough, shouldn’t other people be the ones talking about it, not me?”
• “I don’t really have anything to say, outside of my book. Who would want to hear from me anyway?”

I simply want to encourage you to give yourself permission to share. Your voice does matter, and sharing your writing can inspire, educate, entertain, and help someone feel a connection to the themes you write about.

Sometimes these inner narratives are framed as a logical assessment of the marketplace:

• “Oh, the market is too crowded right now. Why would I jump in as the millionth person talking about this?”
• “I don’t have the right credentials. When I have time to go back to school and get that degree, then people will care.”
• “Honestly, I don’t think now is the right time. There are so many more important things going on.”

While these things may be logical and someone can try to produce charts and graphs proving them, I don’t find them to be compelling evidence to silence the creative work inside of you. Creating and sharing is important, and it is where the process of growing your audience begins.

Simplify: Focus on the Basics

Writers are inundated with all they are told they “must do” to develop their author platform, share their writing, grow their audience, and launch their books. This often has people spinning their wheels trying to learn too many things at once, and in the process, inadvertently half-baking it all.

Instead, I encourage you to focus on 1 or 2 activities for how you share and connect with readers, and double down on them. To me, your platform as a writer is based on 2 things: communication and trust. This is different from how it is often talked about, which tends to center more on things like how many followers you have. So the question you have to ask is: “Do I want a wide audience of people who will barely engage with my writing, if ever? Or do I want an audience of people who will truly appreciate my writing, have it influence their lives, and who will gladly share it with others?”

Getting better at self-expression and communication helps you take bigger concepts like “author platform,” and bring them down to specific tasks to work on. Could you:

• Write a better newsletter subject line?
• Craft a better pitch to become a guest on a podcast?
• Reach out to a colleague in a way that would make their day?
• Create a social media post that your ideal audience just immediately engages with?

The other day I was watching a series of interviews with one of the most successful comic book creators of all time, Todd McFarlane. His bold visual style ushered in a new era for comics and their creators. When talking about getting good at drawing, he focused on one element at a time: getting good at drawing forearms, spending weeks just focusing on them. Then he would draw just hands for awhile, pages of them, and so on. From there he would explore different ways of posing or composing a page layout. One step at a time, he focused on the basics with an intensity. This empowered him to embrace new ideas that changed the industry.

The other side of this — getting better at connecting with people — is not about “putting on your marketing hat.” It is learning how to connect with people who love the same themes that you tend to write about. It is about helping others feel seen and appreciated. It is about learning to celebrate this work, and create experiences that help others feel included and part of something.

When we look at communication and connection as a craft, suddenly a path forms for getting better at it. And in the process, you build the skills and experiences you need to grow your audience and ensure your writing reaches more people.

Focus On the People, Not the Algorithm

What can you forget about in this process? The algorithm. What’s that? It’s the complicated way that social media (and other sites) determine what to share, and how to customize what each of us sees.

For example: you and I could follow the same 100 people on Instagram, but after a few months, we could find that the individual updates that Instagram shows each of us are different. Why? Well, perhaps you engaged more with certain people and I engaged more with others. So Instagram’s algorithm will note this and customize our feeds accordingly. Or perhaps I had done a bunch of searches about vintage typewriters, whereas you did searches on planting an organic vegetable garden. This too, is information that the algorithm will use to customize what each of us sees that is unique. Often, these networks are optimizing what we see based on our actual behavior.

Does this sound scary? It can be, and there have been copious amounts of articles and documentaries considering this. Can it also be useful? I have found that to be the case. For instance, Spotify is the app I use to listen to music every day, and their algorithm recommends new music to me all the time. The result: every week I discover music from artists that I really love, but never would have found without them being recommended to me.

Does this mean that you should obsess about how to feed the algorithm so that it shows your content to more people, and thereby grow your audience? Not necessarily.

What matters most is you getting better at the basics of clear communication in a manner that truly engages people. In the end, that is all that the algorithms on social networks want because they want to see what people are engaging with, and then they amplify it.

But this is also what people want! They want to find more writing that speaks to them. They want more connection with great writing and those who share about themes that resonate deeply with them. And they want more connection to others who appreciate these things.

Focusing on communication and trust can be centered entirely on the person, not the algorithm.

Make Small Changes and Celebrate What You Learn

Become a student of the process around sharing better and connecting better. The nice thing about this is that it will benefit you regardless of any trends online or on social media.

Again and again, I find that people who learned to communicate and connect well in one place online, can later apply this to a different place online. For instance, a writer who created Twitter posts that truly engaged people are now skilled at creating Threads posts that engage people. I hear this often for video creators too — those who are doing incredibly well on TikTok or YouTube — plenty of them started years ago on other services such as Vine.

I encourage you to:

• Take small actions each day or week to focus on the craft of communication and connection.
• Challenge yourself to make improvements. For instance: consider 10 different ways to write a newsletter subject line. 10 different ways to write a podcast pitch. 10 ways to ask a question that might get replies on social media.
• Experiment. I have often found that what works are the ideas you least expect to.
• Track what you do. It’s so easy to create and share, yet get to the end of a week and feel as though you didn’t do as much as you hoped. I have had so many writers say to me, “Ugh, I didn’t do anything this week.” Then when I explore this further, I find out they took 20 distinct actions to share their work, but they simply didn’t recognize that they did so.
• Track what you learn. When you take action, there are often little lessons along the way. Write these things down. Quickly you will learn that what feels right to you, what works, and most importantly: you will pull valuable lessons from things you found didn’t work as you hoped they would.
• Celebrate milestones! The process of sharing, connecting, and growing one’s audience is in the service of something important. You should honor that work.

Develop Your Support System

Surround yourself with those who support your goals in creating and sharing. These aren’t always the people you live with, so you may have to make the effort to seek out colleagues and friends.

Ideally, these are people who push you to grow your craft and believe in yourself. I’ve written many times in the past about how Jennie Nash and I have a standing weekly call for this purpose. We each bring a goal or challenge to the call, and the time is split in half. When we get on the phone, one of us almost immediately says, “Do you want to go first?” and we dive in. This is not idle chit chat or vague status updates, it is work time. I deeply admire what she does and think she’s a genius. So when she gives me advice, I shut up and listen. (You can read the full story of how Jennie and I first connected here.)

If you want to get good at sharing your work, connecting with people, and developing your audience, I strongly encourage you to develop a support system of people you can talk to and collaborate with. These should be those who will challenge you, help you explore new ideas, and find a path that feels both meaningful and strategic.

How to find people like this? Consider connecting with those who resonate with you. Support their work first. Consider ways you can collaborate that attend to their goals as much as your own.

Nurture Your Creative Motivation

Your creative motivation is so precious. It is a finite resource and without it, all of this work to create and share and have a positive impact on people’s lives may seem overwhelming and out of reach.

I think so many writers, artists, and creators think back to a time when their craft was filled with hope and possibility. Over time, that feeling may slip away. I remind my writing clients of this all the time: your creative motivation is a prescious resource. Nurture it and integrate it into your daily life.

So much is changing in social media right now, which is still a primary way that writers can connect with others who share their passions. Personally, I am changing so much around what I advise to my writing clients, and am even tweaking my own systems for using social media.

Getting good at growing your audience centers on awareness of connecting what you write with those who may appreciate it, being willing to engage, understanding that the purpose is to communicate with others in a trusting manner, and remembering that this is a craft, one that you can improve upon each day or week.

If you are ever overwhelmed by the idea of sharing and connecting, I encourage you to start small. Just get better at understanding what you create and why. Get better at understanding why this resonates with people and where you see that happening. Get better at being present and connecting with others in small but meaningful ways. And get better at creating a process to show up to this work as a way of honoring your writing, not distracting you from it.

Thank you for being here withe me.

-Dan

 

When did you start writing and creating? When did you begin sharing your work with others?

I’ve been thinking about my own earliest experiences in writing and publishing, and how it has informed my appreciation for the opportunities that writers have today to share their writing. I am so excited about three things regarding how you can reach your readers now:

1. You can share your authentic voice without asking permission, or having it edited by others who don’t share your vision.
2. You have access to those you admire and like-minded people, coupled with the ability to have meaningful conversations and connections around the themes you write about.
3. You can distribute what you write with ease.

I grew up as the art kid. At age 5, my mom enrolled me in art classes in Mrs. Flannigan’s basement. Her walls featured these huge 20-foot-long murals, with art supplies spilling over on the shelves. Was it a dank, dark basement? Sure. Was it also absolutely magical? Yes!

In the years that followed, I explored illustration, painting, sculpture, photography, paper engineering, and so much else. Then, of course, came the writing. At first this was in service of the visual stories I was telling. But soon my life as a teenager was filled with writing poetry and prose.

Recently I announced a workshop I’m teaching on August 4th called Launch & Grow Your Email Newsletter on Substack. (Register here!) This had me considering my first newsletter, which I began publishing back in 1993 before the internet was a widely accepted medium for sharing what we create. It was in print. At the time, I called it a “zine,” and the primary focus was writing about alternative, indie, and Britpop music.

Here is a photo of me at the time, with the 2nd issue.

It’s funny, this is a selfie before there were selfies, which I took because I was clearly so proud of what I created. It looks so simplistic now, but it was a huge effort at the time. For me to create and share this required:

• Thousands of dollars in debt for printing costs.
• Long nights at Kinkos (a copy shop open all night) to get this printed, because I was working minimum wage jobs during the day, as well as attending college classes.
• Figuring out how to use desktop publishing software to layout the pages just as a magazine would.
• Learning how to create and edit images/photos on my computer years before I could afford Adobe Photoshop.

But that isn’t even the half of it. What else was there? The writing, marketing, distribution and more.

The publication was started by me and my friend. We were fueled by our love of music and this idea that we wanted to share and connect with more people around that. I’m on the right:

This whole venture started when I moved in with roommates during my 2nd year of college. One guy I knew already, but his friend was our other roommate who I didn’t really know. I quickly learned that he had a zine and one day I heard him talking on the phone to a record label. As a 19 year old, this blew me away. I asked him about it and he explained how the whole process worked.

I. Was. In.

Soon after, I tested the waters by calling the Arista Records publicity department. A band I really liked had a new album coming out in a few months, and I asked if I could get an early copy of it to review it. They said yes, and then something that nearly stopped my heart happened. The guy on the phone asked:

“Do you want to interview the band?”

This was unbelievable to me, that I would be able to have access to artists I admired so much. What followed was that the work on the zine eclipsed my schoolwork by a fairly wide margin, and I soon developed connections at every major record label. I could call someone at Elektra, Sony, Subpop, and have them pick up the phone. It was bonkers, having this kind of access in the early 90s.

I ended up with a mailbox full of free music each week — CDs, records, and tapes mailed to my friend and I, with the hopes that we would review them.

I also wrote feature articles and conducted interviews with bands. I secured interviews with Oasis, Weezer, Blur, They Might Be Giants, and so many others. I chatted with Noel Gallagher at the height of Oasis’s explosion, and with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer just as they were breaking. It was weird and incredible at the same time. Here is a photo I took of They Might Be Giants after I interviewed them in the record label offices:

In the process, I took on a lot of roles, and I will note that these are the same roles that you take on when you create your newsletter:

• Publisher – coordinating production, timing, etc.
• Editor – determining editorial direction and features
• Writer – conducting interviews and writing articles
• Designer – creating images and laying out the issue in QuarkXPress, a professional layout program at the time, which I was surprised to learn still exists!
• Publicity – calling and visiting record labels and record stores
• Distribution
• Finance – taking on debt, negotiating with printers
• Photographer

I say this to writing clients all the time, but there is a real literacy here. There is so much you are learning about each of these skills when you create your own newsletter. This takes time. Here I am laying out an issue on my bed:

This is my home office at the time, with the zine’s logo taped to the wall. I was so proud of the tech I had and how it helped me publish and distribute the writing I was doing:

That small beige thing on the left of my desk in the laptop I used to create the issues, I would print out samples on my dot matrix printer, and that phone was my lifeline to record labels, record stores, and interviews. It’s funny to remember how much that phone moved around the room with me, plugged into an extra-long cord.

As I mentioned, this publication put me in serious debt. Each of those phone calls was long distance and cost money. I would get this long multi-paged phone bill each month, with each call adding up to hundreds of dollars. Printing each issue would cost between around $500 on the low end, and I think $2,500 on the high end. At the time, I was waiting tables, and earning minimum wage. It took years and years for me to pay off the credit card debt from this zine.

Of course, I never regretted it.

This experience taught me so much about what it means to share your voice authentically through your writing and creative work. It had me amazed at the ability to connect with those you admire and like-minded people. And it had me appreciate the value of distribution — being able to disseminate your writing to those who may appreciate it most.

At the time, distribution was mostly via the post office (more $$$) and my bike. I would get this zine into record stores by biking it around for miles and miles, dropping off issues at each. Today, we click “publish” or “post” or “send” with ease via newsletters, blogs, or social media. Back then, this was how I distributed my writing:

(This is the model I had, but I can’t find a photo of my actual bike)

Now I work from a private studio. The tech is different, but the mission is the same. I love writers and readers, and I think amazing things happen when you share your writing and it connects with those who will appreciate it most.

I’ve sent my own weekly email newsletter for the past 18 years, sharing ideas that inspire me. I’ve helped thousands of writers do the same. Please consider joining me for my workshop on August 4th:

Launch & Grow Your Email Newsletter on Substack
Live event: Friday August 4th, 2023 at 12:30pm ET.
Full recording provided to all who register.
$49
Register here.

Thanks!

-Dan

I’m doing something new, and I’m really excited to share it with you today. If you have followed my work at all, you know that I have spent 13 years working full-time with writers, helping them to find meaningful ways to share their work that is effective in reaching readers and feels good to all involved. To live up to that goal, I’ve sent this weekly email newsletter out every week for the past 18 years, and have helped countless writers and creators develop and manage their own.

Today I’m releasing a brand new workshop called Launch & Grow Your Email Newsletter on Substack. Here are the quick details:

• Live online event on Friday August 4th at 12:30pm ET
• All registrants receive a video recording, so if you can’t make it live, no problem.
• $49

Register for the workshop here.

I have been putting so much into this workshop and am really excited about it. Why newsletters? I feel newsletters are a huge opportunity for writers. They become the basis for developing an audience, encouraging book sales, finding new opportunities, and for honing their public voice in a way that feels authentic to who they are.

I am in the trenches with newsletters every day with my clients, and I can’t wait to share details in the workshop. Some of what we will cover:

• Why email newsletters are a powerful tool for writers.
• The reason readers love email newsletters, even if you dislike them.
• When to start your newsletter.
• Why I recommend Substack for most writers, and an introduction to it.
• How to define a clear purpose for your newsletter.
• How to create a title and description for your newsletter.
• How often to send a newsletter.
• What to share in a newsletter, and the most common content types to consider.
• My system for creating newsletter content that gives you an endless amount of content aligned to the purpose of your newsletter.
• How to reduce the amount of time it takes to create each newsletter.
• How to increase open rates and engagement.
• How to become consistent with your newsletter without the stress.
• How to get more readers and subscribers, even if you are starting from zero.
• The biggest mistakes people make with newsletters.
• The biggest factors in newsletter success.

This workshop will be packed with useful information all in one place, and all coming from hands-on experience. I will host a live Q&A at the end of the workshop to answer your questions.

You can register here.

Also…

I’m offering a very limited way to engage directly with me via two additional packages. This is for people who want more feedback regarding their current newsletter strategy, or as they develop a brand new one. You can see more on those two packages here.

I know how powerful it can be to get feedback and guidance, and to collaborate as you develop or optimize your newsletter. I’ve never offered something like this before — a way to get direct feedback on something this specific. Both of these packages are very limited (only 10 and 5 spots, respectively), so if you are considering them, I encourage you to register quickly.

And one final thing…

I have run hundreds of workshops over the years, but I feel this one is different. Why? It is the start of a new ecosystem I’m developing to support writers and creators. More than a year of planning has gone into this. You can expect more in this series, because my goal is to help more writers find effective and meaningful strategies to share their work, and feel awesome about the process.

Thank you for being here with me, and for all of your support over the years. This is work I do because I truly admire those who write and create, and because I see amazing things happen when their work reaches their readers and audience. It is an honor (and a pleasure!) to be a part of that process.

Please check out the workshop: Launch & Grow Your Email Newsletter on Substack.

Thanks.

-Dan

Working full-time with writers, my days are filled with conversations around the challenges they face. Maybe some of these feel familiar to you:

• “Do I have to share on social media? Does it really do anything?”
• “Isn’t the marketplace too crowded? How will I stand out?”
• “I worry that all the trends point away from the work I love creating. Do I even bother?”
• “Who has time for all of this? The creating, the publishing, the sharing.”

So today I want to remind you of something incredibly important: you get to choose.

• You get to choose if and how you create.
• You get to choose if and how you publish.
• You get to choose if and how you share.

It is okay if you don’t. You can create simply for the act of creating in itself. To write and then not consider publishing it. To take a photo and not share it. To create an illustration and then stash it away in a drawer.

There is beauty in the creative process in itself. Engaging with it can help you explore what it means to be who you are, and what this world is. And that is enough.

I grew up as the art kid. I have boxes of creative work sitting up in my attic that never was — and never will be — shared. And I am a better person for having created that work.

But…

If you are still reading, then I want to encourage this:

Take the creative risk.

Make a bold choice that aligns fully with what writing and creativity is to you. Share in a way that resonates deeply with the kinds of experiences you want to have, and the kind of people you want to fill your life with. I want to share two stories of taking a creative risk today: one from a writer and one from a musician. Let’s dig in…

Dawn Downey is Publishing and Sharing Her Own Way

I met Dawn Downey years ago, and watched as she published 5 essay collections. This is Dawn:

Earlier this year, I started noticing recurring posts on her Facebook page. There was a stack of her most recent book, Listicles, next to a ruler:

It reads: “100 printed. 21 left. Email me today for your copy. Dawn@dawndowneyblog.com.”

Every time I saw a subsequent post from Dawn, the number of books went down a bit from her starting point late last year, when she first published the essay collection. But then I saw a post from her that really made me pause:

“I’m in the process of deleting the Listicles manuscript from my computer. What will it feel like when I no longer own or control this book? When it exists only in the hands of readers? Deleting the manuscript is more complicated than I’d imagined. Today I found a PDF of the interior pages, probably the version the book designer sent to the printer. I hit delete. And felt a little tension. But another piece of Listicles is released.”

I had to reread this a few times. Dawn was literally deleting any copies of her book and manuscript other than the 100 printed copies!

On one of her Facebook posts, someone asked her why she was doing this. She explained:

“Curiosity drives me. Two of my friends are visual artists and they pour their emotional/spiritual/psychological stuff into their work. Then they sell it, and never interact with it again. I was curious. What did that feel like? As a writer, I pour my guts into what I write, but I can revisit my words whenever I want to. I can tweak those words, make them better, write that I changed my view about what I’d written before. I saw a documentary once about a painter who decided to go in another direction, burned every painting he still owned—paintings he could have sold. It made an impression on me. He seemed free. I wanted to be that guy.”

“I was curious about the idea of attachment. Every month, an organization swings through our neighborhood, picking up donations. So every month I fill up a box. Every month I get to see I’m attached to clothes I don’t wear, pans I don’t use, and knickknacks I don’t even like. I think about the stuff ending up with people who need it. The stuff was just passing through my life until it ended up on the next leg of its journey.”

“I was curious. What would it feel like to treat my book like that? To trust it’s only passing through my head on its way to the next leg of its journey. I’m attached to the words I string together into essays and books. If I delete the manuscript, I’m free from the oppressive feeling of being responsible for controlling its future.”

“I’m playing around with the feeling that if I let go of the book, I’m setting it free.”

When I emailed Dawn asking about this, she also reflected on why this book isn’t available at any online retailers, and how she is embracing the process of sharing this book. She wrote:

“I’m deleting the manuscript as a creative experiment in attachment, (including) success based on numbers. I’m selling them out of my house, so no sales stats coming in from Amazon or Ingram. I have to tell people about this project. I have to share often. I have to tell people what the book will do for them. I have to be excited about my own work.”

So often, writers insist that they HAVE TO do this or that. For example, “Well Amazon is the world’s biggest book retailer, I have to be there, even if I don’t want to.” But as Dawn proves, you don’t have to do anything. You get to choose. You can take the creative risk to write, publish, and share in a manner that resonates with you.

Dawn ended her note to me with a powerful statement:

“I’m learning that creativity creates me.”

Here is the book and note that Dawn sent me:

As a reader, knowing all of this changes my relationship with her book. It now feels like a process I am a part of, not just a possession that I own. If I keep the book, I am keeping Dawn’s work alive. If I donate the book, it moves on to another step in its journey.

You can find Dawn, and whatever copies remain of her book, over on her Facebook page or website.

Taking a Creative Leap

One of my all-time favorite moments of creative risk is from the 1985 Live Aid concert. At the time, U2 had a dedicated following of fans, but had not broken out as a band that everyone knew. So playing Live Aid, to a global audience of more than a billion people, was a huge opportunity for them.

(Now, you may not like U2, and you may not like Bono, but I ask that you stick with me through this story anyway.)

What did Bono do in this big opportunity? He took a creative risk, and in doing so, he blew the band’s big chance to play their latest single, and he genuinely thought his actions broke up his band.

I have this photo on my wall of the moment where Bono took a literal leap, diving down an 11+ foot drop in the middle of the performance:

It may be difficult to see, so let me annotate the photo:

Here is the story of what Bono did…

His band was allotted around 15 minutes to play 3 songs. In the middle of the second song, Bono goes way off script. Near the end of the song, Bono begins to explore beyond the stage. He steps out onto a monitor:

You can see the bassist looking at his foot, thinking, “What are you doing? Be careful.”

Bono begins to look off in the distance, and then suddenly just drops his mic, and you hear a thud as it hits the floor. He ventures to one far end of the stage and raises his arms, and the crowd mimics him.

Then he drops down about 3 feet to the riser for the television camera, and he moves past it. He’s now closer to the audience, and you can see his determination.

He runs to the other end of the riser and begins motioning a “come here” signal with his hands. But he is looking out at a crowd of 70,000 people:

Finally, it’s possible to see what is in his mind. Security guards are helping a woman over the barricade because she is getting crushed, and Bono is signaling to bring her to the stage. But the security guards don’t see or understand what Bono wants:

All this time, his band has no idea what is happening. They just keep playing the same chords over and over as minutes are eaten up.

Slowly, you see communication happening. As another woman is pulled over the barricade she tells the security guard, “Look, Bono wants your attention,” and the security guard looks up at him.

But she is quickly whisked away, causing Bono to become more and more frustrated. Finally, he decides to take action. In a split second, he leaps down 11+ feet:

You can see the crowd’s reaction, they are losing it with excitement:

Nowadays, this kind of thing is more commonplace. But at a show the scale of Live Aid, this was dangerous new territory. He continues signaling to security to bring a fan over the barricade to him:

Finally, he has the moment he wants, dancing arm in arm with a fan:

The most fascinating thing about this is seeing him with his eyes closed, just slowly dancing with this fan. He is supposed to be on stage, singing a song to more than a billion people, but here he is focused on connecting with one person:

He returns to the TV camera riser, and the crowd is cheering louder than at any other moment in their set.

They have been playing the same song for nearly 9 minutes, an eternity compared to what was planned. He spends the next 2 minutes singing lyrics from Rolling Stones, before ending with lyrics from Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side.”

Then, for the second time he drops his mic with a thud, and walks off stage.

What happened next? His bandmates and manager were furious with him. They were supposed to play a third song, their new single, but Bono’s antics ate up too much time, and they couldn’t play it. That was supposed to be their big break.

In the week that followed, Bono genuinely felt he had just broken up his band.

But then something happened…

All of their albums began to move up the charts. He took a huge creative risk, and it got messy, and the world loved it. In a concert that was made for TV, Bono showed them a true human moment. One where the embrace of just two people mattered more than the headlines of how many millions of people were watching.

You can watch U2’s performance here.

Why am I telling you this story? Because you — and you alone — get to choose how you create, how you publish, and how you share. You can leave the stage, you can do something unexpected, you can create moments that feel authentic to you, all while ignoring the expectations of others.

And what’s more… this action may be the very thing that gets you the most attention, the most validation, and spreads your writing to the most people.

What do these stories teach us from a sharing and marketing perspective? People want to share things that they feel a part of, and they want a story to tell. Give people something to talk about that resonates deeply with what they want to see in the world, or how they want to experience their own identity.

What stories of creative risk have inspired you? Please reply back or share in the comments.

Thank you for being here with me.

-Dan