Author: Dan Blank

Many writers and creators I speak with struggle to understand how they can build a presence in a crowded marketplace. I’ve worked with thousands of writers through the years, and find that their are common challenges that can block someone’s progress. This idea of knowing how to share what you create and why. I mean, imagine if you:

• Knew exactly how to describe who you are as a writer and creator.
• Knew how to create an infinite amount of content showcasing what you create and why.
• Knew what to share that feels unique to you and compelling to others.
• Knew how to get engagement from others, instead of feeling as though you are shouting into a void.
• Knew where you fit within the marketplace, and were also able to carve out your own little corner of it.
• Felt proud of what you share, without worrying that you are seeking attention or gloating.
• Felt comfortable having your voice, your identity, be public.
• Felt a total and complete permission to share.
• Felt safe throughout the entire process.

The answers to these challenges are never the latest trend, a hashtag, learning about some secret social media button, a TikTok dance, Amazon ads, or hiring a VA to just do it all for you. (although all of those things could have a place within a larger strategy.)

If you have struggled with any of the items above, I want to encourage you to develop the most powerful tool in your entire platform and presence as a writer: Defining your voice. Embracing your voice. Sharing your voice.

What is voice? It is how you show people what you care about. Is it how you share. It is how you show up for others. It is how you engage. It is how you have a presence in people’s lives.

This is my obsession.

Recently I’ve been delving back into my hobby of researching my family’s history. The research I’ve been doing and conversations I’ve been having have focused more on my two grandfathers, both of who died before I was even born. I’ve been thinking about their voices. What they sounded like. How they talked. Their interests. Their hopes. Their fears.

I took out one of the boxes I had in storage that contains my maternal grandfather’s stamp collection:

 

My mother grew up in a tenement apartment in New York City’s lower east side. The four of them slept in one bedroom, the tub was in the kitchen, and the single bathroom was accessible through the hallway outside their apartment.

Yet, there is this stamp collection, torn off of letters that came to family, friends, and colleagues. My grandfather clearly asked everyone he knew, that if they received a letter with a stamp from an unusual place, to save the envelope for him. I have batches of stamps he collected in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, until a car accident took his life in 1965.

This hobby likely gave him excitement, inspiration, education, and way to create little unexpected bright spots throughout his week. His entire life, from high school on, he worked one job, at a bakery. He was a slicer, and eventually became a driver delivering bread around New York City. He would have had a wide network of people through all the restaurants he met with each day. I have envelopes from The Russian Tea room in the 1950s, and many others. Today the stamps likely have no intrinsic value. Their value is in their story. And that story is my grandfather.

Through his collecting, he would have created thousands of conversations with people. He would have shared moments of discovery with them. He would have tied together a wide network of people around his interests. His voice would have done all of this and more.

I know that many writers are concerned that having a platform is a waste of time: sending a newsletter to a tiny list. Posting to Instagram and getting a handful of likes. Feeling as though you are sharing, but no one is listening.

If you are reading this, you are a writer or artist or creator. You have something to say in your creative work. I want to encourage you to double down on that. Not with a feeble attempt, but with vigor. To know that this is an opportunity you have right now to create. I want to encourage you to raise your own volume. To be heard because your voice is part of your craft. It is why you are driven to create and share.

The other day I got a text from my friend Jennie Nash:

 

I reached out to Diana and asked her about this. She said that she had read one of my newsletters and really resonated with this quote: “How fortunate we are to have the opportunity to create.” She says:

“I slapped that quote up on my monitor front and center to anchor me! It was, and continues to be, a very helpful way to bring me back to a sense of purpose, to remind myself that it’s a privilege to write and sell books. It actually puts a smile on my face and centers me before I get to work.”

Your voice is an opportunity to create something special. Not just for yourself, but for anyone who comes in contact with you or your creative work. Honing your public voice takes time. It’s not uncommon for a writer to mention that their dream is to be able to share as Ira Glass does on This American Life. There is a wonderful 4-part video series where he discusses the long process of developing his own voice. He describes how hard a team of people work to create each story in their program, and how many stories they spend hours and hours developing, they never air because they were deemed not “good enough.” Go on YouTube and search for “Ira Glass on Storytelling” to find the video series.

Your voice is your own. It can be filled with generosity, with kindness, and with purpose. You get to define that.

Thanks.

-Dan

So many writers strive to get more followers for their writing. Today I want to discuss how to design an experience for how you engage with your readers, and develop your author platform. One that is thoughtful, focuses on engagement, and helps you view your platform as a craft, not an obligation.

Too often, when we think of developing an author platform, we think of the “content” we share. We post a piece of content, then check back to see how many “likes” it received. Instead, I want to encourage you to consider how you develop a full experience for people.

What does that mean? To create a platform that is deeply meaningful and posed for growth, which includes:

• Considering your ideal reader with a sense of total clarity.
• Crafting an experience that leads to engagement, not just hoping for hollow metrics of ‘likes’ and ‘follows.’
• Focusing on moments of connection that develops a true community around what you create.

I’ve sent out this newsletter every single week for more than 15 years. Right now I’m going to ask that you trust me as I share a metaphor for how to consider crafting your audience. I’m going somewhere useful with this, I promise…

So my friend, author/illustrator Lori Richmond, is renovating her home, and she and her husband have paid particularly attention to (please bear with me here) their cat’s litter box. I will say this up front: all of us should strive to create anything in life as thoughtful as she and her husband have designed the cat’s litter box.

Sound bonkers? It’s actually kind of inspiring. Here’s why…

You see, Lori and her family of 4 have shoved themselves into a tiny 1-bedroom apartment for half of a year, while their home is going through a gut renovation. In the process, they wanted to solve for every inconvenience they previously experienced living in Brooklyn, one being the cat’s litter box in their kids’ bathroom.

The solution? Okay, let’s take a look. This is their new kitchen, looking toward the pantry. See the little hole in the corner? That is the entrance to the litter box.

 

Here it is with the outside door open. Notice how the first hole is toward the left, and the inside hole is on the right:

 

So once the cat, whose name is Mona, enters, she follows this little path from the first hole, to the second inner hole, where the litter box resides behind the gray door.

 

The two handles above it remove a panel that gives Lori and her husband access to clean the litter box, which will be placed in here:

 

You will notice that the shelf above extends all the way to the door, preventing the cat from jumping up onto other shelves:

 

What’s that you say? It seems dark in there? Well, don’t worry, there will be a motion activated light to ensure Mona can see what she is doing.

So how is this litter box a metaphor for the experience you create for readers? Soooooo many ways! Let’s consider it:

Lesson #1 Consider How Readers Become Aware of Your Work and Enter Your Community

Lori and her husband found what looks to be a very elegant solution the challenge of integrating a tiny cat bathroom into their beautiful home. When you consider how someone discovers your work, the same thing applies. If you are on social media shouting about your book, and otherwise not engaging, that is likely not the best way to give people a path to your work.

In my book, Be the Gateway, I use the idea of a gateway as a metaphor. This threshold that you cross to move out into the world to find your ideal readers, then to walk them back through the gateway to experience your work. It is a process of communication and trust.

You have to carefully consider the language, context, and images that will get someone’s attention. How you get their attention in a manner that is meaningful, in an otherwise noisy world. It’s not always logical either, where you simply make a clear pitch for your book. This is what social media has taught us, which reflects real-life: what engages us can touch a wide range of emotions. Consider: how are you creating an entrance to your work that speaks to your ideal reader in an immediate and visceral way?

Lesson #2 Ensure People Feel Safe

There is a real empathy that went into how Mona can feel safe. The goal is for her to be able to use the litter box without being disrupted by the activities of a busy family. The corner entrance, the dual doors, the lighting, all of this is about helping Mona feel safe.

However you share what you create, be mindful of how others feel seen, and feel safe. Trust is such a critical part of what it means to have an author platform. Of course, your own sense of safety is paramount as well. How each of us defines that may be different, but it is something to consider at every step of how you share.

Lesson #3 Give People a Clear Progression

Where are you leading people? Let’s say you wrote a historical novel. Are you sharing 15 posts about flowers on Instagram for every one post about a theme of historical fiction? If that’s the case, you can’t be surprised if you aren’t gaining followers who love the themes you explore in your writing. So you have to consider where you are leading people, and how obvious that progression is.

Likewise, you may want to consider if you are offering people a million off ramps away from how you want them to see you and your work. What is the entire sequence of how someone discovers your work, learns more about it, stays engaged, and feels a connection to your work that can last?

Likewise, consider where points of confusion may be. Is your platform too vague? Do you rarely talk about major themes? All of this is a craft that takes time to get right.

Are you unintentionally doing things that allow people to wander away from what you create? Sometimes that could have to do with frequency of how often you share, or giving them so many links, they can’t follow them all. Much like Lori and her husband designed the higher shelf above the litter box so that the cat can’t jump up there, consider the holes in your platform.

Lesson #4 Consider the Goals of your Reader

Let’s face it, where the cat’s litter box is, is not usually the biggest priority for a human. But for a cat, it’s a big deal. I’ve had many veterinarians explain to me the delicate balance you want to strike with placement.

When trying to engage readers, you have to consider their goals, not just your own. What would they love to engage with? What kind of community are they looking for? What is their reason for loving a certain kind of story or topic? What would their dream experience be with the topic or theme from a book? These are all ways to consider developing what you share that aligns to the experience you develop for someone else, not just how you share “content.”

This will require challenging your own assumptions, and even testing new ideas. When Lori and her husband designed the entrance to the litter box, at one point they mocked it all up, printing a black entrance hole onto a sheet of paper, then taping that to the bottom of the door. Don’t be afraid to play with new ideas as you consider how to develop your audience.

Lesson #5 Collaboration is a Critical Part of Success

If your goal is to develop a community around what you create, the surest way to failure is to try to do everything alone: to have no colleagues, to eschew the idea of engagement with readers, to just hope that someone else shares your work. Be open to your author platform being social. One way to do that is to have collaborators.

Let’s consider the key collaborators involved in Mona’s litter box:

1. Lori and her husband: Lori is a designer (plus author and illustrator), and her husband is a designer and educator who has incredible technical skills too.
2. Their architect: who helped with the overall design of the litter box area.
3. Their carpenter. Lori said: “Carpenters are true artists and masters of functionality! Our carpenter helped us tweak the design at the work site before he built everything. He brought up little details we wouldn’t have thought of.”
4. Their plumbers: who had to redo work twice to ensure that every pipe around the litter box area didn’t infringe on the design and functionality of it.

Here is a photo of the contractor, Lori’s husband, and the plumber discussing the litter box during construction:

 

I mean, the cost of this is impossible to calculate. Not just in material, but the design prowess and expertise of 5 highly trained people.

How can you have collaborators in what you create? Recently I shared a post talking about the power of outreach, including gratitude emails. At the most basic level, simply consider: who else writes about the kinds of topics or themes you do? Maybe just send them an email expressing appreciation for their work. It can start that simply.

How you share and how you engage is a craft. Give yourself time to develop these skills so that they expand the possibility of what your writing creates in the world. If you want assistance in creating any of this for yourself, learn more about how I work with writers and creators here.

Thanks.

-Dan