Author: Dan Blank

Your creative identity is what you do. By this, I don’t mean your job or other roles you may have. Rather, your creative identity is comprised of the actions you take, habits you form, and interactions you have. For many who write and create, these things might be a small part of your week in terms of time, for example: a busy parent finding 15 minutes to write each week. But these moments add up, and become the center for your identity as a writer.

To be known as a writer is to write. It may also include the craft of how you share, and how you develop a network of colleagues and readers around you. All of this doesn’t just happen magically, it is your intention that makes it a reality.

Today I want to discuss how your ability to share develops your identity as a writer, and why you have much more to share than you may think.

All this month in my private community here on Substack, I have posted exclusive lessons for writers, including:

1. Defining your creative identity, and the narratives that drive your work.
2. Writing your mission statement and/or short bio.

In the process, we are uncovering and clarifying what our work is about, who we hope to reach, and what that engagement with readers may look like.

This post is part of the first month of my fall curriculum, which I’m calling the Joy & Connection Marketing Plan. Please consider joining my paid community to receive these exclusive series each month, where I give assignment and am engaging directly with the hundreds of writers and creators in my private Chat. It’s been incredible to see how much support writers are providing to each other in this community. Join us here.

I worry that too often, writers and creators quiet their voices. They rarely tell others about what they create, and convince themselves that it would be fruitless to share anything about their writing. Today I want to explore that in depth and share my philosophy for why sharing more of what you write and why not only helps you serve your own creative vision, but truly makes readers’ lives better.

Let’s dig in…

Your Creative Identity is What You Do

Develop your creative identity through actions, conversations, and moments that you have which others can experience. Your identity is not a logo, or branded colors, or a website design. Instead, your creative identity is you and how you share and engage. This is the manner by which people discover and know what you create and why — via experiences they have with what you create and share.

This could include:

• Working on your craft, and mentioning that casually in everyday conversations.
• What you say, and what you don’t say. This newsletter is a good example. I could have started with the photo of my kid and his spaceship, or told you about how my mom is doing this week, or explained that we just had our house painted. Instead, I am focusing on a 1,500+ word essay about developing your creative identity as a writer, sharing one thing about one of my kids, and not mentioning 99% of the other stuff happening in my life.
• Your attitude towards creative work, books, other creators, etc.
• What you share.
• What you re-share from others.
• How you share what inspires you.
• What you learn when you create, even from your “failures.” (Using quotes on that because, as we all know, so much progress and lessons from things that don’t work out as expected.)
• Who you know and how you engage with them.
• Your aspirations and how you make those public to others.
• How you share progress towards these aspirations. (Here is an example, just this morning Melinda Wenner Moyer shared a deep dive into the editorial timetable for her next book, and what fact checking it looks like. The book won’t be out until next year, and she is taking readers on the journey with her from inception to publication and beyond.)
• Your habits.
• Learning and improving your craft, such as workshops, webinars, podcasts on craft, books you read, etc.

Too often, when talking about how writers can develop their “author brands” or “author platform,” conversations focus on the technology: platforms, features, and trends. To me, these things are much less important than clear communication and developing a sense of trust with readers. That can happen on any platform, and with any technology. I have helped writers do this for more than 20 years, and is why I call my methodology Human-Centered Marketing. As a bonus, getting better at the human stuff just feels good.

Do I also dive deep into platforms and advanced marketing strategies? Yep. I love that stuff and obsess about it daily. But the first step is to focus on your voice, the craft of sharing, and the person you hope to connect with.

Please Don’t Silence Yourself

My fear is that writers and creators find small ways to silence themselves. I can’t even count the number of times over the years that I talk with a writer who hasn’t written in months and months (or even years), justifying this in reasonable-sounding ways:

• “I do NOT want to bug people. If I send a newsletter any more frequently than 4 times a year, people will get very annoyed.”
• “I haven’t written for 14 months, because I’m so focused on my next book that comes out late next year.”
• “I have writer’s block.”
• “Life is so busy at work, I can’t spend more than 5 minutes writing, so what’s the point?”
• “Real writers spend at least 4 hours a day writing, and I don’t have that.”
• “I don’t have an MFA.”
• “I require an uninterrupted block of 3 hours in order to write, and it must be totally silent, where I am surrounded by inspiration. My busy life never provides that.”
• “Why write anymore?! There are so many books out there. I can’t compete, and I don’t think readers care.”
• “I recently saw some data about downward trends (in writing or social media or publishing or reader attention or bookstores or book sales) and it I want to wait to write until the trends shift back in my favor.”
• “Oh, the publishing industry is messed up now. Worst time to try to get a book published, so why spin my wheels by writing?”

I get it, each of these narratives can be factually true and feel very logical. But they have the result of turning down your volume. Of silencing yourself. Of giving you reason to pause and delay sharing your voice.

I sent my first newsletter to 9 colleagues in 2005. The very next week, I had every reason to not send a second issue. I was busy, stressed about something I now can’t remember, and maybe had normal social fears of not wanting to bug those 9 people again. But I sent that 2nd one, and then every week since. In that time, my voice developed, I embraced the craft of diving into the topics I cared about, and my network and community grew one person at a time. Honestly, that newsletter has driven my creative voice and my career for most of the past 20 years.

Of course, many will write but rarely share, with similarly logical sounding reasons behind it:

• “My book doesn’t come out for 2 years, what would I say without an actual book to promote?”
• “I read the social media and Substack have all peaked. I missed the boat, so I’m not bothering.”
• “I heard a successful author say that social media doesn’t sell books, and I don’t have money to travel around to literary festivals.”
• “I’m an introvert.”

Again, I have empathy for each and every one of these reasons. And yet, I still encourage you to…

Turn Up Your Volume

This doesn’t have to be in a huge dramatic way if that isn’t your style. But you can turn up your volume in a light, but frequent manner. Small actions, week by week. If people don’t know you as a writer, maybe that is because:

• They never see you write.
• They never hear about you writing.
• They don’t know of your creative dreams/intentions/vision, because it’s been kept private like a locked diary.
• They hear endlessly about everything else in your life, but not your writing, so they don’t know to ask about it.
• They never hear you mention books, reading, or other literary-related things.
• They don’t know that you take classes or webinars on writing, or that you listen to podcasts on writing.
• They never see/hear of you with another writer, or within writing-focused communities.

So every cue that could work to inform people that you love writing: visual, audible, sensory, etc — shows them zero proof that you love writing. If accessing someone’s identity as a writer is a great mystery to be solved by others, then one can’t be surprised that others don’t know them as writers.

How to Share More

I feel you have more to share than you may think. Look beyond big milestones and credentials. Instead, share that you are creating, even if you are shy about sharing details. Talk about the deeper themes in your writing. Discuss other books, or story structure, or character development, or other specific aspects of the process. Share what inspires you, and who inspires you. Talk about what you read and what you look forward to reading. Ask people questions about what they like to read and create themselves.

All of this becomes the basis for your identity as a writer. It becomes how people know you. E.G. “Oh, you mean Dan? He loves writers and creators, I see him talking about them all the time.”

You don’t need a website, newsletter, or social media to do any of this. You can throw out your phone and cancel your internet service. Just be the person who talks about the creative process and explores it in the world around them. Develop your voice, the craft of sharing, and how you create moments and conversations with those around you on these themes.

Please let me know in the comments: what is one tiny action you can take in the next week to share why you create, how you go about it, or what inspires you? Bonus points if this is within a conversation with another human being!

And please join me and my community to work through my exclusive series each month this fall! You immediately get access to the last two lessons I shared, and can engage in the great conversations and feedback happening in Chat. Join us here.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

How to you reach out to your readers and, with subtlety and grace, encourage them to become aware of your writing? Inherently, this is about being public as a writer. And to do this, you need to craft your identity.

We tend to think of one’s identity as just a thing that exists. “Just be authentic” is the advice thrown around. But that is not always as useful as we hope. (More on that below.)

Today I want to talk about the importance of developing your identity as a writer, the components of it, and how to be intentional about connecting with readers.

This post is part of first month of my fall curriculum, which I’m calling the Joy & Connection Marketing Plan. Please consider joining my paid community where this week I kicked off the first exclusive series: Define Your Creative Identity. I gave an assignment and am engaging directly with the hundreds of writers and creators in my private Chat, reacting to their introductions, homework, and questions. It’s been incredible to see all the support in this community. Join us here:

Okay, let’s dig in to today’s topic…

Should Creative Work Speak for Itself?

When raising the topic of being public as a writer, some may feel resistance, asking, “Shouldn’t my writing speak for itself?” Yes, of course. But what happens when you publish your book (or Substack, or podcast, etc.) and it just sits there on a shelf, not speaking for itself. Few people pick it up, fewer buy it, and even fewer post reviews about it or tell a friend.

Is that okay? Sure. But most writers and creators I speak with want something more. The best advocate for your work is you. This does not mean you need to become a huckster, or that annoying friend always pushing their products. In fact, it is just the opposite, your creative identity provides a meaningful way for others to learn about your creative work, and the ethos behind it.

This is not a new concept, yet I know many writers and creators resist it. Let me look to another creative field — music — to see how they have handled the idea of, “Shouldn’t my creative work speak for itself?”

If I look up musician interviews on YouTube, I get zero results. Clearly, they feel the music should speak for itself. Likewise, there has never developed a meaningful form of media such as magazines talking about music or interviewing musicians. Musicians have famously never gone on podcasts, they decline any TV appearances, rarely appear in public, and wouldn’t ever choose to play a song live, because that would be akin to becoming a salesperson on stage. When cable TV came of age in the 1980s, a few musicians recorded ads for their music which they called “music videos,” but they were quickly scorned and no musician was brave enough to try again. Musicians, as we know, are famously a hidden part of our culture. They record their music in private, publish it through a record label or via the web, and then go back into hiding to making more music. They feel the music should speak for itself. If you offered me a million dollars, I wouldn’t be able to pick out the members of The Beatles from a photo of 10 people.

Of course, that is all absurd. If we look at our history with the arts, we find people are often curious about the person behind the art. When we engage with writing and art, it opens up a gateway to a new way of looking at the world, each other, and ourselves. Naturally that may include curiosity about the person who created the work that we so covet.

Should your writing and creative work speak for itself? Yep! But that doesn’t mean that nothing else can be done to support it and help it connect with readers.

What Makes Up Your Creative Identity?

What are some core components of one’s creative identity? That can be many things, and it is different for each of us. Too often, I think people focus on the obvious design related decisions: a brand color, for instance. As in, “Oh, my website and social media posts all use my brand color — orange — so people know it’s me! When they think orange, they will think of me and my books!”

And that’s fine, but to me, that is the slightest indicator of what your creative identity really is. Your creative identity is how you and your work make people feel.

It’s what you create, but also why. It’s what you create, but also how. It’s what you create, but also what inspires you. It’s what you create, but also your fears and dreams. It’s what you create, but also your collaborators. It’s what you create, but also your community.

Your creative identity is how you communicate and create connections with people, and the trust they feel with you in the process.

You are a gateway, giving people “ways in” to the themes, stories, and topics you write about. This is inherently about human connections — how you and your work speaks to one individual. I’m listening to 16 hour autobiography right now, and even though the author is famous and the book has thousands of reviews, he is speaking directly to me. When I send out my newsletter each week, even though Substack sends it to thousands of people, each person receives it alone, and if anything I say speaks to them, it becomes a connection between me and that individual, not me and an audience.

We often think that the internet radically changed how a writer or creator develops their creative identity — or how they are public online. Yet, I tend to find the same human elements are what matter most. I study how people become successful on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and elsewhere. Do they create good work? Of course. But they have also developed their voice and identity in a way that simply resonates with people. Why does Ryan Trahan have 16 million subscribers? He makes good stuff, he’s really smart, and people like him. I could not make a dull hotel room as interesting as he does.

Your creative identity is often about moments and experiences. It’s the interactions you have with people, and how they relate to or are inspired by your process and motivation as a writer or creator.

I remember being a part of arts communities and cafe culture back in the 1990s, and what I see online feels similar to what was happening back then. Like-minded people coming together around the arts, but truly getting to know each other and feeling a sense of meaningful connection with creators and fellow fans.

How to define your creative identity? Get good at communicating with your ideal reader and develop a sense of trust with them. Focus on one experience at a time, just like in real life. You don’t forge meaningful relationships by walking into a room and yelling your bio and book description. Or then saying, “And my brand color is orange!”

You Can Be Intentional in Crafting Your Creative Identity

You can be proactive in creating your identity. Advice I commonly hear people give here is, “Just be authentic!” In some ways, I think that advice is not always very helpful. Because we may feel pressure to be magically charismatic and interesting.

You can choose what to share in a proactive manner. This is also how you set clear boundaries around what remains private. I will write about this more soon, but I am a huge believer in establishing firm boundaries so that you feel safe in what is public and what is not.

Each day, we craft a version of ourselves. This can be in simple things like what we wear, how we do our hair, and our grooming habits. But it can also be in how we act around others: the nonverbal cues, social niceties, and communication style.

And if you are an introvert like me, I still think all of this is very accessible. I sit in a room with a locked door all day, yet still share a newsletter each week, a video each week, and dozens of social media updates. I talk to a wide range of writers via phone and Zoom all the time. I share what I like, don’t share what I want to remain private, and turn down all requests for in-person meetings, or anything requiring travel. You can find the balance that works for you.

Please let me know in the comments: what kinds of moments would you love to have with your readers or audience?

To dig into this work even further, please join my paid community here on Substack. You can immediately view this week’s lesson on defining the narratives that drive your creative work, and next week I will be sharing a lesson on crafting your short bio or mission statement. This is a vexing challenge for many writers — how to succinctly describe who you are as a writer and describe your writing in an engaging manner to your ideal readers.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

An author emailed me the other day, and asked how to sustain themselves when they feel overwhelmed by all that is asked of writers, and how to avoid burnout. Here is an excerpt (shared with permission):

“So often people ask me how I cope being an author and having a full time career and a family. Many authors feel awful, they are burnt out and don’t want to continue to work in an industry that expects so much of them. Dan, I would be so very grateful if you can give me and other authors more inspiration and incentives to want to continue in an increasingly tough and demanding industry. I am completely exhausted and that isn’t how I want to feel after ten years as a published author and certainly not as a human being.”

I bought this sculpture at a yard sale years ago, and when I was looking at it recently, it reminded me of that feeling of overwhelm that a writer or creator can experience:

So today I want to talk about how to sustain yourself as a writer, and navigate the risks of overwhelm and burnout. Before we begin, I want to remind you of my fall curriculum, which I am calling The Joy & Connection Marketing Plan. We will be spending three months exploring how to share your writing in a way that is infused with meaningful connections and personal fulfillment. My first exclusive series for paid subscribers starts Tuesday September 10th. Become a paid member of my community here:

Okay, let’s dig in…

The Opportunity — Not the Obligation — to Write

You do not have to write. You can take a pause, a hiatus, or hang it up completely. This decision is yours to make, and needs to align to your personal needs and goals. I always try to remember this, because when I remember that writing is not an obligation but an opportunity, that helps me go back to the well. To return to the source of inspiration that fuels my creative vision.

You can also change what you write, how you write, and how you share. I’ve been surrounded by writers and artists my entire life, and many times have spoken to someone who felt trapped by what they create. They were known for a certain style, but wanted to change and explore new avenues in their work. But they felt trapped. That they would be letting down others by changing, they would be on untested new ground, and that it would somehow be “foolish” to do that. But it is never foolish to listen to your heart, and to forge a path where you feel a sense of growth and fulfillment.

We each get to create, we don’t have to create.

For a writer whose career relies on their craft, is this more complicated? Of course. Yet, as I look up from my computer, I see a wall of faces looking back at me. I have photos of dozens of famous creators posted to that wall, each who remind me of the power of risk in creative work. That sometimes you have to do the unexpected thing, the action that scares you, or what people lease expect. That you have to sometimes let go of what is safe and easy and expected, in order to follow your passion. Here are two stories of creative risk that always inspire me:

• Take the Creative Risk (featuring Bono)
• Your next act (featuring Steve Jobs)

If you are a writer who feels more and more is asked of you, please remember that you don’t have to do any of it. You can choose the path that is right for you, whether that is big picture stuff, or the tiny details.

If I ever feel overwhelmed or burned out, one thing I do is consider a clean slate. How would I work and create if I started fresh, tomorrow? What would be included in that day? What experiences and moments would I optimize for? How would I want it to feel? And of course, I would go back to my Clarity Cards.

Focus on the Craft of Sharing

We all know that writing is a craft, one that you can work on and develop over time. But I also believe that sharing is a craft, one that you can attend to in a slow and meaningful manner, making it feel more nuanced and beautiful over time, and less overwhelming.

Craft allows you to make clear choices focused on improvement, not “doing it all.” For example, I’m sure some writers may say, “Well I know I need an author platform, but I’m struggling to keep up with Substack, TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and so many other channels.”

Now, I’m a writer, and I have worked with writers full-time for 14 years. This is not only a total joy for me, but it is also the only thing that financially supports my family. It would be easy to justify that not only is social media essential for “promoting” my work, but that I truly need to be everywhere. Yet, I didn’t share at all on social media for 6 months this year. When I returned (literally this week!), I wasn’t “everywhere.” I created a single video each day. I even skipped yesterday with no guilt because I was busy. I’ll probably skip today too, and instead go for a walk. I’m not posting to Threads or many other places. I’m focused on what fuels my creative vision, and what creates meaningful moments with readers and those who inspire me. What I try to remember is to:

• Show up and try. While I help people create strategies for how they share their work, sometimes just showing up is more than enough.
• Focus on small steps. Were the videos I shared this week perfect? Nope. But they were fun and each was a small step to sharing something meaningful. In that process, I am developing my voice, and in many cases, amplifying the work of those who inspire me.
• Identify lessons each week. Even weeks that go off the rails are filled with lessons. Counting the lessons helps me know I am attending to this craft of sharing.
• Set intentions, and worry a bit less about specific goals. Maybe this sounds too chill, but I have found that when I focus on intentions, I end up finding more to feel satisfaction with. And when I set specific numeric goals, I tend to be much more stressed. So I focus on the intentions, and assume that “no one knows what works, but doing stuff works.”
• Follow a methodology so that I don’t get trapped in a rut. More on that below.
• Have a support system! I encourage you to develop relationships in your life — professional or personal — with those who can support you, and you them. When I feel overwhelmed, someone I know is going to get a text message. Reaching out to someone is so important, please don’t suffer alone. If you feel you don’t have a colleague or friend like this, then slowly work to develop them. Start by being there for others, it’s just that easy.

I did a deep dive on my Creative Success Pyramid for paid subscribers the other day, and shared this image in my Substack last week:

I also mentioned that I tend to use a 20-tab spreadsheet with clients, where we can carefully work through this methodology to create a personalized plan for how they will share and reach readers.

Some people expressed to me that this felt overwhelming to them. That it looked complex, they instantly felt they had to do it all at once, and that even the word “spreadsheet” freaks them out.

That’s fine!

There are clients I work with where I say, “Oh, you never have to use the spreadsheet, but just know that I’ll be working from this model in our work together.”

As you navigate all of this, I would encourage you to not focus so much on the quick fix, the latest trend, or something that doesn’t feel good but you have convinced yourself you “have to do” because everyone else is doing it. I have an entire chapter in my book Be the Gateway titled, “Avoid best practices.” Choose the path that works for you. Recently I was talking with a writer I’m working with, and just before our chat ended, she said: “I never thought this would be so much fun and interesting.” That is the goal!

This is why I love looking at how one shares as a craft. This is an active process of understanding and improvement. One that you attend to in small ways each week. Where you focus on moments of meaning and fulfillment.

You are What You Do

All of this aligns to the theme I am exploring this month of defining your creative identity. You are what you do, and you get to define what these things are. As a writer, I assume that for many of you, this focuses first on the craft of writing and reading.

In sharing your work, I often encourage writers to talk with readers — to be curious about what people read and why. Many favorite example of this is the time I spent with Barbara Vey years ago, who was a contributing editor for Publishers Weekly. I took her on her first subway ride in New York City, and on a crowded car she did something unexpected. Usually on a subway ride, you don’t stare at other people or talk to them. Barbara did not follow this rule. Instead she turned to the woman sitting next to her and asked her what she was reading. Barbara and the woman then had a lovely conversation about books!

She would tell me stories like this all the time. If she had to go into a medical facility, she would later tell me what her nurses and doctor liked to read. If she went to get a sandwich before we talked on the phone, she would tell me what the person behind the counter liked to read.

When you talk with readers, you dive deep into the “messy” side of the publishing world. You learn that readers don’t neatly fit into a box of only reading one genre, or reading regularly, or liking what you would expect they would. When you learn how to talk with readers, you learn so much about how books are shared, but also you develop a this capacity in yourself. Because when you launch your books, you will want to have the ability to casually talk about it in a way that will truly engage someone.

I encourage you to develop these skills, knowing how to talk about what you write and why. To focus on it as a conversation, not a tagline or elevator pitch. To develop your identity as a writer because you talk about the themes you write about and explore those themes with those you meet.

Please let me know in the comments: how do you manage overwhelm and burnout as a writer or creator?

A final reminder that my exclusive series for paid subscribers starts Tuesday! Become a paid member of my community here:

And if you are curious about getting started on Substack, I’m teaching a course next week hosted by the amazing Jane Friedman: Start on Substack with Power & Purpose.

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

Your writing and creative work are a gateway for those who experience it. It allows them to experience an idea, viewpoint, story, or process that opens them up to a new way of looking at the world, those around them, and themselves.

You are a gateway.

This fall I invite you to join me to find joy and connection in how you share who you are, what you create, and how you connect with your ideal readers. I am excited to announce my fall curriculum, a new series which will flip how you think about marketing, author branding, social media, and the platform you develop to reach readers.

All of this is meant to give you a clear sense of purpose. I’m calling this the Joy & Connection Marketing Plan. It is about how to share your writing in a way that is infused with meaningful connections and personal fulfillment. To do what feels authentic in who you are, and avoid anything that feels gross and icky. Here is how we will spend the autumn:

• September: Define your creative identity.
• October: Identify your ideal readers.
• November: Connect with your ideal readers.

Of course, my free newsletters each Friday will dig into these topics. But where the magic is going to happen is in my community here on Substack, where paid subscribers will join me in an exclusive series each month! Here we will dive deep into a specific aspect of each monthly theme in exclusive 3-week series where you will receive a lesson each Tuesday, and where you can engage with me and other writers and creators in my private Substack chat. The first 3-week series begins on Tuesday September 10th — I will share more about that soon! October and November will have their own exclusive 3-week series as well.

To be a part of this, simply become a paid subscriber to my Substack community. And, for the first time ever, I’m offering a special discount if you join in the next few days. Get 30% off your subscription if you redeem this offer by Tuesday September 3rd.

If you choose the annual plan, that is 49% cheaper than the normal monthly subscription price — a huge deal! This gives you access to the three exclusive series in September, October, and November, my full archives, and private subscriber Chat.

Let’s Do the Work

Years ago, I developed the Creative Success Pyramid. At the time, I knew that this methodology worked well for writers, but could also be applied to other creative fields. This is what it looks like:

While the steps remain the same, the purpose and goal can change depending on the context you are in. This could easily be:

• The Book Launch Pyramid
• The Author Platform Pyramid
• The Grow my Substack Pyramid
• The Start my Coaching Business Pyramid

Why? Because it focuses on the critical steps involved in the craft of how you share. It’s about doing the deep work of understanding your own purpose, framing your public identity, developing messaging that feels authentic, understanding your ideal audience, and all the steps to reach them.

Years ago I published a book called Be the Gateway, which I still have people emailing me about all the time.

When I shared recently about the break I have taken from social media, people expressed to me how they could no longer participate in channels that sap them of energy.

To me, the idea of sharing your writing should be about filling you up, and providing you with meaningful connections with real people. I want you to feel a sense of clear purpose in your work, and knowing that your work is reaching your ideal readers. That you are honoring your creative intentions, not running yourself into the ground.

I encourage you to develop your gateway. To move through the pyramid with me, and to fill your days with sharing who you are, what you create and why, all in a manner that is full of joy and fulfillment.

I hope you can join me this fall for the Joy & Connection Marketing Plan here on Substack. The most value is for my paid subscribers (subscribe or upgrade here!), with the exclusive series I’ll be sharing in September, October, and November. These will be delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, plus you get everything I share in my Friday newsletters, and access to my private Chat community.

Please let me know in the comments: what three words would you choose to define how you want to feel about sharing your writing and connecting with readers?

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

I haven’t posted to social media since March. My last Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn posts were in March, Facebook in December, and Twitter/X and TikTok in November. Why does this matter? Because:

• My entire life focuses on how writers/readers connect online
• I teach social media
• Being present online is a primary way that people find me, and how I support my family

So leaving social media can be seen as an enormous risk to my career. But not posting to social media doesn’t mean I haven’t been present on social media as an observer about 200 times per day — I have. I love seeing what writers and readers share, and engaging with those who inspire me.

And of course, I have doubled down on Substack, which is kinda like social media, but not fully branded that way.

In today’s post, I’m want to share the surprising lesson I learned in not posting to social media, the way I’m developing the strategy for my return, and how I’m focusing all of this on joy, fulfillment, and meaningful connections with writers and creators.

In the process, I want to encourage you to consider how you can begin — or begin again — if you are a writer or creator who wants to use social media, or do anything new (and scary) to connect your writing to readers. Let’s dig in…

I Left Social Media and My Life Didn’t Fall Apart

14 years ago I started this little business, working with writers to help them develop their voices, author platforms, marketing campaigns, and book launch strategies. I sit in this studio every day talking to writers and working with them via Zoom or phone.

This is the work I love and the only thing that supports my family, so it would be easy to assume that without promotion on social media, my life and business would quickly dissolve, right? Luckily, that isn’t the case. It’s been a super busy year, filled with wonderful work with writers.

So often people talk about the value of a writer’s author platform, saying something like, “A publisher told me that they like my book, but I need to work on growing my author platform.” Sometimes that is communicated as, “… they want to see 10,000 followers” on social media.

But social media is not what defines an author platform. And you don’t need 10,000 followers. I have always defined one’s author platform as relying on two things:

1. Communication
2. Trust

This is your ability to effectively communicate with your ideal readers, and to develop a sense of trust with them in the process. Can you do that through social media? Sure. Is social media required? Nope!

There is nothing you “have to do” in order to be a writer, except that is, write. Everything else is optional. That said, I would encourage you to consider the opportunities you want to pursue, the connections that matter most to you, the experiences you want to have — and how social media may help encourage these things.

Leaving social media wasn’t a “big decision” for me. I just… stopped posting. I didn’t announce it, and didn’t even think I would write a post about it until this week. For awhile now, I have known I will start posting again, and have spent a lot of time simply thinking about this, considering how my return will focus on joy and connection. I encourage you to ask yourself a similar question for anything you do to share your writing or creative work.

Focus on the Experiences That Matter Most to You

After weeks of thought, I created a new document titled “Social Media Reset 2024.” I kept it simple, using an empty Keynote template (similar to Powerpoint.) The goal here was to focus on the people who inspire me, how I hope to help writers, and the meaningful moments I want to fill my days with.

I made sure to focus on the positive instead of listing out anything negative. I know that social media can quickly trigger and overwhelm people, often in the most unexpected ways. I have friends who have large followings on social media, yet try to avoid the apps as much as possible because the more they scroll, the less good they feel.

I want to feel the opposite, and to do that I have to be clear about my intentions and how I connect with others. So I’m simplifying everything in order to focus. This may mean that I unfollow a large number of people. Now, this is not meant to sound negative, or imply that any of these people share things I don’t like. They are all wonderful. But I am considering questions such as: “What if I only followed 20 people who deeply inspired me? How would that feel when opening up Instagram?”

Or for crafting the moments that matter most to me: “Do I want to show up to deep conversation with 3 friends, or an auditorium of 800 people?” I don’t know the right answer, but I am giving myself permission to explore. And I’m also aware that regardless of what I choose, there will be a variety of voices in my feeds because of the algorithm, all the re-shares, and all of my subscriptions.

Sometimes going small is a wonderful way to reinvent your experience and expectations. The goal is meaningful connections with other people. You get to make of this what you want. You don’t “have to” do anything. All of those “rules” we hear about online are not rules at all. For instance, recommendations of: “Well, you have to post 3 Reels a day, and there should be a split of 80% generosity to 20% self promotion,” are all just suggestions of what may work for some people, some of the time.

I’ve been considering examples of this. For instance, I belong to a small private Facebook group of vintage toy enthusiast, run by one guy. He is an avid toy collector, and the gaps he has to fill in his collection are very specific hard-to-find items. Does he spend his days on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and other online venues to track down these rare toys in the worldwide marketplace? Nope. As a rule, he only buys items “in the wild” — at antique malls, toy stores, toy shows, or from other collectors. He has to happen upon it in a natural way in the real world, just as one would have done in the 1990s or prior.

This limitation is meant to focus on the experiences that matter to him: conversations around toys, and exploring new places. It also helps ward off the possible negative situations: staying up all night every night searching on eBay. He shares photos of his finds — all from real places, from a variety of people he meets face-to-face.

In another example, I was listening to an interview the other day from someone who used to have a platform on one of the largest media outlets in the world — with millions in the audience. But more recently, he left and has focused solely on developing his platform on his Substack newsletter, which has 174,000 subscribers. He described the problems that came up for him when he had a massive audience who didn’t fully understand his viewpoints or methodology. So he put everything behind his paywall, saying, “I want that self-selected audience that understands how I think.”

I talk to people about this all the time. Last night my wife and I took a walk and were reflecting on the craft stores we used to go to in New York City in the early 2000s. Back then every “find” seemed precious. I reminded her of this ribbon she found back in 2001 that had embroidered strawberries on it that she loved.

But since that time, artists have been inundated with cute “finds” on Instagram — a constant unending stream of them. It can easily desensitize you to the experience. Suddenly you are overwhelmed by all the cute things, and they no longer feel precious.

You get to choose the experience you want — how you share and connect online, and how you do so offline as well.

How I’m Returning to Social Media

I am returning to social media in September, and I want to ensure it is meaningful to writers and creators. To do so, I have developed a Fall Curriculum for what I share, which I’ll announce soon. My focus is to create meaningful experiences for writers, and fill my days with learning, connection, and inspiration.

The fall seems like a natural time to do this, just as my kids get ready to start school again — 2nd grade and 9th grade. For them, there will be new classes, new schedules, new challenges, new opportunities, and perhaps some new outfits.

I’m trying to think of my autumn on social media the same way. My goal is to truly show up, truly see others, and focus on the moments that matter most. I’m 51 years old, and have been active on social media since 2007 or 2008, sharing tens of thousands of posts. It feels nice to give myself permission to begin again, with no assumptions or expectations, and focus on filling my days with joy and human connection.

It’s never too late to begin, or begin again.

Please let me know in the comments: how do you want social media to feel for you? What simple change can you make in order for it to feel more meaningful?

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan