Platform Resolutions for Writers 2010

Before writers establish an author platform, they typically establish a writer platform. Over the past decade, thousands of writers have parlayed established influence into traditional book deals. Landing a traditional book deal is still an effective way to exponentially increase your credibility and visibility.
Your “platform” refers to what you do in the world with your professional expertise that makes you visible and influential in the world. Having friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter is not your platform, unless the majority of those people know who you are, what you do, and are enthusiastic about your work.
I thought I would offer some advice about how to slowly and steadily establish a lasting platform. You may note the lack of fanaticism in this advice and the emphasis on enduring success instead. I’m a mother and a wife, a freelancer, a speaker, a teacher, and a blogger, so aiming for balance is the only way I can afford to work if I plan on sticking around for the long haul.

This advice has worked consistently for my students over the past several years. I think you will find that a grounded, step-by-step approach works just as well for you if you choose to follow it:

1. Develop a platform topic that you love and can work on tirelessly for the next few years. Your passion of the moment should come in second to the topic you could delve into deeply for a good, long time. Prior professional education and a depth of personal experience are going to be a boon to your platform if you have an eye on a future book deal.
2. Hang back from establishing a blog on your topic until you have cultivated a wealth of content and experience working with others on specialty-related activities that lend credibility and trust to your name. Others will tell you to start blogging immediately, but don’t, if you want to be efficient with your time and money.
3. Instead, gain authority by seeking publication in established, highly visible publications both in print and online that serve your target audience. Avoid the kind of publishing that anyone can accomplish, like posting on article sites, and work on your professional communication skills instead. By all means, avoid the content mills offering writers slave wages with the promise of future earnings.
4. Don’t begin any kind of marketing campaign for any product or service offerings until you have established yourself as a go-to person on your topic, again saving you time and money. Before you look at ways to serve others directly, channel your expertise into the best service methods possible based on your strengths and weaknesses. This is a meaty topic that is covered in-depth in my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008).
5. Then, develop a product or service that can become one of several multiple income streams over time that will support your goal of becoming a published author. For example, teaching classes over the years has allowed me to re-invest more of the money I earn from writing books back into book marketing. Make sure any offerings you produce are released conscientiously and are integrated into the professional writing you already do. Otherwise, you will seem like you are all over the place and just trying to score a buck.
6. Don’t expect your platform to support you financially for at least one or two years, as you micro-invest in it, re-invest in it as it grows, and expand your visibility.
7. Once you have a professional publication track record in your niche topic, then it’s time to hang your online shingle. I’ve seen this accomplished in as little as six months by exceptionally focused students. Take a portion of the money you’ve earned writing and invest it in a professional quality online presence.
8. A low-cost way to do this is to purchase your name as a URL and use a hosting site like GoDaddy.com to host a Wordpress.org blog. I use the Thesis Theme, which you can see in action at my blog. In this way, a blog can also serve as your website where you post your published clips, offerings and bio. If you don’t have a ton of money to invest in the look of your site, you can always pay a designer later.
9. Delay partnering with others on joint ventures until you have a clear idea of your own strengths and weaknesses in and around your topic. And when you do partner with others be extremely discriminating. Make sure the partnership is going to be win-win-win for everyone involved.
10. Start an e-mail newsletter or e-zine with those who are most interested in your topic. Build your list by invitation and then grow it into a permission-based following over time. Create an expected, ongoing dialogue that is mutually beneficial to everyone involved and your list will grow.
11. Now you are ready to start blogging. And yes, I mean while you continue to do all the things we’ve already discussed. Be sure to zoom-focus your blog on what you have to add to the conversation that is already going on about your topic. Don’t just share information; make an impact. Make your blog a go-to, up-to-date resource for your audience.
12. Partner selectively with others who serve the same general audience that you do with integrity and humility. Spend time getting to know folks before you decide to partner with them. You can’t afford to taint the reputation you have worked so hard to establish by partnering with just anyone.
13. Now that you have an established niche and audience, definitely participate in social networking. I like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn because they all offer something unique. The best way to learn is to jump in, spend an hour online each week until you are up and running. Follow the instructions for getting started provided by social media expert Meryl K. Evans.

This start-up plan for a writer platform will eventually blossom into an author platform. From start to finish, implementing a solid platform following this advice should take you about a year. By the end of that year, you will have established yourself as a serious contender in both professional and online circles, without killing yourself for some huckster’s promise of overnight success.

Have a plan. Leave a legacy in words, connections and professional influence. If you are consistent, by the time the year is done, you will have made effective use of your time and money in 2010. I wish you the best of luck in your platform-building efforts!


Christina Katz is the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform and Writer Mama, How to Raise a Writing Career Alongside Your Kids for Writer’s Digest Books. She has written hundreds of articles for national, regional, and online publications, presents at literary and publishing events around the country, and is a monthly columnist for the Willamette Writer. Katz publishes a weekly e-zine, The Prosperous Writer, and hosts The Northwest Author Series. She holds an MFA in writing from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Dartmouth College. A “gentle taskmaster” to her hundred or so students each year, Katz channels over a decade of professional writing experience into success strategies that help writers get on track and get published. Learn more at ChristinaKatz.com.

Where have you gone Dr. Seuss?

By Shari Downhill

Four words that rankle me…“There is no hope.” 

Too many people; Too much pollution; Not enough time; Too much greed; Too much…Too little…Too much…Too little…On and on like a pendulum it goes.

Oh Dr. Seuss, where are you when I need you?

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple,” Seuss chortles in my ear.

Sigh…

Then something happens to get my attention, to pull me out of my early morning depressed stupor.

“What was that? Ah, yea, I Remember now.”

My hand is stopped in mid-air reaching for a jar mayonnaise on the top shelf of the refrigerator. I can feel a place at the top of my heart, near my sternum. The angels are talking to me again.

It’s something that happens when I genuinely ask Spirit a question. Oddly enough, Spirit ALWAYS answers and often sounds a whole hell of a lot like Dr. Seuss .

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not,” the wise one says.

But I am overwhelmed by a mountain of unfinished tasks. I’ve been floundering in a muck of futility. “I need some sun,” I try to convince myself. “That’ll cheer me up. Pump up my serotonin levels.” And with that egoic nudge to my gluts I’m tumbling down the slippery slope of “I need…,” self prescribing things, people and experiences that will make me happy, fulfilled and content.

That is, until I feel The Breath in my face. I’ve actually asked for angelic assist on this…Asked them to apply the spiritual shock collar when I’ve again wrapped myself around the “I need…” axle.

The Breath

I remember taking my children to a community sponsored event to create child safety portfolios. These were supposed to come in handy if our children were ever abducted. Scary thought. Scary enough to fill a local school’s lunch room with fearful young mothers and their toddlers. The portfolios would contain our children’s fingerprint cards and Polaroid pictures. It seemed important and relevant at the time.

In that odd and fearful environment a spontaneous silence took hold, thick and anxious. Crashing through that silent window came a sound like a melon hitting concrete. The silence turned into a vacuum sucking my attention toward a mother picking her toddler up from a crumpled heap on the floor. She held him high in the air like a young child would hold a limp cat, mirroring the blue frozen shock on her baby’s face. The little boy had fallen off of a bench and landed on the back of his head. Though there was no blood, his face was frozen in a scream, stuck like a screen door with a faulty pneumatic closer.

Though I knew this woman to be very capable, she was momentarily paralyzed. “He won’t breathe!” she finally wailed. “He won’t breathe!”

I yelled at her from across the room, “Blow in his face!” But she remained as still as her baby. “Blow—in--his--FACE!” I yelled louder.  She finally recognized the bellowed instruction and blew forcefully into the small scrunched blue face.  The baby inhaled sharply.

 I’ve heard it’s an instinct response but I’ve never researched it. I just know my mother taught the trick to me and it worked. I’m sure my mother was taught by someone else, who was taught by someone else, who passed the knowledge on.

Angelic Assist

Knowing full well that this works, I’ve given the angels permission to use it on me when they need to get my attention. And they do.

“It's a troublesome world. All the people who're in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
for the places and people you're lucky you're not.”

Have I mentioned that the angels adore Seuss? Yea, well, here’s the deal - Why reinvent the wheel?  I also find they enjoy rhetorical humor, at least the ones who hang out around me.

“Thank goodness for all of the things you are not!
Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot,
and left all alone in some punkerish place
like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space.
Thats why I say "Duckie!
Don't grumble! Don't stew!
Some critters are much-much,
oh, ever so much-much,
so muchly much-much more unlucky than you!”

 I can’t help it, I am forced to smile. My Uncle Whitie could do that – make me smile when I’d been on the edge of tears seconds earlier. Maybe my Uncle Whitie has been coaching the angels.

I’m back standing in front of the refrigerator in my robe, hand reaching toward the mayonnaise.

As I touch the cold shelf in front of me I feel The Breath and inhale. I remember why I am here. I am present and listening closely to my heart. I remember that is where my Truth is. That is where the idea that I am separate from God has no foothold. It is where I find a deep and respectful Love for myself and the world I have co-created – sometimes intentionally and sometimes thoughtlessly. The Breath reawakens me.

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You!”

I grab the mayonnaise and finish making my daughter’s sandwich.  I notice the smell of the bread, the sweetness of the fresh strawberries and the coolness of the yoghurt container in my hand.  Rather than rushing through putting her lunch together, I begin to enjoy it. I smell the fresh coffee and feel eyes on me. I turn around to see our dog, Belle, standing near lending her support.

What about all of those things that you need to do?” my ego whines at me. “Doesn’t that STRESS YOU OUT?”

Well, yea, it did before the angels reminded me that being present in every moment is the only thing that I REALLY need to do.

But, damn, priorities are double edged and sharp. I think I’m on top of things when I build a task list, prioritize them and insert neat little boxes to be checked off at completion.  That approach seems to make sense, but I find myself listening to angels instead. As messengers for Spirit, they have a much different agenda, and it never seems to match my task list. So, seldom do the tasks get done completely. Guilt seeps in…and I succumb once again to the Great Forgetting.

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”

When will the vicious cycle end? When will the Great Forgetting stop? When will I be strong enough in Spirit to Remember for more than a few measly seconds before guilt, worry and insecurity seep in?

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.”

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it? This whole cycle of needs and wants, desires and demands, the constant striving for a thing we call “happiness” that falls so short of the joy possible if our hearts were only tuned to Spirit.

That leads me to the practical yet sad truth behind The Law of Attraction, the phenomenon enticingly explained to the world by Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret. The truth is we can manifest anything in our imagination. The Law of Attraction is as real a universal law as gravity. But, there is a dark side. Or, as my friend Aisha explains, a duality that we often fail to consider. There is always, without fail, a consequence for everything we do, say and think. It’s Quantum in nature. But, that’s another story…

The Truth of Yuzz…

And there is a larger consideration. The idea that just because there is desire coupled with the ability to manifest that it is the wise thing to do. I will repeat this because it’s the most profound thought God has gifted me with today – My imagination, and my idea of what is best for me falls far, far short of what God has in mind. My conscious imagination is fetal and limited, though I wish that were not true.

Why then, would I not wait to see what Spirit would manifest on my behalf? Sounds simple enough, but it strikes terror in my heart.

Wait? Don’t lay down any plan? Stand at the mouth of the void expectantly? I think I would feel safer standing naked on the side of a busy highway.

“My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It's the letter I use to spell yuzz-a-ma-tuzz. You'll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond 'Z' and start poking around!”

So, I’ll wait here…and try very hard to Remember to Remember to Remember…and be grateful for patient angels who utilize the wisdom of Dr. Seuss to comfort and encourage me.

“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way.”

“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!”

~~~~~~

Quotes are from various Dr. Seuss books from my youth. I am forever grateful to Dr. Seuss for his creative healing.

Withholding judgment ~ Finding Solutions to Teenage Bullying

by Shari Downhill

The case of a bullied teenage girl who took her own life has grabbed attention across the U.S. The death of Phoebe Prince has resulted in the indictment of nine of her high school peers in the South Hadley , MA  with additional indictments expected. The Prince case is intriguing not because its uniqueness, but because it is so common. The question is - why the media attention now for something that’s been going on for ages?

South Hadley has become a fish bowl with thousands of harpoon pointing fingers demanding retribution – fingers pointing away from the only real solution. Only by accepting personal responsibility can we heal and effect change in our own communities and homes. That's a solution. Pointing at the “monstrous” behavior of others and shoving the responsibility of a collective culture that perpetuates and condones bullying at all levels far away from our own doorstep accomplishes exactly two things: Perpetual Victimhood and Ethical Impotence.

How could I say this? Isn’t it easier to recall and recount gut wrenching incidents of being bullied in school?

Isn’t it also true too that none of us can escape a nagging memory of treating someone else unfairly? Of whispering cruelties? Of acting vengefully as a teenager?  …and as adults?

Guilty.

So, now what?
Rather than concentrating venomous judgment on a community and school that is no different than our own, we model the change this country is demanding of South Hadley. We learn to understand the devastating effects of bullying, how to recognize it in our schools, our children and ourselves. We recognize that teenage girls are just as effective at bullying as teenage boys are, and some would argue, even more so. Culture driven mandates that “girls are supposed to be nice” have only served to redirect their aggression down avenues at times more torturous than the fist fights teenage boys openly engage in.

In “Odd Girl Out” and “Odd Girl Speaks Out” Rachel Simmons delves into female bullying, putting a face on an underground culture of girls’ abuse of girls. Simmons travels across the country speaking to girls, parents, teachers and coaches on female aggression, naming the demons and dragging them out into the light.

“Dirty looks, taunting notes, exclusion from social groups – there is a hidden culture of girls’ aggression in our schools that is as widespread as it is painful,” Simmons says. Through first person case studies, Simmons goes beyond anecdotal surface assumptions, sharing insights that parents, teachers and coaches can use to better guide young girls and young women.

Beyond the immediate symptom of bullying, MA based writer and artist Daniel Brown says teenagers need to be encouraged to acknowledge the disturbing thoughts that haunt them. “Young people should be encouraged to communicate the darker emotions that roil their minds instead of having them medicated or denied,” Brown suggested in a recent essay about the South Hadley incident. “Instead of embracing a dead-end culture of victimhood, we should give even the meekest of kids the mental and verbal tools that will teach them how to defend themselves when they are falsely accused or verbally assaulted.”

Joining with many others calling for a stop to the South Hadley “witch hunt,” Brown says adult modeling would go a long way towards showing young people appropriate ways of handling frustration, disagreements, jealousy and anger – all natural occurrences in social group settings.  All too often teenagers witness their own parents engaged in similarly cruel and callous behaviors as those that reportedly led to Phoebe Prince’s suicide. Unintentional modeling is perpetuated by teenagers who view it – however aggressive, cruel and destructive – as an acceptable option.

The answer lies in our own homes and in our relationship with our own children. Humility and a willingness to recognize our own shortcomings…and being willing to talk about them is one simple first step. Pulling back the finger of accusation is the second.

(c) 2010 Shari Downhill