Your Story Matters
What Memoir Writers Fear Most
Beck came to me last spring with a vague idea about the story he wanted to write.
Snippets of experiences from my childhood living as a girl and moments of parallel in adulthood, as I re-experience firsts as a man.
Okay.
I knew there was an important story there, and I also knew that "snippets" weren't going to do it justice.
"What are you most afraid of?" I asked. I figured the snippets approach was a way for Beck to protect himself, to guard his heart from further trauma and judgment.
Snippets! So light and breezy!
Because this is a writer who has been abandoned over and over by the people who are supposed to love him most.
"Oh, I'm afraid that people will think my book is a narcissistic journey into nothingness," Beck said.
I chuckled, not because this was funny but because I hear a variation of this fear all the time from writers.
Being afraid that people will think you're a narcissist if you write your story really means you're afraid that no one will...
5 Steps to Building Your Author Platform
Author Platform is a scary and mysterious term for many writers. Let’s unpack it.
Michael Hyatt, author of Platform, says platform "is the stage you use to connect with readers. It’s how you get noticed in a noisy world."
Tim Grahl, author of Your First 1000 Copies says author platform is “code for how you are going to sell your book.”
Platform is finding the people who connect with what you write, building real relationships with them by being, as Tim Grahl says, “relentlessly helpful,” and then offering them a product—your book—to purchase when it’s ready.
Notice, I didn’t say ANYTHING about having thousands of social media followers. This is one of the biggest misconceptions about “platform.” Platform does NOT equal social media or number of followers. Social media is useful in building your platform - but it’s only one of many tools.
