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Growing Your Readership (and Mine)

Tfile000401942226his week, Jane Friedman posted a video of her talk from the 2013 Midwest Writers Workshop on Audience Development. In the video, she shares her experience with starting a website: the quiet beginning, the learning curve, and the principles of cultivating readers “over the span of your career.”

Jane Friedman has over 180,000 (180 THOUSAND!!) followers on Twitter and tens of thousands of hits on her website daily. If you’re interested in readership and author platform, this video is worth the twenty minute investment of your time.

What I love most about her talk, besides her honest and humble perspective on how this all works, is her approach to any new (or ongoing) professional project, two simple words that I view as the underlying current in my work and writing:

Incremental improvement.

Writing as a craft is similar to audience development in that it grows or improves inch by inch. Page by page. On those days when I get caught up in (what seems to be) a lack of progress–on a story or on the novel–I need only look back on the last few months to see that I have been moving forward. In tiny increments.

As usual, it’s all about perspective.

And speaking of incremental improvement….

I’m also progressing to a new way for subscribers of this blog to receive email notifications when new posts go live:

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After Google Reader fell to the wayside, I turned to WordPress’ Jetpack plugin for readers to sign up via email. In the last several months, though, Jetpack has been letting in suspicious email subscribers–with login names like “puzzledhelp” and server tags like “topsandal” and a few risqué logins that might fit in better if I wrote erotica. Mmm hmmm…shady, if you ask me. The logins, that is. If you write erotica, more power to you. But, I digress….

While I love seeing my numbers rise, I don’t like thinking some tech worm has wiggled its way into my site. So, from here on out any subscriptions to this blog will run through a MailChimp campaign. I’ll be able to manage subscribers with a little more ease and comfort, and you’ll be able to manage your subscription with a little more control as well.

If you’re already subscribed, you don’t have to resubscribe. But, I do ask two things of you:

  1. First and foremost: if you receive more than one notification from me next week, please accept my apologies. I’m hoping, as I deactivate Jetpack and transfer everything over to Mail Chimp, everything will run smoothly and you’ll only see one email from me. But, technology isn’t always my friend.
  2. Should you receive more than one email from this site, feel free to unsubscribe from the email that does NOT include the MailChimp electronic stamp. If you have any trouble with this, contact me.

Incremental improvements. Little by little. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

(If, by chance, you’re not yet subscribed but would like to, MailChimp makes it easy. Just click the link on the sidebar.)

Are you able to see the progress–little by little–on your own projects, writing or otherwise?

* Photo credit: FlyingPete on morguefile.com

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Writing Memoir: the Side Effects of Telling the Truth

“There is a ripple effect each time a memoir is published, and while the memoirist cannot fully prepare for it, he or she should expect it.” ~ Anthony D’Aries in Writing Lessons: Memoir’s Truth and Consequences

file0001997823143Several years ago, I was pushing my daughter in the stroller while on a walk, and I came upon a story. Near my house, I passed a young girl sitting on her front steps. She was skinny, maybe thirteen. She looked bored. Then, I heard people I can only assume were her parents yelling at each other inside the house, their voices loud enough so that every word resounded as clear as the intonation behind it. I slowed my pace and gave a tentative wave. When the girl glanced up at me, I thought I saw the faint trace of a black eye.

At first, I kept on walking, doubting myself but wondering. Then, I turned around and asked if everything was okay. She looked at me like I was crazy. Like everything going on around her, behind her, and in spite of her, was just another day in Normal. Parents argue, they yell. This young girl waits it out.

Impressed by the image and by her indifference (and maybe by a little of my own guilt in walking away), I wrote “Red Velvet Sunday.”

Later, I had the opportunity to read that story on the radio, and I shared the link to the episode with family and friends. Even though the story was fiction, someone close to me said they hoped the story wasn’t born out of real life experiences. “Not a bit!” I said, completely surprised, and I wondered what they and others might think if I did write bits and pieces of truth.

When writing memoir, facts are set down easily enough; it’s everything in between—and the potential effects afterward—that presents the challenge. Andrew D’Aries warns the memoirist in his quote above, but a write can only prepare for so much.

I’m talking truth in memoir at Write It Sideways this week in a post that’s generating some great discussion. I hope you’ll stop by and leave your thoughts.

Writers love dialogue.

Read it here: Telling the Truth in Memoir: More Than Just Facts

*Photo credit: biberta on morguefile.com

 

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Finding Time to Write: Old-School Technology Saves the Day

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All I need is ten minutes. I’m notorious for saying those words after a late night, a long day, or in a moment of exhaustion. Ten minutes of sleep. That’s it.

And, it usually works.

I wake up refreshed, ready, and I don’t feel one bit guilty about taking that time for myself.

So, why can’t I apply the same philosophy to my writing: ten minutes, no guilt?

Just a few weeks into summer, I posted about how I was taking all my extra time, before my kids got out of school, to write. Before time got swept up in travel to and from baseball and gymnastics and swimming and Up North. And, never mind the grocery shopping and the laundry and Who’s planning on weeding the garden anyway? I swore, early on, I wouldn’t have a minute to spare for writing once summer heated up.

Funny enough, though, I didn’t worry about when I might find time for checking emails or updating my Facebook status or shooting off a tweet or two. Or that nap.

EggTimer1Cue Joanne Tombrakos‘ book, It Takes an Egg Timer: A Guide to Creating the Time for Your Life: 

You do have enough time–for everything you have to and want to, and then some. It’s just a question of what you are letting get in the way.

I bought Tombrakos’ book ages ago but hadn’t cracked it open. Then, shortly after I wrote my “don’t bother me I’ll be writing” post, I rediscovered it. I was flipping through source material to use at my monthly writing gig with the Seniors, and I saw the Egg Timer book. I thought it might have some good tips, maybe a writing prompt or two.

I don’t remember bookmarking any prompts necessarily, but I do remember reading.
And nodding.
And taking A LOT of notes.

Old-school technology, exactly what I need.

Trombrakos’ concept is simple (and cheap): get yourself a regular egg timer and use it as THE tool to help you focus and to be wise with your time. Spend a good 20 minutes or 60 minutes on writing-related projects, be it social media or novelizing…or blog posts.

Sure, there are a million ways to time yourself, including the iPhone (which I have and have used). But Tombrakos makes a good point when she talks about her history with egg timers, how it’s not just about the simplicity of the mechanism but the meditative (and non-disctracting) qualities of it:

The gentle, unobtrusive tick, tick, ticking of an egg timer fell on my ears like the sound of the ocean. Soothing and calming, I grew to understand it as a set amount of time in which something could be created. In the kitchen it was food. On my desk it would be something else.

My iPhone pulls me away from writing with its easy access to all things online. If I really want to focus my time and attention, I have to put that piece of technology away.

How It Works

The point of using an egg timer is to busy ourselves with what engages us, not what distracts us from our purpose and our path.

MAKE A TO-DO LIST. Simple enough, you say, but don’t overlook the value of a list. It’s precisely when I’m overwhelmed that a such a list becomes my life-saver (or sanity-preserver). I write down the next several writing projects I have to do/want to do, even if I think, “There’s no way.” Just write it down.

SET YOUR PARAMETERS. Tombrakos suggests 20-minute or 60-minute windows of time. I set mine at 10, 30, 0r 60, depending. The numbers aren’t as important as how you use them. Look at your list and figure out which projects warrant more or less time. If you’re having trouble deciding, consider a couple of questions from the book:

How is this task helping to manifest my bigger intentions?
Is is worth setting the egg timer for?

For example, Twitter and Facebook are both a part of my writer’s platform, so I can’t ignore them completely. But I can limit the time I spend fiddling around with them. As Tombrakos says, “Social media never gets a sixty-minute window. NEVER.”

START THE TIMER. Really. Get going. I had to tell myself that the other night when, after settling my kids into bed, I felt beat tired. Beat. It was already close to ten o’clock, and I thought, Surely sleep is the better option. But, my egg timer–this little guy

sergeant

–was sitting on my desk, looking all cute and what-not but ready to give me the fish-eye if I didn’t get moving.

So I did. For just 30 minutes. And, man, did I feel good afterward.

I don’t use the egg timer every time I sit down to write, and I’m not always as productive with the timer when I do. But, as Tombrakos says, “The egg timer alone is not your answer, but it sure helps.” Especially on those days when writing is the last thing I want to do or the one thing I think I can’t possibly squeeze into my schedule.

What would you do with ten minutes? Or twenty?