Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

If you’re new to writing, you may be unaware of the fierce debate among writers, editors, teachers, and grammarians over the use of the serial, or Oxford, comma. If you’ve been around the world of words a while, you know the tension, the arguments, the passion associated with this tiny punctuation mark used—or not used—in the specific scenario of a series. The Oxford Comma The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma, is the last comma you’d use in a list that includes three or more words or phrases and a coordinating conjunction. The comma would be placed just before the final “or” or “and.” For example, if I said, “I love articles, essays, poems, and podcasts,” a serial comma would be the comma you’d place just after “poems” and before the word “and.” It's often referred to as the Oxford comma because, as Oxford Dictionaries explains, "it was traditionally used by printers, readers, and editors at Oxford University Press.” The AP Stylebook vs. The Chicago Manual of Style Style guides tend to fall into two camps on the use of the Oxford comma. The Chicago Manual of Style, for example, often used by book publishers, “strongly recommends” its use in every series—use it by default, they urge, because it prevents ambiguity. The Associated Press Stylebook, usually referred to as the AP Stylebook, is used by many newspapers and magazines. This style guide prefers using the serial comma only when clarity is needed. Otherwise, leave it out by default. It’s a space-saving measure, for one thing, and leaves the page one stroke cleaner and less cluttered. Both philosophies agree that the use of the comma achieves the goal of avoiding ambiguity. The difference is that The Chicago Manual of Style argues that using it by default will avoid an oversight. So if you or the place you write for says to use the serial comma all the time—even if the sentence would make sense without it—you or the place you write for falls in the “Oxford comma” camp. How Can a Missing Comma Cause Confusion? What kind of ambiguity or confusion could be caused by leaving out one little bitty comma? Mental Floss offers up several examples of confusion caused by leaving out that key comma. One is a book dedication that may have been invented. It reads: “To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.” It’s missing the serial comma that The Chicago Manual of Style would urge adding directly after Ayn Rand. With the Oxford comma missing, the dedication implies that this person comes from an implausible but unforgettable lineage—that his or her parents are Ayn Rand and God. You can poke around online and find numerous examples of how the Oxford comma helps avoid combinations that would lead to confusion or at least bizarre images. And, as I said, the AP Stylebook would agree to include it to avoid confusion. In that respect, we’re all on the same page. But it’s worth our time to consider the implication of leaving it out when it really ought to have been included. A week or so ago, a United States Court of Appeals handed down a ruling that hinged upon a missing comma. Maine’s overtime statutes include a list that leaves out the serial comma so that you could read it two different ways: one interpretation would combine two actions to be one, and another interpretation would separate them to be two different activities. Including the comma would have cleared things up. A dairy in Maine interpreted the meaning of the phrase one way, and its drivers interpreted it another way in a case involving overtime pay. And with that, we all saw that serial commas are serious business. Smithsonian Magazine provides a brief explanation of the case and quotes Judge David J. Barron: “For want of a comma, we have this case.” Small Stuff Matters No matter where you fall on this usage philosophy,

I didn't publish a single post last week. I volunteered to serve at a four-day tournament, and my commitment left no free time. I couldn't write anything new, and I had no blog posts or podcast episodes in reserve. So last week, I published nothing. May I serve as a cautionary tale? Work Ahead on Content If you're a blogger or regular guest columnist for another publication, I urge you to do what I failed to do: write several articles or blog posts and store them up—better yet, prep and schedule them—so you'll have content for the weeks you head off on vacation, catch the flu, or volunteer to serve at a four-day tournament. If you don’t, you'll end up like me and have no choice but to recycle something from the archives or simply take the week off. Now, taking a week off is certainly an option. But your readers like hearing from you. They look forward to your updates. They appreciate your solutions to their problems. They're entertained by your stories. They show up looking for whatever it is you write and when you and your words aren't there for a week or more, they wonder what’s going on. They hope nothing's wrong. I wish I'd worked ahead, so I could have offered great content to help you reach your writing goals—and have fun. We missed a week when, together, we could have been more curious, creative, and productive. It Takes Grit to Work Ahead I know it's possible to work ahead, because I pulled it off last year when I was going to be gone for several weeks. The month before I left, I got up early and stayed up late to double the work, writing one piece for the week I was in and another for a month out, when I would be traveling. My pace was nutty—unsustainable, really—but I pulled it off and felt great having a month's worth of content finished, prepped, and scheduled. It took grit; I had to push to get ahead. But what freedom! And the beauty is that once you're ahead, you can revert back to a normal schedule, producing only one piece at a time knowing there’s a safety net. If you fall behind one week, you’ll still have something to publish. I wish I'd kept it up and maintained that work-ahead advantage. But I didn’t. And that’s why last week, I did not record a podcast or write a blog post. And that’s why this week, I’ve resolved to work ahead. Write When Productive to Have Content When Blocked The work-ahead advantage is a great gift not only when you're busy, like I was, but also when you hit a creative lull. Call it writer's block or call it a dry spell. Whatever it is, writers often enjoy mega-productive seasons followed by weeks of meager output. If you can manage to write extra when words are flowing freely, you'll accumulate essays, articles, blog posts, or poems you can continue to send out even if you enter a phase when you're unable to produce polished pieces. What Season Are You in Now? If you’re in a mega-productive season, write. Write a lot. Write more than you need. Write until you have a month’s worth of material or more. Make hay while the sun shines and all that. If you're in a dry spell, hang in there. Read some great literature and relax into it. Underline phrases that generate a sigh or laughter. Copy into your commonplace book sections that seem significant and deserve further consideration. Take long walks. Sip tea. Exercise. Write in a journal. During that lull, maybe—hopefully—you’ll have some extra content on hand that you can send out or publish. If not, that’s okay. Call it a hiatus or a sabbatical or something. At some point, the muse will return and you'll feel that surge of energy. Ideas and inspiration will once more flow through your fingers and onto the screen. Once again,

  Before we revise, we need something to revise. We must compose the perfect first draft. How? We write without worrying about every comma splice or misplaced modifier. We write with abandon and get the story down. The Writer Hat During the prewriting and creation stage, we must consciously separate the writer self from the editor self. It’s as if we need to wear two hats—literally two different hats you can wear at the appropriate times. In episode 91, I mentioned my literal editor hat: a Maxwell Perkins-style fedora. The writer hat—especially needed during that first draft creation stage—is more like a baseball hat popped on backward. That image comes to me from Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote: My muse wears a baseball cap, backward. The minute my daughter is on the school bus, he saunters up behind me with a bat slung over his shoulder and says oh so directly, “Okay, author lady, you’ve got six hours till that bus rolls back up the drive. You can sit down and write, now, or you can think about looking for a day job.” (High Tide in Tucson, 96) Don’t stop the momentum and start fiddling with the words when knocking out that draft. Pop on the baseball cap as a reminder to keep the words flowing. When that hat is on, we’re in a no-judgment zone, building the piece, keeping the creativity flowing, not second-guessing ourselves. Just get ‘er down and git ‘er done. “Crummy” First Drafts Another memorable source to turn to regarding first drafts is Anne Lamott. Countless writers have found freedom to write wild and free and without judgment thanks to a chapter in Bird by Bird (and I paraphrase), “Crummy First Drafts.” “All good writers write them,” Lamott says. “This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts” (21). As readers, we see the final versions of books. We pluck them from library shelves and marvel at their quality, their genius, their lyrical style, their page-turning power. We forget that every short story, poem, memoir, and novel started as an initial draft. Every writer had to get that first draft down—and that first draft was likely rambling, riddled with errors, and downright crummy. Write Like It’s Child’s Play Lamott gives another freeing image to take us into our project's initial writing stage: The first draft is the child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, "Well, so what, Mr. Poopy Pants?,” you let her. No one is going to see it. (22-23) When we write our draft like it’s child’s play—free and even fanciful—she says we may end up with one line in a paragraph buried deep on the sixth page…a line that captures our imagination, and perhaps our heart. It’s a line “you just love,” she writes, “that is so beautiful or wild that you know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go—but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages” (23). Write Without Judgment Quiet the voices and write without judgment, without fear, without hesitation. Like a child scribbling her story. Free. I’ve never been able to confirm the original source, but Jane Smiley is attributed as saying, “Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It's perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.” Don’t let perfectionism hold your words hostage when you’re working on that first draft. Let it all out. It’s perfect for what it is: the first draft.

Style, for example, is not—can never be—extraneous Ornament…. [I]f you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’ (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in the 1916 book On the Art of Writing) Writing Needs Revision When I taught composition and creative writing to high school students, many of them felt that the first draft they spit out was enough. Boom. Done. They did not want to go back and revise. But writing needs revision. So they learned in my class that writing is a process. Now, it’s true that they had, at that point of arriving at a first draft, successfully worked their way through several stages of writing—from pre-writing and development stages to the first draft. But they weren’t done yet. No, they needed to go through editing, revision, proofreading and peer review stages—which might lead to more revision and proofreading—before ever submitting their project to me. That’s how it worked in Mrs. Kroeker’s writing class. Because that’s how it works in the real world. I wanted to train them to take a second, third, and fourth look at their writing. I can’t remember the last time something I wrote came out perfectly the first time. Probably never. I fiddle with emails and Facebook updates, so you’d better believe I fiddle with my writing projects. I want them to be the best they can be for any editor or agent—and eventually, of course, the reader. So I revise. I expand in some places and murder my darlings in other places. And at various stages, I get input from others, because an objective set of eyes is like gold to a writer. We get so close to our projects we stop thinking or seeing clearly. We miss glaring errors and tiny blips. We think it flows, but our first readers find it choppy or confusing. Don Your Editor Hat Before I pull in others, I start with my own eyes. I can edit as I go a little bit, but toward the end, I actually don my editor hat—I don’t literally don a hat, but I could if I wanted to. I have a nice Maxwell Perkins-ish fedora on hand, should I need to fully focus on editing. When we wear this figurative—or literal—hat, we start reading more critically. We look for hot spots and trouble zones. We read to discover how well a section flows or how believable our characters are. We address the glaring errors and try to spot and fix the tiny blips. Reform Your Work Alice LaPlante in her book The Making of a Story (affiliate link) quotes Raymond Carver: It doesn’t take that long to do the first draft of the story, that usually happens in one sitting, but it does take a while to do the various versions of the story. I’ve done as many as twenty or thirty drafts of a story. Never less than ten or twelve drafts. LaPlante herself goes on to say, “First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it.” Don’t be afraid to go back into your work and reform it—to revise it. The word “revision" comes from Latin, meaning to “see again.” When we stick the editor hat on, we’re trying to maintain an objective eye and see our work afresh. Try This to See Again Step away from your project for a while—as long as you can manage. Come back to it and read it aloud. Flag any spots where you stumble over a word or have to re-read a sentence. Maybe you stop or pause because you didn’t include appropriate punctuation. If you realize a scene doesn’t seem clear or a character’s dialogue feels unrealistic or a point in your essay is underdeveloped,...

Christian author Eugene Peterson wrote a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. He explains where he got that phrase. Christians, he says, are looking for quick results, but shortcuts don't lead to Christian maturity. Peterson writes, "Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw this area of spiritual truth at least with great clarity, wrote, 'The essential thing 'in heaven and earth' is . . . that there should be long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living." Peterson argues that the world discourages this "long obedience in the same direction." Commit to a Long Obedience in the Same Direction Anything worth doing will ideally be something that also makes life worth living. I’ve concluded writing is worth doing and is part of what makes life worth living. I don’t want to waste my life. I don’t want you to, either. So if anyone tells you a writing life is a wasted life, don’t listen to them. Resolve, instead, to a long obedience in the same direction—write and keep writing, and see where it leads. You may very well find positive results, and I hope you will. Will you get exactly what you hope for? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what you hope for. If you hope for bestseller status and seven-figure advances, that may not be where your obedience takes you. Even the dream of seeing a single book in print one day is not guaranteed by a long obedience in the same direction. I do believe, however, your faithful work as a writer will give you a life worth living. The writer who stays faithful—showing up to write the stories, to steward the message, to pass along the truths—will find that she can look back on her life with satisfaction regardless of the results. And yet you very well may find that your efforts lead to success in a short time frame—if so, I’m happy for you! Just be careful, though, because it can be tempting to sort of sit back and feel you’ve arrived or to fear you’ll never achieve such impressive results again. I urge you to avoid either of those responses. Don't rest on your laurels or fear you got your 15 minutes of fame and that’s it, time’s up. Stay Faithful: Keep Showing Up, Keep Writing Instead, build on that early success and if for some reason, you don’t see continued success, write anyway. Stick with that long obedience in the same direction. Keep at it. Keep showing up. Keep writing. The world praises quick results and discourages long obedience in the same direction. Someone or some message will try to convince you it’s not worth it to stick with this writing life over the long haul. They’ll point you to a shortcut that leads to a dead end. They'll tell you to hang up your pen if you don’t see fast results. Stop dreaming, they’ll say. You’re not experienced enough or talented enough or clever enough or savvy enough. Stop wasting your time, they’ll say. But you’ll know. You’ll know that writing is worth sticking with, day after day—that "there thereby results something which has made life worth living.” Ann Patchett says, “Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.” A long obedience in the same direction, for a writer, is hard work. And at times it can be a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. And you can join with Ann Patchett and countless others, and attest that writing is better than anything in the world. You’ll find that faithfully showing up today, tomorrow, and the next day and the next week and the next month and the next year to write and share what’s written . . . was never, ever a waste of time. It was, instead, worth every minute,

In chapter 7 of On Being a Writer, my coauthor Charity Singleton Craig highlighted what L.L. Barkat calls the “Fifteen Years of Writing for Your Grandmother Rule” (On Being a Writer, 86). Charity included this excerpt from Barkat’s book Rumors of Water: It is not uncommon for writers to seek a large audience too early in their writing journeys. The idea of being published is a dream promoted by a cluttered market of writing books, writing conferences, and vanity publishers…. I love working with new writers but am often surprised at the desire they have to pursue a publishing dream when they haven’t yet put on a small-time cooking show, so to speak. (ibid, 86-87) Your Small-Time Cooking Show Charity goes on to explain the "small-time cooking show.” It was a little project Barkat’s daughter set up in their home—a cooking show she put on for her grandmother, “where she acted out her aspirations long before she’d ever attempt to be an actual chef.” Just as her young daughter was logging hours as an amateur before going pro, L.L. Barkat herself reflected back on her “small-time cooking show” years, before she was a professional writer, when she would write letters to her own grandmother and "write book reviews for a local newsletter” (Rumors of Water, 107). From Rumors of Water, Barkat says: "I’ve heard it said that most successful writers put in about fifteen years of small-audience writing before they begin to work with larger audiences” (ibid, 108). Where are you staging a cooking show for your grandmother? How long have you been whipping up meals for just a few hungry patrons? What smaller audience is receiving your words as you learn your craft? Sharing Smaller Pieces on Smaller Platforms In episode 87, I encouraged you to consider creative ways to use social media to publish on a small scale or at least in short form—micro-form, if you will. When you share smaller pieces on smaller platforms for smaller audiences, you gain lots of advantages, like instant feedback and the fun of experimentation without such high stakes. These are places to set up your cooking show. That is, you get to learn the craft and skill of writing with friends and family as your readers—your audience. You share your work with people who truly enjoy your stories, your ideas, your style. They look forward to the next piece you push out there on that small-scale stage. Fast-Tracked Writers or Rushed Writers Now, you may end up being one of the exceptions who can bypass the 15 years of small-scale writing and you may plunge directly into writing for larger audiences. It’s happening. Bloggers are getting book deals, and self-published authors are being picked up by agents and mainstream publishers. But most of us put in our time. Most of us are showing up to write faithfully in smaller outlets for modest-sized audiences. If that’s you, don’t rush your desire to publish. Find your small audience and set up your cooking show. Take joy in producing your best work on that stage. It’ll give you time to grow as a writer and help you solve problems and develop your voice in a more relaxed setting. The Time to Learn During this season of your writing life, you can create a self-study course, as I recommended in episode 88, and as you learn new techniques you can apply them in the next installment of your memoir published once a week on Facebook. You can improve your use of dialogue in the short story you’re tossing out scene by scene on Instagram. You can try a cinquain or haiku on Twitter. Don’t try to speed up the process too much. During this era, you’re growing your audience and, more importantly, you’re growing as a writer. One day you’ll publish something for a larger venue with a larger audience. You will have waited until the timing is right—you’ll have put in your time and ...

As you go about the work of writing, and the business of writing, don’t forget to study the craft of writing. Find ways to continually learn and improve. A lot of writers feel a strong urge to enter an MFA program to do this. If you feel compelled to pursue that, by all means, research it and see if that’s the right next step for you. But what I’m suggesting is you set out to invent a kind of self-study writing course using resources readily available online or at your local library. You'll learn efficiently when you develop a self-study writing course that includes practice and study pertaining to your biggest areas of struggle or weakness. Novelist James Scott Bell wrote an article about how to strengthen your fiction the Ben Franklin way. He explains how Ben Franklin came up with his own self-study course to grow in virtues. Franklin made a grid and evaluated whether or not he was successful in his pursuit of a given virtue each week. In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father concluded he did not attain perfection, as he had hoped, but "was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it.” James Scott Bell proposes the fiction writer identify key areas to develop into a stronger writer much as Franklin identified his list of virtues. Bell calls these key area "critical success factors," or CSFs. He explains: Business and sales folk have been using Franklin’s system for decades to improve their own performance. Not via Franklin’s virtues, but by determining their own areas of competence. These are called critical success factors. Bell goes through each CSF a fiction author would want to develop and points to related resources: if the reader wants to learn about scenes, voice, or other aspects of fiction, Bell provides links to articles or books that can address each of those. By tapping into these resources, the writer develops his own self-study course. You can do the same. You can make a list of what you feel are your personal CSFs—this could be something like organization or productivity or time management. Then list CSFs of whatever writing you do. In this way, any of us can identify an area to improve in and find instruction pertaining to that exact skill or technique. For fiction, you could check out James Scott Bell's list in that article, where he cites the seven key elements a fiction writer could focus on plot, structure, characters, scenes, dialogue, voice and meaning (theme). You could make a list of CSFs for nonfiction writers. This might include research, idea development and organization, grammar skills, or something as focused as transitions. You could list key skills a poet or essayist could work on to improve your craft. Consider some of the areas you’d like to grow in first, and then find online courses, books, articles, webinars, and podcasts created to address those key skill sets. Work through them, over time, as a self-study program custom-made for you, and by you. When you realize you've learned all you can from that phase of study, fully absorbing and applying what you found, you can revisit and reconsider those CSFs, and see if there's a way to ramp up your training, as if you're ready to move up to the 300- or 400-level courses, or grad-level understanding—even though these are all your own lifelong learning efforts as an autodidact. In this way, you can and will improve. You can and will grow. You can and will gain confidence. You will arrive at some level of success. And if you feel you aren't as successful as you'd hoped, you can look back and see that by this endeavor, you're a better and happier person than you otherwise should have been if you had not...

In episode 86, we discussed first steps you can take to launch your social media presence. I suggested you could start simple and slow by establishing a bare-minimum presence at each of the big social media platforms. I encouraged you to secure your avatar, your handle, your username—ideally using your author name—and fill out your profile or bio at the places you think sound fun or useful for the writing you do (and where you think your readers will hang out). All of this was in the context of building a writing platform and using social media as one tool to do so. But consider this. Something motivated you to want to write and publish a book that would require a platform—and part of what motivated you was surely the reader. Not a reader named Shirley, but you know what I mean. Part of you must want to write for an actual person who will open your book and take in the message or story in its pages and be affected by it, changed in some way, maybe even transformed. If you write nonfiction, maybe you have ideas to share or problems you can solve for the reader. If you're a science writer, you might be assembling research to pass along so readers can be better informed. If you write fiction, maybe you want to connect with the readers' emotions and make them laugh and cry and feel shocked or jubilant. Here’s the thing: you can start impacting readers right now. Through social media, in small doses and with creativity, you can press “publish” and make a difference in people’s lives without waiting two or more years for a book release. Isn’t that exciting to think about? Poetry on Twitter Instead of writing entire poems, submitting them to multiple literary magazines and waiting months to hear back, you can wake up one morning struck by an interaction or scene. Jot out just a line or two, marry it with an image, and share it on Twitter. Just like that, you’ve shared beauty with followers who happen upon it. While your fully developed, polished poems are under consideration via Submittable, you can still be practicing the art in small ways, enjoying the satisfaction of publishing snippets of your own work as they come to you in your everyday life. Nonfiction on Facebook If your passion about a topic has led you to research and outline a nonfiction book that you plan to pitch to a publisher, why not share tiny tidbits on Facebook—maybe an excerpt from an interesting study that helped you see the subject from a new angle. You could share a quote. You can microblog about the material as your long-form project comes together, getting people to think about this topic, generating interest, demonstrating your knowledge, passion, and understanding. Maybe one of your Facebook updates will contain and convey exactly what someone needs to know. You can help people. Right this minute. Fiction on Instagram You’re a novelist, let’s say. Why not tell your story in installments on Instagram? You’ll be like a modern-day Dickens, publishing serially. Others have done this or are in the midst of their stories. Rachel Hulin wrote Hey Harry Hey Matilda on Instagram. Another author, Adam Hurly, draws sketches to go with each installment of his story on Instagram. In an interview, Hurly said: My goal with this is to create more opportunities and to show people that there are ways, innovative ways, to tell the stories you want to tell. There are ways to find an audience, you just have to be ahead of the curve with it. Why wait for a publisher to green light your project? Write some great short stories, coupling installments or scenes with images, and publish them on Instagram. Be ahead of the curve. Mix and Match Genres with Social Media You can mix and match, of course. Poets love Instagram, and memoir is Facebook or Instagram-ready.

When people talk about building a platform, they often think immediately of social media. I suppose it’s because the word “platform” is often used to describe them: Facebook is a social media platform, Twitter is a social media platform. It’s referring more to the technology that makes it possible for that service to run. But no wonder it’s confusing to talk about our writing platform and to toss the words “social media” into the mix. We can build a writing or author platform in many ways unrelated to social media efforts, but today I’d like to suggest first steps you can take to launch your social media presence as part of your platform-building strategy. Explore the Possibilities of Social Media Because just think about it. We have, right at our fingertips, avenues to reach out into the world to anyone with Internet access. We can meet people, share information and resources with them, participate in a group discussion, offer encouragement and support…all while sitting at home or a coffee shop. It’s kind of crazy when you think about it. And it would be crazy to not at least explore the possibilities. And possibilities? Oh, man, there are so many new social media options popping up, it’s hard to keep up. We’ll have to see what’s next and what audience it best serves. Maybe we’re bold enough to be an early adopter to a new upstart and just when we get used to how it operates, it evolves into something unrecognizable from what we’ve known, or fades and simply disappears. Others stay strong. At the time of this recording, Facebook doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, Pinterest and Instagram are expanding, YouTube and LinkedIn continue to serve a strong purpose, Twitter is still in the game. Avoid Social Media Overwhelm It’s tempting to jump into several at once—either we resolve to learn it all or we’re pressured to do so by industry experts who insist we’ve got to have a presence here and there, on this and that platform. You click around and try to understand how they all work and end up confused, struggling to keep up, overwhelmed by the activity required. Instead of going slow, you’re spent. You’re sick of it. Nothing seems fun or friendly. Forget it. Listen, if you’re like me and you’re a one-man or one-woman show, you will feel overwhelmed if you try to tackle it all at once. It’s too much to juggle every area of social media on your own and sustain efforts over time—especially while you’re busy trying to pull off all the other aspects of writing and pitching and whatever else your writing efforts require. So take a deep breath. We don’t all have to be Gary Vaynerchuk, who's on every social media platform out there. First Steps to Launching Your Social Media Presence I want you to stay curious, creative, and productive, and if poking around and testing the waters on Twitter and Instagram feels like fun, go for it. But if you lean toward being overwhelmed at the thought of continual activity and that sucks the life out of you, there's no need to rush. Instead, let me offer a simple approach that positions you to expand later if you choose. Establish a bare-minimum presence at several social media platforms by simply setting up your username and profile at the places you think sound fun or useful and where you think your readers will hang out. Many writers—probably most writers—are building a brand or online presence based on their name, so that’s a good place to start. See if you can snatch your name when setting up your profile at these social media services. This may take a few days because you’ll want to read about how each of the services works. Fill out the bio section. Add your website and whatever contact information you're comfortable sharing with the world. Almost all of these—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

There’s a proverb that says “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” It’s true of so many things, isn’t it? We would be in such a different place if only we had started years ago. Building a platform might feel a little bit like that, but it’s not too late. If you haven’t already begun, the best time to start is now. Most of our platform-building efforts are like dropping coins and stuffing the occasional bill into a jar to save money for a vacation. Some actions don't feel like they are adding much—you drop in a couple of quarters, a couple of dimes, a dollar bill. You pick up the jar and shake it and just a few coins jingle and jostle against each other. Man, at this rate I’m not going to make it to Florida for another five years! Then you do something—or something just happens—making a bigger impact. It's like stuffing a $20 bill in the coin jar. You see that and you think, Okay, okay…maybe this trip isn’t just a fantasy. Maybe I can get there if I keep at it. So you keep at it. A tweet might be a quarter in the jar, but then someone with a big following retweets you and a dozen new people click like, read your post, and share it. The quarter turned a $5 or $10 "profit" and all that goes in the jar. You record a YouTube video, and a few people watch it. Maybe that's like a $5 bill going in the jar. You post another, and it gains traction. Soon, people are eager for the next, and the next. In time, with these efforts, your name is known by more and more people. They're paying attention to you. They're finding you in Google searches. Someone interviews you on a podcast. You get a speaking gig. You contribute a chapter to a book. You keep tweeting, you keep recording videos—whatever your main outlets are, you keep those going. It builds. It grows into something substantial. Your website and social media accounts represent opportunities. A good practice might be to take some action of some kind each day. Some days are busy, so you tweet something. Some days offer you a chunk of time, so you write a short blog post or pitch an idea for a guest post somewhere. You share a link on Facebook and Pinterest. You upload an image related to your brand on Instagram. You'll meet people in these places. You'll interact. You'll like something they’ve posted that relates to your work, or you'll read their post and share it. That's how it starts. That's how it continues. That's how it adds up. Now, let me caution you not to grab a handful of coins and hurl them out willy-nilly. For example, don’t sign up for every social media platform and dive in full force. My examples might have implied you have to be at all those places all the time, which isn’t the case. Pick one that makes sense to you—one social media platform you’re already familiar with, where your target readers hang out, where you might already be seeing success. For example, if you have some speaking skills, think video and don’t worry about Twitter and Pinterest right now. If you love photography and you’re already enjoying Instagram, start there. Get to know it. The sweet spot is when you find something you love doing, and your target audience loves it, too. Don’t give up if you don’t see results right away. In the beginning, you’re just tossing in nickels, dimes, and quarters. It takes a while when you’re only seeing coins. But, as I said, over time you’ll start to see the efforts accumulate. At some point, you'll hit a tipping point and cha-ching! Your efforts no longer feel like you’re just flinging a coin into a fountain and making a wish. It starts to feel meaningful as you interact with people and start to see the kind of content and support and stories they respond to.

Last week I volunteered to serve at a speech and debate tournament for junior high and high school students. One of the women I served with asked if I thought writers were expected to speak more than ever before, whether through all the video options that are popping up like Facebook Live, or in person at events. I thought back to the late 1990s, when I was pitching my first book to a publisher. The editorial team took me out to lunch, and someone on the team asked if I would consider speaking as a way to help sell the book. If you've read On Being a Writer, you know I practically choked on my sushi, because I always thought of myself as a writer, not a speaker. I couldn’t imagine speaking, and I didn’t think about that being part of the marketing plan. I knew the right answer was "yes," but I panicked at the idea of standing on a stage speaking. The editor waited for me to turn from my California roll to look him straight in the eye. He said, “Something compelled you to write this message and share it with a broader audience. Right?” I nodded. "I would simply ask,” he continued, “couldn’t you see speaking as another avenue to share that same message? Your words—your message—spoken?” That makes sense, I thought. I felt strongly about my book and I could see speaking as another way to spread its ideas. “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll do all that I can.” A few weeks later they gave me a contract. And I did begin to speak…mostly in small venues, but occasionally in larger settings. I’ll be honest, I did feel panicky at the first few events, but I got a little more confident and comfortable each time. Obviously, I gained more and more experience and learned how I like to prepare. That editor was right. Speaking gave me a new way to communicate with people. Interacting with audiences of all sizes gave me immediate input—impossible to get through the written word. I could test out new ideas for future articles and books. I could meet people and make connections. And, to the publisher's delight, I could sell books. I would never have pursued speaking if that editor hadn’t asked. But I’m glad he did. To swing back around to the question I was asked at the tournament, I think publishers—and maybe people in general—do expect writers to speak, though I think they've expected it of us for many years. They expect it, or at least hope for it. I think publishers hope that writers will open themselves up to the idea because it’s a tremendous opportunity to connect with people who care about your topic or story. What's new are all the ways we writers can get our message out there as speakers. I think any writer building a platform should—whether asked or not—consider looking for ways to speak, including taking advantage of all the technology available to record and distribute our messages. For live events, you can find opportunities locally: See if a friend would host a coffee where you could read from your work-in-progress or your published pieces. Try recording a short reading on Facebook Live, where no one expects it to be perfect. See if a local civic group would appreciate a short talk. Ask at your place of worship if an upcoming retreat or conference could use a breakout speaker. Offer to lead a small workshop at your local library. Whether in person or through a recording, people love to hear directly from authors. They love to hear a writer’s voice. They love to see how their eyes light up when they talk about something related to the story they wrote or the topic their book was about. I think some people love getting the information or story through the spoken word not instead of but in addition to the written word—if it’s a podcast, for example,

At a writing conference a few years ago, I attended a panel discussion that included acquisitions editors from several publishing houses and a couple of literary agents. I’d been wanting to meet one of the agents, so after the session, I stood in line to introduce myself. I told him I was a writing coach working with several authors who were developing book proposals. These authors had questions about platform. “What kind of numbers are agents and publishers really looking for?” I asked. “And how would I know if I have an author you might be interested in?" He said he couldn’t speak for all agents or publishers, but as an example of the platform size he was looking for, he would only consider authors with a minimum of 10,000 Twitter followers. Platform: Numbers Matter I asked another literary agent the same question recently, especially regarding platform. Though she didn’t commit to 10,000 as the ideal, she said numbers do matter. “It’s not me,” she said. "It’s the publishers. They’re the ones asking for us to bring them authors with significant platforms because they want to guarantee a certain number of sales.” Authors as Business Partners Chad R. Allen, editorial director for Baker Books, said in an interview that when he’s reviewing book proposals, he always has three things in mind: "concept, platform, writing.” After he looks at the book idea to see if it’s a fresh, marketable concept, he then turns to the author bio, to learn about the author "not only in terms of how good a writer they are, but also in terms of what are their connections, what’s their platform, what is their ability to bring exposure to their own book.” He says, "Authors are artists–we all know that–but they are also business partners, particularly when they sign a book contract.” Chad said, "The #1 reason we turn books down is no platform or lack of platform.” Definition of Platform So we can’t ignore the need for platform, but still…what is it? Chad offered a quick definition when he said he wants to learn about a writer’s connections and their ability to bring exposure to their own book. Literary agent Chip MacGregor says essentially the same thing: "a platform is simply the number of people you can reach with your words.” He then lists several ways you can reach people: through speaking events, a blog, articles in other publications, television or radio appearances, leadership positions that would give you influence over a large group or organization. Chip says, "All of those are points of contact with potential readers…[A]dd up the audiences for all the ways in which you reach out, and that’s your platform." That’s what it comes down to: How do you reach people with your words and can you reach more of those people? Does Your Platform Reach the Right People? Literary agent Rachelle Gardner emphasizes that "the key to platform is your target audience and what you are doing to reach them.” In other words, who cares if you have 10,000 Twitter followers if they aren't the target readers of your next book? If I plan to publish a cookbook for backpackers but have been building a huge connection with business professionals focused on developing powerful speaking skills simply because I have an interest in both of those topics…I may need to rethink my strategies and find ways to build up a following among outdoor enthusiasts, campers, and, well, backpackers. I could write articles for Backpacker Magazine and join forums that talk about gear and destinations and food as some platform-building efforts. Or I could write a different book. About speaking techniques for business professionals. The point is: build a relevant platform.

It’s that time of year when everyone is working on their annual business plans, intentions, resolutions, habits—or even big, hairy, audacious goals, those BHAGS. Or “stretch” goals. A lot of writers are thinking through their goals for the year ahead. You may be measuring and drawing out calendar grids in your bullet journal or shopping for a bright, new, fresh yearly planner. You’re organizing and reorganizing Evernote tags and Notebooks. You’re trying out productivity apps. You’re going to test run a new social media platform. Maybe you decided this is the year to write your first book, so you set up a Word document or Scrivener file with the working title, as a promise to make progress. You can imagine that as a coach, I love all of that dreaming, all that energy, all that desire and hope. I’m so happy you’re making plans and experimenting—maybe setting out to launch a new project. Go for it. Make those plans. Set those goals. Write out your intentions and resolutions. Stretch and get a little audacious. And then, before you lock everything in, may I make a suggestion? Run it through one more grid. Because I’d hate for you to get deep into the second quarter and realize you can't possibly keep up with the pace you set for yourself. You can’t turn out the daily word count you set up, or you were unrealistic about how fast you could land a byline in a national publication. I encourage you to look ahead with the idea of sustainability. The word “sustainable” traces back to ideas of being able to last or continue over the long haul. But its root word, “sustain," means to give support or relief to, or to supply with sustenance or nourish. I find that to be a satisfying way of looking at our work. So with those ideas of sustenance and nourishment in mind, let’s consider four ways our writing can be sustainable: 1. You can sustain your writing plan if you have enough ideas to keep going This first idea is obvious. Your writing plan is sustainable only if you have enough ideas. If you set out to publish a blog post five times a week or three times a week, you need enough content to keep that up. In episode 76, I did some math for you—and believe me, I’m really invested in you to do math for you. In that post, I figured out that to publish twice a week for three years, you’ll need 312 ideas. I was suggesting you brainstorm and see if you can generate a big number in one or two sessions because that would confirm you have plenty of content to keep writing in your niche. Well, it’s the same principle as you move ahead with your writing plan for the year ahead. You want to be sure you have plenty of content to supply and support the plan. If you have 312 ideas, you’ll have no problem continuing—you’ll be able to move ahead with two articles per week. If you have only 75, perhaps you should reduce your frequency to once a week or broaden your niche so you can generate more ideas. In any case, the concept here is that if you’ve set up a goal that requires a steady supply of content, make sure you have enough on deck to sustain it. 2. You can sustain your writing plan if the schedule isn’t brutal This is closely related to the first sustainability challenge, except that you could have 700 ideas ready to go, but if writing still comes a bit slow for you, or if you’re working full time and writing is still a side gig, or if you face other complicated scheduling challenges, those ideas are just going to sit there. Even efficient writers need time to write and prep content for a blog or freelance submissions or as pieces of a bigger project like chapters for a book. If you don’t have much writing time available, you can have all the ideas in the world and it doesn’t matter if you can’t get them written.

Last time we talked about our writing as a gift to the world, but our writing can be a gift in a more specific, focused way when we write for individuals we know and love. When our writing is sent out to the world, it's usually enjoyed by one reader at a time, so in a way, all of our writing is for individuals. What I mean here is you can sit down and write for someone in particular—an individual who will be the only intended recipient of a given project. Maybe you write a long letter to a family member, or you compose a children’s story for your child or grandchildren, or you write a love poem to your significant other. You might write a note to a soldier stationed in another country, a person in prison, or a sponsored child. One project, for one person. This is where writing is personal. Sure, the projects we send to publishers are important, offering the potential to reach into circles we might never have connected with on our own, carrying our message far and wide. And yet the people who have been part of our lives all along, the people who like your posts on Facebook and look for your letters in the mailbox—the person you'd send a sympathy card to? Those people treasure your words. If you write a gift of words specifically for and to them, you're sending a powerful present. It’s likely your gift of words will be held closer than any book you may write in the future because the book is for many, whereas the gift of words you crafted is a present for that one person alone. Anne Lamott explains in Bird by Bird how she wrote "books that began as presents.” In her case, they were initially a project for one person and did end up being much more—they were published as books for anyone who might enjoy them. But when she initially sat down to create, she had one reader—one recipient—in mind. One book was a present to her father and the other, to her best friend, Pammy. Both were people Anne loved; both were people who were going to die (185). Motivated by love and a sense of urgency, she wrote a present for each of them. She explains: I got to write books about my father and my best friend, and they got to read them before they died. Can you imagine? I wrote for an audience of two whom I loved and respected, who loved and respected me. So I wrote for them as carefully and soulfully as I could—which is, needless to say, how I wish I could write all the time. (194) We can work on our platform and stick our deadlines when we write on assignment, but when we write for someone we love and respect—when we write out of love—we are giving an inimitable gift. Stay on track with your professional goals. And if you feel inspired, write someone a present. But whatever you do, as much as possible, write as carefully and soulfully as you can. Isn’t that how we wish we could write all the time? Click on the podcast player above or use subscription options below to listen to the full episode. Resources: What Do Writers Dream About? Ep 80: Your Writing as a Gift Your Writing Platform episode collection Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott (affiliate link) * * * You can subscribe with iTunes, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. The podcast is also available Stitcher, and you should be able to search for and find "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach" in any podcast player. ____________________ Writing is solitary work—but why not include others in aspects of the writing process? Join the Group Coaching Winter Session I'm facilitating a five-week group coaching opportunity for nonfiction writers. Starts January 7 (cart closes on January 5 or when ten people have...

In this season of giving, it seems apt to talk about our writing as a gift. "Hold on, now," you say. "I was kinda hoping to make some money at this whole writing gig, so are you saying we have to give our words away?" Whether we're paid or not, isn’t viewing our words as a gift…isn’t that how we begin the process of connecting with people? We toil over our message and send off something for a reader to consider. “Here. I wrote this for you.” I recently published a blog post about the longing we writers have for applause—not for how amazing we write or how heroic we might be for sharing the depths of our heart or pain, but to hear the sound of someone responding to the words we've composed and offered. We long to build a bridge from writer to reader. To connect. Author, poet, and essayist Scott Russell Sanders explains his motivation. In an essay entitled “The Singular First Person," he says, “I choose to write about my experience not because it is mine, but because it seems to me a door through which others might pass” (p. 8, Earth Works). If we share that mindset, we write to solve someone’s problem or ease their pain or show them we know what it’s like, how it feels. And in writing that down as best we can, we build a door “through which others might pass” or a bridge over which a reader might cross. We create a threshold. Or a safe passage. A gift. All of our writing in that sense seems to be a gift, even if we receive payment for it. Now the funny thing is, literally giving away our work for free can have a literal payoff. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow partnered with Litographs in an article published on Medium, where Doctorow writes, "I’ve been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money…” When the print version of his first novel was published, he made the electronic text available for free at this website as a digital download—a gift—and within a day he saw 30,000 downloads. People “met” him through that free copy—it introduced them to his work. He created an instant audience that suddenly knew him and wanted their friends to know him as well. “My problem isn’t piracy," he explains, "it’s obscurity, and free ebooks generate more sales than they displace.” Getting known by readers is a challenge for all of us; obscurity is indeed a problem for those writers trying to build a platform. Giving away some of our work to introduce ourselves could pay off in the long run. So if you’re kinda hoping to make a little money at this whole writing gig, never fear. View your work as a gift to the world—as a bridge built to create connection or a door opened wide through which others might pass. Pour your heart into it, knowing you might make a difference in someone’s life. You can sell it. Absolutely. Or you can give it away, expecting no particular gain. Either way, you're holding it out to the world, to a reader, as a gift, saying, "Here. I wrote this for you." Click on the podcast player above or use subscription options below to listen to the full episode. Resources: What Do Writers Dream About? Why Give Away Your Work for Free? (Medium article featuring Cory Doctorow) Your Writing Platform episode collection Earth Works: Selected Essays, by Scott Russell Sanders (includes "The Singular First Person") affiliate link * * * You can subscribe with iTunes, where I'd love to have you subscribe, rate, and leave a review. The podcast is also available Stitcher, and you should be able to search for and find "Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach" in any podcast player. ____________________