Writing vs Author Platform

Jul19

How much time should the unpublished writer spend on platform? In April, I analyzed that debate in a post that led me to conclude that a new writer must do both, but in balance. I thought I could do both. I wanted to do both. But I’m also a realist.

I don’t know if my experience mirrors that of other writers, but each time I think I’m working on a solid revision of the novel I’m writing, something happens that causes me to reconsider. It could be a critique from a beta reader, or a sudden idea in the middle of the night about my plot, or that horrible sense I sometimes get that what I am writing is plain awful. But at this point, I am attached to this project and to my characters. I need to spend more time on this work.

At the same time, there is another imp on my shoulder crying “Platform! You must have an author platform!” There seems to be no end to those voices in the industry, or those who work in social media, insisting that the moment you start writing a book, you must begin building your platform. If you wait until you’re ready to query agents, it will be too late. Gah. And so I started this blog.

What I didn’t realize is how much time it would take me to write what I hoped were worthwhile posts and how jealous the novel-writing side of me would be of the time I spent working on my blog. I want to do both without sacrificing the quality of either.

But something’s gotta give. As Donald Maass pointed out in commenting on a post by Jane Friedman in Writer Unboxed, your writing is your platform. As he put it succinctly, “Platform’s just a lump of concrete until you’ve got a rocket to launch from it.” And so I feel a need to work on my rocket, er, my novel. It means too much to me to let it slide.

I am not abandoning this blog. It’s my baby, too. I deeply appreciate my followers and all those who take the time to like or comment on my posts. But I will post less often for awhile as I work on my “rocket.” Throughout life, we have to set priorities, decide what’s important, understand who needs us most, or what we need most to be doing. I struggle with those choices constantly. But I make them.

Encouragement, anyone?

Odds and Ends

Jun22

Why I stopped my car the other day

Reading Three Books At Once

I knew this day would come. There would be so many books that I am dying to read that I would find myself reading three books at the same time. It’s not that any of the three is failing to hold my interest. It’s just that, well, I’m not really sure how it happened. So now I am partway through Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain, Canada by Richard Ford, and The Red House by Mark Haddon.

These three novels are very different. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is almost a moment-by-moment account of a ceremony during a Thanksgiving Day football game in Dallas to honor a group of American soldiers who survived a brutal firefight with Iraqi insurgents. Canada is about a young brother and sister whose parents, uncharacteristically, committed a bank robbery and went to jail. The Red House is an unflinching look at family, a brother and sister long estranged but reunited by the death of their mother. What these novels have in common is incredibly good writing, strong character development, and — in each case — tremendous empathy by the narrator for these very different characters, all struggling to make sense of their lives.

My Week With Marilyn

It’s been a long time since I have wanted to sit all the way through the credits at the end of a movie simply because I didn’t want to get the feel of the movie out of my bones. That’s how I felt at the end of My Week With Marilyn. British actor Eddie Redmayne plays a young film assistant who has a brief relationship with Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) during the filming of a movie that starred Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). There is not a lot of plot, just the making of a movie plagued by all the things we have already heard about Marilyn Monroe, that she was often difficult to work with, late to the set, and abusive of pills and alcohol. But the movie is not unkind to her. As someone says on the set, at a time when Marilyn is holding everything up, “When Marilyn gets it right, you don’t want to look at anyone else.” Michelle Williams captures Monroe’s luminescence.

In watching movies, I often look for ideas that might help me write: in the way the movie is structured, point of view, setting, dialog, and the like. As I watched this movie, I was struck by how much emotion was conveyed in the faces of the actors, Eddie Redmayne and Michelle Williams, in particular. In many scenes, wordlessly, their simple expressions conveyed sadness, love, admiration, and vulnerability. I kept wondering how I could write a scene that would come close to describing in words what they so simply and subtly expressed without them. It would be a gift to write like that.

Beware of Twitter Spam

We have all seen it: the direct message that seems entirely out of character for the person sending it to us. I’ve gotten the one that says people are saying terrible things about me. Then there is the one promising dramatic weight loss without dieting. And this week I got a new one in which the sender said he was laughing so hard at a picture of me that his friend found.

Each of these messages comes with a link that, if we click on it, will likely unleash a virus or worm or some other equally horrible computer invader so, if you get such a message — no matter how tempting — don’t click on the link! My advice is to let the sender know that he or she may have been hacked. The sooner they know, the faster they can correct it.

So how’s your summer going? Any movies, books, or odds and ends to share?

What Movie, What Blog Inspired Me This Week?

May10

There is a reason I named this blog “Book Ends and Odds.” Sometimes I will just post random odds and ends: about movies, books, blog posts, life, things that make me think. Here we go….

The Tree of Life

Photo by Adashi

It rained all day yesterday so I made popcorn and watched “The Tree of Life.” This is a movie that critics either rhapsodized about or hated.

The subject matter is compelling: the day-to-day life of a family in the 1950s, the death of a son, another son’s attempt – as an adult – to reconcile with his father and make sense of it all. Themes include loss, grief, regret, and shame.

But the movie is experimental. There are amazing scenes, gorgeous filmography, suggesting how the world began and a scene at the end that seems to depict an after-life where we reunite with our loved ones on a beach. There is not that much dialogue. Instead, there is a lot of whispering and interior monologue and a sound track grounded in religious music.

But this is what inspired me the most: I have never seen such realistic scenes, such patient scenes that show the roller-coaster of emotions that children experience. They are depicted in this film by the brilliant Terrence Malick not with dialogue, for the most part, but through the smallest, the tenderest of gestures and nuanced facial expressions.

As I watched, I thought how miraculous it would be to write scenes like those contained in the film and create the same kind of emotional impact but with words. A central character in my novel in progress is an 8-year-old boy who has lost people he loves. As I continue to revise, I plan to envision those scenes with the young brothers in The Tree of Life and see if I can capture some of that screen magic.

My favorite blog post of the week:

I love Justine Musk’s blog not only because it is always incredibly informative and well-written, but because she is so passionate about art and life. Her latest post was just what I needed. In it, she relates what Joyce Carol Oates said when asked at a conference what she would do today if she had to launch her writing career all over again.

She said, “I would blog.” She went on to say, “I would blog before I wrote a book.”

Justine then discusses how important blogging is to developing a voice, a voice that an audience can connect to, and how each blog post is another chance for the writer to practice, another opportunity for feedback.

Love a post that makes me feel inspired.

What post inspired you this week? Did a movie give you an idea for developing your story?

How Does the New Writer Balance Writing versus Platform?

Apr30

This past Friday, a spirited debate arose over a post by Jane Friedman at Writer Unboxed. Pointing out that beginning writers who lack fame or fortune (I’m here, Jane) need to have an online presence, she offered guidelines to help writers decide whether they should spend more time on writing or more time building a platform. Her common-sense approach counsels, for instance, that you should focus more time on your writing if you have not yet completed or revised a manuscript and that you should focus more of your available time on platform if, for instance, you need to prove to an agent or publisher that you have an audience.

Comments exploded

The comments in response to Jane’s post came in at a rapid pace with writers offering differing opinions on how best to allocate their time, as well as varied reactions to different types of social media. Some expressed dread at the mere idea of Twitter but felt ease in expressing themselves on Facebook and on blogs. Folks in the industry warned that it is essential to start building one’s author platform the moment you start writing a book and that if you wait to build a platform until you have a publishing contract, it’s too late.

[Reading all this, I was sweating bullets.]

Then literary agent Donald Maass pointed out that for fiction writers, to a large degree your writing is your platform and that, while it is important to connect with readers, “Platform’s just a lump of concrete until you’ve got a rocket to launch from it.” Don referred to a recent industry study of factors leading to “awareness” of a book prior to purchase which found that the #1 factor in selling a book is in-store promotion. Next in line is word of mouth. And, the study concluded, social networks are near the bottom.

In response, Jane pointed out that social networking is all about word of mouth but she and Don agreed that, in the end, the writing is what sells the book, that a knockout book is its own best word of mouth. Then, after reading a ton of comments, Jane also concluded: “Some days I feel grateful I’m not a new writer!”

[Panic was setting in.]

On Saturday, in a post on Writer Unboxed, Porter Anderson analyzed Friday’s discussion and suggested, basically, that we should all just take a deep breath. As he pointed out, we can spend too much time online to the detriment of our writing but we can also spend too much time offline doing things other than writing.

Where does that leave the new writer?

A number of Jane’s commenters were writers who had already published, had a book release in the offing, or had more than one manuscript in process. And while their views were insightful, it left me wondering what I as a new writer, an unpublished writer should make of all this?

Balance! That was the common theme struck by Jane Friedman, Donald Maass, Porter Anderson, and the dozens of other commenters on this issue of writing versus platform. And the fact is no one can tell the writer, new or otherwise, how to strike that balance. Each of us has to decide how much time can be spent productively on platform while maintaining a laser focus on creating a rocket to launch from it.

I feel compelled to work on platform because, in this transitioning industry, we are expected to have a following. But having only recently started this blog, I am painfully aware of how long it takes to build one. That’s not surprising when you consider that there are more then 73 million WordPress sites throughout the world and that WordPress users post around 500,000 new posts a day.

Given these stats, I cannot imagine why anyone would ever wander onto my blog, stay there, and someday even buy a book I’ve written because they’ve gotten to know me as a blogger. And yet, I know that it happens. Over the past couple of years, I have bought books based on recommendations, reviews, and personal connections that I have found on Twitter, in blogs, and on other online sites. I have discovered some amazing writers that way.

Also, I find blogging useful because blogging is writing. It requires focus and discipline and, like a good novel, a blog should provide value to the reader. So I will continue to blog but I will spend most of my writing time revising and re-envisioning my novel.

All of life is a balancing act and one we should embrace. Now that’s something to work on every day.

How about you? Do you think the rules are different for new writers when it comes to platform versus writing? How do you manage it? Would love to hear your suggestions.

Movie Note

There are several movies that I have seen more than once, but I hardly ever watch the same movie two days in a row (unless you count the time I was an usherette and saw everything multiple times. Who else do you know who can recite much of the dialogue from “The Sandpiper”? Who else remembers “The Sandpiper”?). Anyway, I recently saw “The Descendants” with George Clooney and happily watched it again the next day with my niece. It had a strong narrative structure, full of conflict, character arc, and trenchant dialogue. But what touched me deeply was the penultimate scene. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t give it away except to say this (OK, spoiler alert): the look on George Clooney’s face when he realized that what he felt for his wife was empathy was so restrained but so emotionally loaded, all at the same time. Wouldn’t I love to create that kind of emotional response in a reader?

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