Today was all about building a platform for the Drama Book that I wrote about in my post for Day Eighteen. So what is ‘platform building’?
A platform is the thing you ‘stand on’ to get people to notice you, to engage your readers. You might do a series of writing / reading events or workshops, you might run a blog, or engage with your audience through social media, for instance.
If you’re a writer, do you need a platform? The answer, as with a lot of questions to do with the creative life, is: it depends. Partly it depends on your opinion about the following. Writing, for me – and I’ve come to realise this over several years – is a job. It could be a spiritual practice, it could be a form of mindfulness, it could be a way of expressing yourself, a form of therapy even, and a way to tap into your buried creativity, but more than all of those it’s a job. Of course, it’s only a job if you want it to be. I’m not going to try to persuade you to become a plumber or a librarian if you don’t want a career in pipe bending, or information collation, so why would I persuade you to work as a writer if it’s not the job for you? As with most things, you could do writing for fun if you wanted to, but for me, it’s a job.
A job is something that you turn up to regularly. It’s a habit that you don’t much think about (unless you hate it). You get up, put on appropriate clothes – diving equipment if you’re a deep sea diver, a lab coat if you’re a scientist, overalls if you’re likely to get muddy – and go to work. You also go to an appropriate place to work – the sea, the lab, a muddy field, and you do it for an appropriate amount of time. There are a lot of interesting jobs out in the world. Not everyone works in an open plan office with a vending machine, but those who do will get fired if they don’t turn up. In fact, turning up is the defining characteristic of a job. You might turn up to your kitchen table or the sofa, but whether you’re a plumber, a librarian, deep sea diver, scientist, mud sculptor or office worker, you turn up. Writing is also about turning up. The job of writing doesn’t equal publication. Writing equals turning up.
Again, as with a lot of creative questions, writers’ attitudes to platform building exist on a continuum. At one end, those who don’t want to engage in it at all, and the other people who enthusiastically connect with their audience face-to-face and / or via all sorts of digital media from Facebook to Instagram. Right at the end of the continuum are those who write using digital media – they’re not engaging with their audience online to try to spread the word about offline texts, the internet IS their medium. You see how the writers inhabiting our metaphorical continuum differ a lot in their attitude to this.
You might be at the ‘minimal platform building’ end of the continuum for various reasons. Lack of technical knowledge, fear of putting yourself out there, not enough time in the day, you believe the writer’s job is to write and that the publisher should advertise. You might be at the ‘blog and tweet several times a day’ end of the continuum because you’re super-organised and have made time in your day, or because you’re procrastinating, or a bit of both.
In my opinion, if writing is your job, then part of that job is platform building. Unfortunately we’re no longer in situation where we can ignore digital media entirely. BUT you have to find a way to stop it taking over, otherwise it will become procrastination and a form of busy-ness. Today, for me, was about creating a logo for the Drama Book website, and getting the structure of the thing in place. Did it stop me from writing my novel? Yes and no. Once more, it depends. A quick recap, if you haven’t been reading these from the start: I’ve identified that not only are distractions tough, but that there will never be a time when there are no distractions. I’ve also realised that when it comes to my novel it’s structuring – specifically, sequencing – that needs work. And that work needs quiet, dedicated focus time. I don’t have focus time in the middle of the summer holidays when a camping trip is imminent. Yes, it’s possible I could bury myself somewhere between the hours of 9 and 2 (i.e. when the boy is at playscheme) but it WOULDN’T BE ENOUGH.
If you need help with platform building, here are some of the resources I used:
Be the Gateway by Dan Blank
Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World by Michael Hyatt
How to Make a Living with your Writing by Joanna Penn
WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson