Turn up your volume

Why sharing makes your life (and readers' lives) better

Your creative identity is what you do. By this, I don’t mean your job or other roles you may have. Rather, your creative identity is comprised of the actions you take, habits you form, and interactions you have. For many who write and create, these things might be a small part of your week in terms of time, for example: a busy parent finding 15 minutes to write each week. But these moments add up, and become the center for your identity as a writer.

To be known as a writer is to write. It may also include the craft of how you share, and how you develop a network of colleagues and readers around you. All of this doesn’t just happen magically, it is your intention that makes it a reality.

Today I want to discuss how your ability to share develops your identity as a writer, and why you have much more to share than you may think.

All this month in my private community here on Substack, I have posted exclusive lessons for writers, including:

1. Defining your creative identity, and the narratives that drive your work.

2. Writing your mission statement and/or short bio.

In the process, we are uncovering and clarifying what our work is about, who we hope to reach, and what that engagement with readers may look like.

This post is part of the first month of my fall curriculum, which I’m calling the Joy & Connection Marketing Plan. Please consider joining my paid community to receive these exclusive series each month, where I give assignment and am engaging directly with the hundreds of writers and creators in my private Chat. It’s been incredible to see how much support writers are providing to each other in this community. Join us here:

I worry that too often, writers and creators quiet their voices. They rarely tell others about what they create, and convince themselves that it would be fruitless to share anything about their writing. Today I want to explore that in depth and share my philosophy for why sharing more of what you write and why not only helps you serve your own creative vision, but truly makes readers’ lives better.

Let’s dig in…

Your Creative Identity is What You Do

Develop your creative identity through actions, conversations, and moments that you have which others can experience. Your identity is not a logo, or branded colors, or a website design. Instead, your creative identity is you and how you share and engage. This is the manner by which people discover and know what you create and why — via experiences they have with what you create and share.

This could include:

• Working on your craft, and mentioning that casually in everyday conversations.

• What you say, and what you don’t say. This newsletter is a good example. I could have started with the photo of my kid and his spaceship, or told you about how my mom is doing this week, or explained that we just had our house painted. Instead, I am focusing on a 1,500+ word essay about developing your creative identity as a writer, sharing one thing about one of my kids, and not mentioning 99% of the other stuff happening in my life.

• Your attitude towards creative work, books, other creators, etc.

• What you share.

• What you re-share from others.

• How you share what inspires you.

• What you learn when you create, even from your “failures.” (Using quotes on that because, as we all know, so much progress and lessons from things that don’t work out as expected.)

• Who you know and how you engage with them.

• Your aspirations and how you make those public to others.

• How you share progress towards these aspirations. (Here is an example, just this morning

  Melinda Wenner Moyer
  shared a deep dive into the editorial timetable for her next book, and what fact checking it looks like. The book won’t be out until next year, and she is taking readers on the journey with her from inception to publication and beyond.)

• Your habits.

• Learning and improving your craft, such as workshops, webinars, podcasts on craft, books you read, etc.

Too often, when talking about how writers can develop their “author brands” or “author platform,” conversations focus on the technology: platforms, features, and trends. To me, these things are much less important than clear communication and developing a sense of trust with readers. That can happen on any platform, and with any technology. I have helped writers do this for more than 20 years, and is why I call my methodology Human-Centered Marketing. As a bonus, getting better at the human stuff just feels good.

Do I also dive deep into platforms and advanced marketing strategies? Yep. I love that stuff and obsess about it daily. But the first step is to focus on your voice, the craft of sharing, and the person you hope to connect with.

Please Don’t Silence Yourself

My fear is that writers and creators find small ways to silence themselves. I can’t even count the number of times over the years that I talk with a writer who hasn’t written in months and months (or even years), justifying this in reasonable-sounding ways:

• “I do NOT want to bug people. If I send a newsletter any more frequently than 4 times a year, people will get very annoyed.”

• “I haven’t written for 14 months, because I’m so focused on my next book that comes out late next year.”

• “I have writer’s block.”

• “Life is so busy at work, I can’t spend more than 5 minutes writing, so what’s the point?”

• “Real writers spend at least 4 hours a day writing, and I don’t have that.”

• “I don’t have an MFA.”

• “I require an uninterrupted block of 3 hours in order to write, and it must be totally silent, where I am surrounded by inspiration. My busy life never provides that.”

• “Why write anymore?! There are so many books out there. I can’t compete, and I don’t think readers care.”

• “I recently saw some data about downward trends (in writing or social media or publishing or reader attention or bookstores or book sales) and it I want to wait to write until the trends shift back in my favor.”

• “Oh, the publishing industry is messed up now. Worst time to try to get a book published, so why spin my wheels by writing?”

I get it, each of these narratives can be factually true and feel very logical. But they have the result of turning down your volume. Of silencing yourself. Of giving you reason to pause and delay sharing your voice.

I sent my first newsletter to 9 colleagues in 2005. The very next week, I had every reason to not send a second issue. I was busy, stressed about something I now can’t remember, and maybe had normal social fears of not wanting to bug those 9 people again. But I sent that 2nd one, and then every week since. In that time, my voice developed, I embraced the craft of diving into the topics I cared about, and my network and community grew one person at a time. Honestly, that newsletter has driven my creative voice and my career for most of the past 20 years.

Of course, many will write but rarely share, with similarly logical sounding reasons behind it:

• “My book doesn’t come out for 2 years, what would I say without an actual book to promote?”

• “I read the social media and Substack have all peaked. I missed the boat, so I’m not bothering.”

• “I heard a successful author say that social media doesn’t sell books, and I don’t have money to travel around to literary festivals.”

• “I’m an introvert.”

Again, I have empathy for each and every one of these reasons. And yet, I still encourage you to…

Turn Up Your Volume

This doesn’t have to be in a huge dramatic way if that isn’t your style. But you can turn up your volume in a light, but frequent manner. Small actions, week by week. If people don’t know you as a writer, maybe that is because:

1. They never see you write.

2. They never hear about you writing.

3. They don’t know of your creative dreams/intentions/vision, because it’s been kept private like a locked diary.

4. They hear endlessly about everything else in your life, but not your writing, so they don’t know to ask about it.

5. They never hear you mention books, reading, or other literary-related things.

6. They don’t know that you take classes or webinars on writing, or that you listen to podcasts on writing.

7. They never see/hear of you with another writer, or within writing-focused communities.

So every cue that could work to inform people that you love writing: visual, audible, sensory, etc — shows them zero proof that you love writing. If accessing someone’s identity as a writer is a great mystery to be solved by others, then one can’t be surprised that others don’t know them as writers.

How to Share More

I feel you have more to share than you may think. Look beyond big milestones and credentials. Instead, share that you are creating, even if you are shy about sharing details. Talk about the deeper themes in your writing. Discuss other books, or story structure, or character development, or other specific aspects of the process. Share what inspires you, and who inspires you. Talk about what you read and what you look forward to reading. Ask people questions about what they like to read and create themselves.

All of this becomes the basis for your identity as a writer. It becomes how people know you. E.G. “Oh, you mean Dan? He loves writers and creators, I see him talking about them all the time.”

You don’t need a website, newsletter, or social media to do any of this. You can throw out your phone and cancel your internet service. Just be the person who talks about the creative process and explores it in the world around them. Develop your voice, the craft of sharing, and how you create moments and conversations with those around you on these themes.

Please let me know in the comments: what is one tiny action you can take in the next week to share why you create, how you go about it, or what inspires you? Bonus points if this is within a conversation with another human being!

And please join me and my community to work through my exclusive series each month this fall! You immediately get access to the last two lessons I shared, and can engage in the great conversations and feedback happening in Chat. Join us here:

Thank you for being here with me.
-Dan

Kids of the Week: So the little fella made a cardboard spaceship this week. Those are thrusters on the back and sides to steer. The satellite he will launch is the white paper with a stick just to the right:

A closer look at the control panel. He is showing me the tether he made for his satellite.

His “Space Captain” helmet, and launch plan:
1. Launch a satellite.
2. Take pictures.
3. Play on the moon.
4. Check the air.
5. Go back to Earth.