My Writing Year: On Brand

Brand

I am reminded of costumes – be it the time of year or this group of chapters (Chpt. 4 It All Starts With Your Work, Chpt. 5 Relationship Building and Literary Citizenship, Chpt. 6 Networking with the Powerful or Influential, Chpt. 7 Your Online Foundation: Website, Email, and Social Media).

Costumes are a question of how and for what you want to be noticed, and perhaps, like a brand unidentified, an excuse to be what you don’t think you can claim, at least not yet. In Last Year I Learned the Word For Costume I wrote this about Purim. “My family’s closets guarded a variety of costumes. They were ready. I had asked eagerly about their choices for weeks in advance this year. I was ready. This year during Hebrew class when the Purim slide deck appeared, I offered the word for costume. Proud. No hesitation. And, it was not enough.

My teacher answered with, ‘Le-hit-a-pes.’ To dress up.

The reflexive version of the verb ‘to look for’ is. . . disguise oneself. The connection would make remembering the word easier, and I was intrigued. How did ‘to disguise oneself’ and ‘to look for’ share a root? Perhaps a suggestion to search for oneself amid the disguises … I asked, ‘How many people must I pretend to be … to still be?’”

My answer after reading Friedman’s chapters is visibility.

Part Two of The Business of Being a Writer is entitled “Platform Development.” Friedman begins by describing possible interpretations of ‘platform,’ reactions to each by publishers and authors, and the reasons why. Platforms are the way to discuss who you are. They are about reach and risk. When you choose to create a platform, you finally say you want to be seen. Your willingness to take a risk and to reach must come before anyone else will be willing to do the same.

Erin Conway manages a website and blog. I included this sentence in my bio, query letters, and resumes for ten years. It is somewhat true. Every week I completed a blog post as a means to maintain my identity as a writer who was writing. For one month, for one year, for ten, every week, something. Movement, but not forward movement. And, I felt like a mess, flailing, paint on a wall. Friedman comforts me now.

“The most important component of platform is your work, which should be a reassurance to every writer. There is no meaningful platform unless and until you have a body of work that people can experience.” (33) It is “anything you produce that can be enjoyed and shared with other … the fabric of how you get appreciated and known.”

I smile. I produced A LOT of text and hopefully I got a little better each time, another of Friedman’s encouragements. Platforms become something because you build and the stronger/higher they are, the greater your visibility, because an author’s work is never always about the work produced, but also the work we touch and share, different ways of seeing and being seen. My unique way of seeing and being seen. I am my biggest opportunity to take a next step in platform development.

Inadvertently, I discussed this with my supervisor, the college editor. We’re in layout for our upcoming magazine issue. He has been in his position for two years, and each new issue, his thoughts still linger on the first. “I received comments like, ‘I can see you’re putting your mark on things.’ I thought I wasn’t changing anything, or at least not much. I realized that as an editor, even the stories you choose to include or not, the photos, everything, is your voice.”

To disguise oneself all the time, completely, is impossible. His choices made him visible. My brand is my choices. I have 494 blog post options to make categories and impressions. Reorganizations are nearly endless. In a phrase, not a phrase, my phrase … Strings in our Hands, the action, the image, the hope. With strategic awareness, I form patterns others can follow about who I am, how I got here and what I care about.

“Platform is not something you develop by engaging solely in marketing activities … It’s about putting in consistent effort over the course of a career and making incremental improvements in how you reach readers and extend your network. It’s about making waves that attract other people to you. Ultimately, your platform-building process will become as much a creative exercise as the work you produce.” (30)

“When you do it right, you don’t see it,” my boss adds, lifting pages from his desk. He sees each page and also the part it plays in the scope of what the issue he is creating.

Again, the strings, each is chosen and wrapped so deftly that the inner reasons as to why the designs build so symmetrically and work together in their own woven narrative is only a slight bump against your skin on the reverse side.

My Hebrew teacher had offered the challenge that Friedman now echoed, how did the ways I showed up, and what I was looking for, share a root? If anyone had been looking, how would they have found me? They might scan the first few (of 494) posts and then … The college editor had been willing to dig a little, but others would not put in that time. It was time to edit, time to dress myself in ways that others would see, my brand.

I’m looking for content lechapes, and I’m looking for versions of myself lehitchapes. And it feels so like me. Not box checking. It's crafting, the (brand) narrative. It’s something I’ve been doing for years on social media, in newsletters, on websites, for everyone but me. From endless combinations, I need to make myself visible, and the choices are a reflexive action, because the answers can only be mine. This past summer I updated website pages I had ignored for ten years while writing blog posts every week.

I pick up the last issue of the magazine, and open a few pages. Then, I meet his eyes across our desks. I understand that author or editor, we are always participants in the literary community, and we will always be seen. “You’re crafting a narrative,” I affirm. A brand. And now I am too.