Building a Platform

Maybe you heard, but Gotham held a Nonfiction Conference recently, where one of the panels was on building a platform because it’s a thing people tell writers they need to do. But they usually leave out what a platform actually is, or how to do it.

And so, first-time authors make a lot of mistakes. In a panic to “build a platform,” new authors have started blogs where they posted excerpts from their manuscripts, which they almost immediately had to take down. (Agents and publishers want unpublished work, and a blog equals publishing.) They’ve started Twitter accounts even though they hate social media, or a newsletter because someone told them they should, sent out a trickle of tweets or issues, then abandoned them not long after.

What all these missteps have in common is an assumption that having a “platform” means having 25,000 social media followers, or a buzzy TikTok, or a Substack (which, according to publishing guru Jane Friedman can be dicey for authors). 

You can see how someone who spent years finishing their first novel might panic if they thought that’s what you need to sign with an agent.

Good news: It’s not.

“With platform, what’s most important is — make yourself easy to find,” literary agent Jennifer Chen Tran said at the conference. “Hang out in the places and spaces you feel comfortable.”

Making yourself easy to find can be as simple as building a website with WordPress or Squarespace, she said. If you use and like social media, great! Do that. If not, don’t.

Author Elissa Bassist said at the same panel that when she (unwillingly) started a platform, she “just did the things I wanted to do and tried to avoid the things I didn’t want to do, while feeling very guilty about that.”

For Elissa, that meant blogging, then editing a humor column at The Rumpus, where she published and ultimately befriended other writers. It also meant doing improv, attending shows, attending readings, making friends.

Also, and perhaps most important: “My therapist at the time was telling me to prioritize my mental health,” Elissa said. “I was just trying to have fun.”

Graphic novelist (and Gotham teacher!) Teresa Wong said she took a similar approach when she started pitching her first book Dear Scarlet. She already liked playing around on Instagram, so she started a project of posting a new drawing a day, for a whole year. She started a Substack, not because she thought she needed one, but because, during lockdown in 2020, “it was a chance to write and draw about the clothes I missed wearing.”

“Nothing ever blows up or reaps rewards right away,” Teresa said. “My goal was improving my skills, not really … becoming an influencer.”

If you’re still struggling to picture what this would look like for you, here’s a hypothetical, using my friend Sherry. She’s a little online, but not a lot. She posts pictures of her kids, and sunsets, on Facebook, but most of her online activity centers on knitting. She’s such a skilled knitter that pattern designers ask her to test out their new ones, the more complex the better. She attends yarn festivals and trade shows, so she’s very active in the fiber arts online community Ravelry. And she’s got an insta full of photos of complicated knitting patterns she’s tested and how they turned out, along with beautiful shawls and sweaters of her own.

When she gets ready to start pitching her sci-fi novel, (note my choice of relative adverb there, Sherry), the last thing she should do is try to start a Substack about speculative fiction, or start a Twitter or Threads account and start posting about books and craft. She’d be starting from scratch, and trying to interact with people she has nothing in common with — yet.

It would make more sense for her to weave (pun totally intended) posts about her book project, or her writing, or what she’s discovering on her creative journey in among her posts about mosaic shawl patterns or roosimine knitting. She could post about ways her two creative pursuits energize one another. She might even start connecting, online or in the world, with other writer+knitters and together they could launch a speculative fiction reading series, where every story has to touch on or mention the fiber arts in some way.

Is this all sounding a little silly to you? Good! I am a little silly, and Jennifer Chen Tran says above all, in this platform thing, “Just be yourself.” And also:

“I want you to know you’re doing awesome, and keep doing the good work and the hard work and if you need to step away for your mental health, it’s OK to take a break.”

Hear, hear.

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty

Meeting of the Minds

This past weekend was the Gotham Writers Nonfiction Conference. I just love a meeting of the minds, which this certainly was.

In the panel Tricky Topics, Jerald Walker said, “There’s a level of discomfort that you have to transcend if your work is going to be as valuable as you want it to be.” Melissa Petro followed with, “I first think: No one can ever know this. The second I hear myself articulate this, I know that is a story I must share.”

In the panel Platform Building, Elissa Bassist said, “When something is not fun and excruciating then it’s time to quit. And that took me 15 years of therapy to learn.”

The featured author Maggie Smith (the memoirist, not actress) who wrote a memoir about her divorce said, “I let go of the idea that I needed to be the good guy.”

Next up is our Children’s Books Conference, coming your way September 2024.

A few weeks ago, Gotham teacher Susan Breen and I attended the Emirates Festival of Literature in Dubai. Susan led a novel writing boot camp, and she’s as good on that side of the world as on this side.

I did two presentations: 7 Keys to Writing Excellence and The Writer’s Mind. (That’s me in the pic.) My 7 Keys were Awareness, Senses, Scenes, Selectivity, Run Free, Revise, and Stick to It. The Writer’s Mind—soon to be a Gotham course—shows you how to use your mind in surprising ways to make your writing deeper and richer and to make the process a bit easier.

Hey, I will be doing a free one-hour presentation on The Writer’s Mind at the P&T Knitwear bookstore in NYC, Saturday March 23, 2 pm ET. You can RSVP here, but there’s usually room if you just want to show up. I’d be thrilled to see some of you there.

Anyway, the Emirates Festival was quite the mind-blowing meeting of minds. At one point, I was having breakfast in the hotel hosting the event. Alone at my table, I was reading Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz, who was sitting a few tables away, and I was occasionally texting on my iPhone, which was co-created by Anthony Fadell, who was sitting a few tables away in another direction.

I let these two gentlemen have their breakfast in peace, but I did spend time watching presentations and chatting with various participants, such as Francis J. Kong, a thought leader in the business world, and the abstract artist Fatma Lootah. My mind was whirling much of the time.

So, yes, get out there and meet with other minds. Maybe even in a Gotham class, of which there are many coming up.

Alex Steele

Gotham President

Writing is Rewriting

Sometimes at this time of year, I like to write to you all about love stories — how not to make them sappy and cringey. Or how to write a good love letter. Or writing a favorite setting that cracks your heart open and makes you feel like you can fly.

Why is love so challenging to write about? My crackpot hypothesis is because it’s so loaded and so fraught. Our desire for it to resonate with the reader, our need for their hearts to swell, or break, is so intense, it can get in the way of us writing these moments well.

Or I could be wrong. Once I asked the author Roger Rosenblatt why writing about love is hard, and he said, “It’s not.”

“There’s nothing special or different about writing about love,” Rosenblatt said. ““You just have to be a good writer—a good writer can write about anything.”

And what’s the key to being a good writer? That’s right. Rewriting.

This week, in her Substack Badreads, the author Lauren Hough wrote something about craft that applies directly to this question, and I love it so much, and it’s so true, I’m just going to share it here in full:

I wrote about it so many times, whatever it is. I wrote about it so that I could practice the reality of it. So that I could see it on the page. So that it could have a place to exist. Then I wrote it again and tried to understand it. Then I wrote it again and tried to make it sound right, the way I wanted it to sound. I wrote it again to punish myself. Then I wrote it to punish those at fault. I wrote it to punish the reader. Because I was angry. Then I wrote it again and tried to see if there was a reason to write it at all. Did it matter. Did it fit the story. Could I write it in a way that I would want to read it. And mostly, when the answer was no, I never wrote it again. But if I thought there was a purpose, I wrote it again and sent it to my agent or editor. Then I wrote it again to make it funnier, or whatever it needed to be.

People love to say there are no do-overs in life. Those people are not writers. We know the truth, though. If you want to do anything well, (like writing), you not only have to believe in do-overs, you have to embrace them.  

Kelly Caldwell

Dean of Faculty