Since it’s on everybody’s lips these days, I asked a publicist what, exactly, it means to develop platform, particularly through social media. She said, You have to post things that make people want to be you.
Apparently this want-to-be-you’ing means lots of success posts: screenshots of your name in journals and magazines, book selfies, glowing reviews, awards. And in case your followers wonder how amazing life is when you are not racking up publications and awards, lots of other glam stuff, like Mai Tais in front of the surf. Perfect kiddos, adoring partners, glowing little dogs, whatever. FOMO food.
It was daunting, to say the least. Not that I have none of these things, but enough to sling it out there the required ten times a day? Not really. And anyway, I tend to be more interested in the trip that took years to save up for, but ended in a freak storm, not cute drinks. (Actually happened to me, and more than once.)
I was once a very would-be writer who was also a high school dropout from an urban part of New Jersey. My undergraduate writing classes, when I made it to being an undergrad, consisted of John Updike, Saul Bellow, Denise Levertov, or one of the other writers who were huge there and then. Some of those writers had great stuff, but their lives had no handholds for me.
Maybe I’m still that insecure young writer. Not that I never do success posts. My working theory is just that people will get tired of them pretty quickly. If I’m honest, I do.
I wrote about platform a few posts ago, but the questions still come. Many come from writers, often newer writers, who doubt themselves when faced with platform, like those marketing statements and questionnaires that ask you to outline your social media reach. I hear from people I consider fascinating and extraordinary that they think they’ll never make it because they’re not sure how to rack up followers on Twitter.
The truth is it’s mostly not clear what your public presence means. One smart literary agent told me that unless your social media reflects what you write about—you write about snow leopards so you post pictures of snow leopards and exciting tidbits about snow leopards—it’s not going to do you much good. Which tracks with my own experience. I have friends whose social media, and Mai Tai photos, get lots of traction but their books don’t sell. I have friends who have little or no engagement with the world of “social” but whose books sell really well.
But. That still leaves us filling out those weird author questionnaires or statements, sometimes before even getting manuscripts to the reading stage. Twitter? Instagram? Facebook? How many followers? (And isn’t that a weird word anyway, like we’re all leading some kind of cult). It feels demeaning. And to many of us, like some game only the privileged are going to figure out. Maybe it’s today’s equivalent of “just be John Updike.”
So let me say something that is a truth, and a good one to take to your soul. You have platform already. You have tons of platform. Platform ultimately means how you stand out and how people will recognize you. And you have that. You do need to recognize it and to own it.
Whatever genre you write, your own life is the most important platform you bring to it. The things only you know, because you do know things that no one else does. Not just what you’ve lived, which is always more interesting than you think it is, but how you’ve thought about what you’ve lived.
These discouraged writers I talk to have been raised in yurts, raised their own kids as exhausted single parents, bartended, gone from poverty to teaching kayaking, bred Malamutes. And done many other freaking interesting things. Not always splashy things but things that cut to the heart of what it is to be alive. And they often don’t recognize the value of that at all. Because we’re trained to expect beaches, Mai Tais, shimmering awards. In other words, privilege.
But really we read to learn what it is to be human in another set of circumstances, another body, another mind. Emily Dickinson did not have, by any public standards, an interesting life. If you balk at that statement, think about what in her writing interests you—that she encounters snakes in the grass on a walk, or her mind.
It’s a bit of a talent to learn to fit that amazing being you are into marketing statements. It’s depressing that we’ve even come to this place. But it is where we are, so learn to take your own life seriously. Think about what only you have done and what only you know. IT’S THERE, I promise. Not just what you’ve lived, but how your life has lived you. Maybe you’ve learned that only Malamutes understand what unconditional love is. That they trained you. That being an exhausted single mom in your shoes during covid is unlike exactly any other exhausted single mom.
Either way, I want to learn what you know. Ask yourself what your stance is toward what you write, your flood subjects (to quote Dickinson), what experiences you bring to the page. Ask those you’re close to.
Massage your knowledge into statements by saying that you are the only person who can tell the story you’re telling, as specifically as you can. Maybe say that people on social media love to hear you talk about x. That there is a huge audience out there of people who will connect to and need your story. Get to that any way you can. Say that there are x number of exhausted mothers, off-the-gridders, dog lovers, etc. out there and they will want to hear from you, because that’s true. Marketing people love numbers. Find them some.
And maybe whatever social media you do have, you use regularly to elevate other writers. That kind of post gives them some platform. Good for your soul too.