How Do You Balance Writing With Platform Building?

Digital Native / Flickr
Digital Native / Flickr

I’m often asked, “How much time should I spend on writing and how much on building my platform?”

It’s a difficult question to answer. After a very long preface, I attempt to offer guidelines over at my column on Writer Unboxed.

Should You Focus on Writing or Your Platform?

I hope you’ll take a look, and let me know in the comments (here or there) what you think belongs in the guidelines.

 

Share on:
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

5 Comments
oldest
newest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Julian Summerhayes

Sorry Jane but the link is broken

Jane Friedman

Should be working now! Sorry about the glitch.

John R Worsley

“It necessarily varies based on the author and the work in question.”

I find that to be the answer to many questions! Which is why I’m picky about who I follow and listen to; I derive little value from catch-all answers, and greatly appreciate people like you who take the time to sort through and articulate the it-depends-ness of an answer.

Susan

Hi Jane, 

I really like the guidelines you’ve put forth. I fall into the “work on your writing” group, but have to give props to a debut author in town who needed to “work on her platform” so she formed a consortium of sorts to build a blog. I think group blogging is a very savvy way to strike a balance. With 8 writers and 2 posts weekly that comes out to one blog post/month which is far more doable and allows for more time to “work on your writing” no matter where you are on the career spectrum. Something others may want to consider. 

trackback

[…] 10.  Have I started building my author’s platform? […]