The Beautiful Formula

Donald Maass taught the first writing class I ever attended at a writer’s conference. It was an early iteration of his very popular “Writing the Breakout Novel” workshop he has since taught all over the country (and which he’ll be teaching this summer at the PNWA’s conference). As with all the classes I take, I remember only one nugget he shared that afternoon, though it was a good one: books succeed, ultimately, because of word of mouth. That was true then, before the Internet and well before social media, and it is true now. I was reminded of this the other week when I woke up one morning to discover a rash of tweets that included my handle (@wdbk, if you’re curious). It turns out the blogger and digital media maven Jane Friedman had excerpted the first chapter of my new book Fearless Writing. Her readers seemed to like what she’d shared and were saying so in the Twitterverse. How exciting!

I had no idea why she had excerpted it, however, until my editor explained that they sent all their books to Jane in the hope she might mention one. This is what we call publicity. You publish a book and twiddle your thumbs and wonder, “What can I do to help that book?” Apparently my publisher had done something. I wondered what else they or I could do. It feels good to do things you like doing, after all. That’s why I write – because it feels good. There are other reasons, but that’s the first and most important reason.

It’s also the reason we tweet and talk about books we like: it feels good. It feels good to read something you like, and then it feels good to talk about it. Which is why the very best piece of publicity is the book itself. No review, platform, or book tour will ever supplant the influence the book has over its readers, and their desire to recommend it to others. After the book is written, those other actions we take, help, but it is important to remember that our first and most important job is to write a book we would love to read. No one would have tweeted that excerpt if they hadn’t felt good while they were reading it, and they wouldn’t have felt good reading it if I hadn’t felt good while I wrote it. That’s writing’s beautiful formula.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.