Are you being loud enough?

CLOSED MOUTHS

I have a real love/hate relationship with attention. On one hand, I know it’s necessary for my writing career. If I don’t get any attention, I won’t sell books, no one will read my writing, and I wouldn’t have been able to build this incredible community. On the other hand, getting attention can be uncomfortable sometimes. And for the longest time, I didn’t know how to be loud enough in a way that worked for me.

But that’s not a problem anymore. I found a way to be loud enough to get the attention I need to help my writing get seen. And so I want to share some of those experiences with you because if you want your writing to be heard, trust me when I tell you that you’ll need to be a lot louder than you are right now.

I am who I am

It’s easy to make the assumption that all writers are introverts. This is not true. Some writers have no problem showing off their personalities for the world to see. If you’re one of those people, then that’s one way to be loud. And I don’t mean you need to dance on TikTok. All you really need to do is live your life like you always do, just record some of it.

Maybe you’re super into fashion. Great! Do some GRWM (get ready with me) videos and show off your outfits. Maybe you love music, or you’re super opinionated about something. It doesn’t really matter what your thing is or if you have a thing at all. What matters is that you record yourself in your most authentic state so people can connect with who you are as a person, not just your books.

The dreaded C word

Yeah, I’m about to go there. I’m hitting you with the C word. And no, get your head out of the gutter. That’s not the C word I’m talking about. Consistency. That’s the word and it’s one way to be louder than anyone else.

I built my largest base of readers when I was posting a blog every week. I’d get over 200 new followers a month, sometimes 300 or more for months in a row. But I wasn’t just posting, I was responding to other posts, commenting on others’ comments to my posts; I was being loud as I could by just writing consistently and it paid off.

If you’re purely interested in being an author and blogging isn’t your thing, that’s cool. Dedicate yourself to writing every single day. If you can’t do every day, do every other day. The consistency will improve your writing and ensure your manuscript is completed. That may sound like a basic step, but I speak to writers every day. Completing a manuscript is a huge step and puts you in position to either start pitching to agents or self-publish. Then you can employ marketing tactics to make sure you’re loud as possible.

Do something to stand out

For my second novel, which I self-published, I ran a billboard campaign. I partnered with Breast Cancer Canada and Beauty Scars was lifted onto a billboard hovering over the city.

It was difficult for me to track sales directly related to the billboard. But what I can say with confidence is that it made a lot of people pay attention. My website views went up, I got texts and emails from people around the city who saw the billboard, and it was a conversation starter when I socialized.

For whatever reason, people are impressed by billboards. And for an indie author to hoist their novel a hundred feet up to the sky, it felt even more momentous.

You don’t need a billboard to be loud, but what you do need is an idea that’s completely out of the box. Something that is unexpected but still in line with your writing or the themes of your story.

If you do any one of these things, you’ll be loud enough to be heard. If you do all three, you give your writing a chance to make an impact. I really do believe that there’s a superstar in all of us. We just have to show the world.