Tools For Your Platform

One of our earliest episodes for Newbie Writers Podcast was to define and figure out what the heck is a writer’s platform. Since this is still a troubling term for writers, here are a couple ideas to help you build your own platform:

A platform is what you stand on to make your point.  So what is your point?  

An easy way to think of this is: Why are your writing this book?

Non Fiction – the point and platform is often the theme of the book.

From this platform and theme articles, blogs, web site, twitter posts and  audience segmentation will all flow.  Think of the platform as representing  your passion and beliefs, it’s what you stack   all the social media and other books on.  The bigger the platform, the easier it is for people to see you as you stand a head above the  crowd.

Fiction –  What is a central theme?  Child abuse?  A discovery journey?  Find a solid theme that you are willing to discuss and expand upon for at least a couple of years, and you have your platform.

For instance, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin to express her idea that if she was devastated over the loss of her child, wouldn’t a slave woman feel the same?  The story was about motherhood, the platform was the call to end slavery.

Once you find that theme, you can write articles blogs etc.  about that theme and the tie it to your fiction book that addresses the platform issue.

Children’s books–  Your platform can be reading is important and your book is an example of fine children’s reading.

Or the children’s book touches on a popular issue or theme.  Again, be cautious of being trendy, you have to discuss this subject forever, it helps if you like it or believe in it.

 Memoir, can be regionally targeted, time targeted, issue targeted. Whatever group  you discuss will be the target group who will relate to your story, their shared concerns will be your platform.

And a  caution about a book and a platform – how much do you like it?  How committed are you?  If you are passionate about a cause, or the subject matter of your non fiction book, you will love the endless conversations, the lecturing, the book signings.  But if you wrote a book because it was trendy, you will soon tire of the subject – your platform – and you’ll become bored.

You will notice, and so will your fans.

  

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Dr. Burack Featured at Day of the Book

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

The Art of Spiritual Writing   Charles Burack, Ph.D.

Dr. Burack will discuss some of the literary techniques that writers and poets use when portraying spiritual experiences. He will also lead some experiential exercises that will help participants reflect on and write about their own sacred experiences.

Charles Burack, Ph.D., is an award-winning poet, scholar and teacher as well as a widely published writer.  Author of the literary study D. H. Lawrence’s Language of Sacred Experience, and the poetry collection Songs to My Beloved. 

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com

Tanya Egan Gibson at Day of the Book

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

Tanya is awesome.  I was so impressed with how much time and energy she gave to the participants at the SF Writer’s Conference.  She has graciously agreed to do the same for us during Day of the Book!

Building a Vibrant Fictional World  – Tanya Egan Gibson

How do you create a fictional world that is unique yet believable, exciting yet grounded? Learn the various ways you can get the details of places right (even without a travel budget), how to make your world exciting, and how to use your world to strengthen both plot and characterization.

Tanya Egan Gibson is the author of the novel How To Buy a Love of Reading (Dutton – 2009), and a freelance editor, consultant, and writing teacher. She has written for such magazines as The Writer, Parents, and Writer’s Digest, which will publish her latest article, “10 Things Your Freelance Editor Hasn’t Told You–But Should” in its May/June 2013 issue.

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com

Fiction as Emotional Autobiography

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

Sounds interesting?  Come and hear Elizabeth Rosner speak during Day of the Book!

Inheriting Identity: Fiction as Emotional Autobiography.   Elizabeth Rosner

Sometimes a novelist’s subject matter isn’t chosen so much as discovered from within.  In this talk, I’ll share my process of finding — and fictionalizing — the complicated and dramatic material inside my family’s history.

Novelist, poet and essayist Elizabeth Rosner is the author of THE SPEED OF LIGHT and BLUE NUDE.  Her prize-winning and national best-selling works of fiction address themes of inherited grief and the redemptive power of storytelling.  Her newest novel ELECTRIC CITY will be published by Counterpoint Press in 2014.

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com

Writing as Personal Expression (Day of the Book)

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

Writing and Self-Publishing as Personal Expressions of Liberation and Autonomy.   – K. Tutashinda

During Day of the Book, K Tutashinda focuses on how the Black Arts, Black Power, and Environmental Movements have served as a foundation for the author to use writing and self-publishing as participatory outlets.

K. Tutashinda,D.C., is a Chiropractic Physician, teacher, activist/consultant, and independent scholar. He teaches English in the Mills Upward Bound program and worked with UC Berkeley’s program for twenty-eight years. The author of five books, he owns Imhotep Chiropractic & Wellness Center in Berkeley,CA. and has been in practice since 1989.

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com

Michael Somers featured at Day of the Book

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

GALACTIC EXODUS: A Science Fiction Documentary or History of the Future  – Michael Somers

Focusing on the work: Galactic Exodus, we will explore the meaning of science fiction, how does science fiction  express our own socio-political arrangements, intercultural relations, the interplay of freedom and equality.

Michael Somers  is a college professor teaching  A Condensed History of Critical Ideas from a Cosmological Perspective  and authored an award winning, post-apocalyptic science-fiction epic: GALACTIC EXODUS: Counterdance of the Cybergods and Polylogue with Mythokrates).

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com

Jump from a Plane, Speak at Day of the Book

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

Jeane Slone has jumped from airplanes, flown upside down and bravely appeared on Newbie Writers Podcast. There is very little she won’t do in the service of her books!

Women in the Air – Jeane Slone

Did you know women flew as spies and bomber pilots in WWII?  Jeane will present the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She will discuss: training, qualifications, how they tried to receive military benefits, 38 WASPs died and never went into combat, the Soviet Night Witches, why black women pilots were not accepted in the program, the WASPs received the gold medal 60 years later.

Jeane Slone is the past Vice President and present board member of the California Redwood Writer’s Club, a member of the Healdsburg Literary Guild, Military Writer’s Society of America, and the Pacific Coast Air Museum. She is a tutor for the Library Literary Program.

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com

Memoir Expert Speaks at Day of the Book

Day of the Book – April 20, 2013

Day of the Book

                                   JFKU 100 Ellinwood Way, Pleasant Hill, CA

                       Time: 10-4

Linda Joy Meyers is one of the premiere experts on memoir, and always delivers great information with heart. I am honored she is speaking for our event.

What’s Your Story? The Heart and Craft of Memoir Writing – Linda Joy Meyers

You have a story you’ve been meaning to tell, and you want to find a way to get started. Where to start is the biggest question memoir writers ask.

Linda Joy Myers, President of the National Association of Memoir Writers, & Co-President of the Women’s National Book Association, SF, is the author of Don’t Call Me Mother—A Daughter’s Journey from Abandonment to Forgiveness; The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story, and a new workbook The Journey of Memoir: The Three Stages of Memoir Writing to be released in February, 2013.

Admission

$35 with lunch

Faculty, staff, alumnae:  $25

Students: $20

Morning events open to the public 10-12

Panel discussion (lunch) 12-1

Literary salon 2-4

For early reservations contact: Catharine at bramkamp@yahoo.com