If you are seeking a writing career you will love, I would love to serve as your guide and coach in one of my highly praised, widely respected six-week classes.

A lot of folks go for bells and whistles today. They go heavy on the social pressure. They OD on technology. They want to hurry writers up and get them overloaded with information and tools.

That’s not how I work with writers. It’s also why I can work with anyone, meet them where they are, and help them take their writing career to the next level via my classes and dream teams. I don’t put things in the way, I help my students take things out of the way.

Maybe you have read one of my books. Maybe you have been wanting to take a class with me for a long time but you have just been waiting for the right moment. Maybe you saw me speak and thought you might like to work with me one day.

Working with me is a huge gift to your creative self. It’s a gift because you grant yourself permission to focus on yourself and your own ideas. Focusing on your own ideas is key because this is where everything else in your writing career comes from. Nothing else can happen until you create a context within yourself where you can court and woo your own ideas into something greater.

Nurturing ideas is a key part of my writing classes, my platform development classes, my query writing classes, and my eBook classes.

Of course, having an idea is only the beginning of a writing journey. Sometimes a writing journey is a long journey and sometimes it’s a comparatively short journey, but it’s always an experience involving ups and downs, challenges and breakthroughs, and determination and letting go. There is no way around the sheer hard work of nurturing a writing career.

And that’s where I come in. I can’t nurture your writing career for you, but I can assist you in nurturing it. I can validate your urge to do so by helping you get to work and grow your writing career in ways that make sense to you. Every skill I teach is a career-long skill that will keep benefiting you no matter what you write.

And you know what? Creative growth is a great feeling. And the world is full of creative opportunities right now despite the droning on of the naysayers’ chorus.

What those people are really saying, when they say, “Don’t create, because you’ll never succeed,” is not about you. It’s about them. They are saying, “I am blocked and I want you to be blocked with me.” They are saying, “Don’t create because if you succeed, then I am wrong.” They are saying, “If you succeed while I fan the flames of my fears, then I will end up frustrated and jealous.”

And they will be. And so what if they are? It’s not your problem.

While they are creating a portfolio of grievances, you can create a portfolio of small accomplishments. And those small accomplishments will begin to pile up over time.

You can create. And succeed. And it is not a reflection on anyone but you.

This is why I say, naysayers be damned. I am going to keep creating and keep working with those who love to create. And we’re going to keep succeeding without giving a rip what all the naysayers think.

We have a pretty good time, working hard, believe it or not. We’re a pretty satisfied bunch, so long as we are creating. We create a whole world of possibilities that never existed before we came along and that’s pretty exciting every time.

So, if you want to get creative, stop tangling yourself up with naysayers and do your darn work. You don’t have to change them or save them. Just save yourself. Take a step forward. Focus on creative productivity for six weeks rather than dissipated distraction and you just might amaze yourself.

Classes begin on April 11th and 12th and I’ll be teaching them. I’ve been teaching them for ten years.

I hope you will join us! Please visit my classes page to learn more about the following classes that begin in ten days:

Writing & Publishing The Short Stuff

Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform

Pitching Practice: Write Six Queries in Six Weeks

Micro-publishing for Mom Writers

What will happen?

You’ll gain a better sense of what you do all day.

In a recent post in The Willamette Writers Newsletter (scroll down on this page), I described platform dynamic as I see it working for writers in various genres.

You’ve heard me talk about this in this blog (here, here, and here).

You can also see what I’ve written on the topic here. (I’ve written more in  The Writer’s Workout LINK and my Build Your Author Platform workbook LINK.)

What I thought I’d help you do today, was get started uncovering your platform dynamic. Because your platform dynamic is connected to what you do all day.

Here’s ten verbs that describe what I do all day:

1. Write
2. Teach
3. Coach
4. Trouble-shoot
5. Edit
6. Critique
7. Administrate
8. Inspire
9. Learn
10. Respond

Now your turn. In the comments below, could you please list the ten verbs that describe what you do in your writing career all day?

Don’t overthink it. And please do not include verbs from the rest of your life (meaning from the non-writing parts of your daily life).

Just give us the verbs from your writing life. Go! Dig. Discover…

What do you notice about your verbs?

I love, love, love this post from Seth Godin — Three Masters –  which encapsulates the essence of platform development, not just for writers but for anyone.

My only response to Seth’s post would be to encourage writers to focus on all three aspects of their ongoing platform development–existing customer base, another customer base, and serving your muse–at the same time, instead of just one or the other. Make it a regular rotation in your weekly schedule.

I also love this recent post–Doing It Wrong, Relentlessly–because I also refuse to work the system.

The reason is because “the system,” indeed any system, isn’t going to support my creative growth and development in the long run, so why would I adopt to one?

The three things that Seth is not saying here that I say repeatedly in my work are:

1. Tap into the essence of what you offer for multiple audiences and everything unfolds from there.

2. Use whatever tools make sense and in any ways that make sense. The tools are not the focus, what you offer is the focus.

3. Find your natural rhythm based on what you offer, who wants what you offer, and how you use your tools.

When you focus on what you can do for the people you serve, that’s when the magic happens.

For writers, the magic is happening in the exchange of energy between writer and others. Between you and others.

Open up the communication valve between you and your audiences. That’s where the synergy is. That’s where you want to be on a regular basis.

My Build Your Author Platform Self-study Workbook is on sale for $29.99 until March 15th. Learn more here.

If you have taken classes with me before, then you know a few things about them.

For one thing, my classes are designed to take you from where you are right now to the next level.

Each class delivers actionable skills that can pay off for writers in the short and long runs.

You are not “done” when you finish a class of mine, but you definitely have skills and you know how to use them.

What you gain from my classes are insights into your desires and the ability to turn ideas into value.

Most writers who take my classes are willing to work steadily at reachable goals for cumulative success.

These philosophies permeate everything I teach and coach about. You’ll find me beating the drum of steady, gradual growth in my classes, coaching, and writing.

Teaching is the core of my career. It informs everything I do. Developing and offering writing career instruction is what I love.

I have gotten pretty good at it over the years and I am always improving.

If you are ready to expand a skill set and I teach a class in that area, I’d love to work with you.

My students tend to be a pretty satisfied bunch. I ask them to work and they work hard and grow.

In my experience, this is all most writers need to succeed.

Don’t you wish someone had told you a long time ago that it could really be this simple?

Grow, repeat, grow, repeat, grow, repeat—you need to find a way to make this your career dynamic.

Here’s a list of the classes I’m offering that begin on April 11th & 12th:

• Writing & Publishing the Short Stuff LINK
• Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform LINK
• Pitching Practice: Writer Six Queries in Six Weeks LINK
• Micro-publishing for Mom Writers LINK

Next round of classes begins in August after this round.

All of my classes will be updated in August and the prices will go up to $299.00. So last time at this price!

Also, certain classes are required to join Dream Team training groups that begin in August.

Scholarships for WPSS and DYS-LYP will be posted next week.

Hope to work with you!

These are some examples of Tech-savvy Writers for our discussion at AWP 2012 in Chicago today.

Get this, writers: traditional media is the circulatory system. But new media is the nervous system. And the two work great together.

The circulatory system makes sure all your everything gets nourished. But the nervous system means you get to have the perception to appreciate that nourishment.

When you want awareness about your book, you want the extended nervous system of humanity to know it.

Just make sure you bring the circulatory system along too, if you possibly can.

These writers do. Check ‘em out!

Cheryl Strayed

Most recent book: Wild, a memoir from Alfred A. Knopf (March 2012) and forthcoming Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar coming this summer.

It’s never too late to get techy!

Strayed is not the most tech-savvy writer you’ll ever meet, by any means. But remember this, writers—better late than never!

Strayed is appearing at AWP this year and you will be hearing her name a lot in the upcoming months if you haven’t already. She has a feature interview in the latest Poets & Writers magazine and also recently had a feature in my hometown paper, The Oregonian. In a rising tide of publicity genius, Strayed timed the big reveal of her role as “Dear Sugar” on The Rumpus to tie in with the launch of her two new books.

Wild will be released in March (you can pre-order it here) and another book that chronicles her columns from The Rumpus will be released this summer.

Strayed wrote a memoir about hiking the PCT, that’s the backstory.

Strayed wrote the line: “Write like a motherfucker,” for therumpus.net. That’s the lead-in story to the backstory.

The end of the story is that more people will read her memoir in the long run because she wrote that top-secret Rumpus advice column.

So put your judgement aside, writers, and see the Internet and technology as your allies, not your enemies.

Learn more about Cheryl Strayed. And buy her books!

Cory Doctorow

Science Fiction writer and activist, Cory Doctorow is one of the smartest people I have ever met. If you are also intelligent, I hope you will follow his proactive, provacative example.

What I’ve learned from Cory is that it does not matter how intelligent you are; it matters what you DO with that intelligence. Your intelligence is either serving your heart or imprisoning it (or something in between). I hope, for your sake, dear writer, that your intelligence is not only serving your heart, but also serving the world.

You can have an ego, that’s fine. Cory certainly has one. But as long as you use your ego in service of the world and others, we are going to cut you a lot more slack than if you just sit around indulging your pride.

You do not have to be perfect, dear writer. Perfection is unattainable and unsustainable. But there is no excuse for self-indulgence and laziness. Got off your rump and write something. Than do something with it. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?

I recommend any of Cory’s books hand’s down (especially to sci-fi fans) because they are so acclaimed and he is so adored by his fans. However, since I am not a sci-fi gal, I particularly like his two collections of essays, Content and Context. Tons of food for thought in there for any writer today and you can listen to them on audio for free.

Seth Godin

If every writer read all of Seth Godin’s marketing books, we would need to have this panel because marketing and self-promotion would be a required class in every writing MFA program in the country. And I know we are doing better but we are not there yet.

So don’t wait for your writing program to get schooled. School yourself. Seth’s books are remarkably accessible and east to digest. You can read them while you are on the bus or waiting to pick up the kids. Just read them!

Godin has saved my career more than once. He is a strong influences in my two recent books, Get Known Before the Book Deal and The Writer’s Workout Coach, both from Writer’s Digest Books.

You can buy them new or used and thank me later. Here’s the most recent list. Read them all is what I recommend.

I am the author of Get Known Before the Book Deal from Writer's Digest Books.

When it comes to platform development, I have learned a thing or two about a thing or two over the past twelve years. Here are a few insights…

• Have a specialty focus, but don’t adhere to your specialty focus so tightly that you miss opportunities or don’t get to follow your healthy creative instincts. Nobody ever said having a platform meant cutting yourself off from your inspiration.
• You don’t need a guru to develop and grow a platform, but you do need solid, informed, up-to-date advice from a number of knowledgeable resources according to your current needs.
• Platform development is not a one-time event, it’s a career-long process. Learn what you can now and keep learning as you grow your career over time.

I have explored platform development as an aspiring author, as an author, and as a multi-book author, and I always enjoy the challenge of learning new ways to communicate who I am and what I offer to others as I expand my writing horizons.

This past summer, I wrote a self-study course for Writer’s Digest which I have turned into a workbook to accompany my second book, Get Known Before the Book Deal.

Get Known has helped thousands of writers go from invisible and unknown to visible and known, and it can help you, too, especially when used in conjunction with my workbook, Build Your Author Platform.

During the week of The Associated Writing Conference, I am knocking ten bucks off the workbook price, so you can purchase Build Your Author Platform for just $29.99.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction of Build Your Author Platform…

This self-study workbook is designed to help you identify and grow your author platform from scratch. What’s a platform? In 2007, I created the following definition of the word:

A platform communicates your expertise to others. It includes your Web presence, any public speaking you do, the classes you teach, the media contacts you’ve established, the articles you’ve published, and any other means you currently have for making your name and your future books known to a viable readership.

Basically, your platform is everything you DO with your expertise. A platform-strong writer is a writer with influence. Once you establish a platform, it can work for you 24/7, reaching readers even as you sleep. Of course, this kind of reach takes time. If many others already recognize your expertise on a given topic or for a specific audience or both, then you likely have an active platform.

I find it helpful to define a platform as a promise writers make to not only create something to sell (like a book), but also to promote it to the specific readers who will want to purchase it. This takes both time and effort, not to mention considerable focus.

I hope you will purchase the workbook and use it with Get Known Before the Book Deal to get started building your professional platform today! Happy platform-building!

I often do some of my best writing right after finishing a book.

I feel that this was the case last summer with a self-study course curriculum that I wrote for the folks at Writer’s Digest to include in their September 2011 Build An Author Platform Premium Kit.

I had just completed The Writer’s Workout, and I was creatively spent and eager to spend some time with my family. But…I felt like I had made some training breakthroughs in teaching platform development, one of my long-time specialties. And I knew that writing the self-study course for Writer’s Digest would push me to articulate my ideas concisely, specifically, and well.

So while Jason and Samantha were off exploring Portland, I was in the basement pulling together all the best of my ideas on platform development for writers.

I think this workbook is one of the best things I’ve ever written and one of the most helpful tools for emerging platform builders around. I have been speaking, writing, and teaching platform development to writers for five years. Thousands of people have benefited from my work on the topic.

You may be familiar with some of my prior work on the topic for Writer’s Digest:

• “50 Simple Ways To Build Your Platform in 5 Minutes A Day” for Writer’s Digest magazine, March/April 2011

• “Elements of a Successful Fiction Platform” for Writer’s Digest magazine, November/December 2010

• “How to Build a Marketing Platform” for Writer’s Digest magazine, May/June 2009

• Get Known Before The Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform (Writer’s Digest Books 2008) More info

I made a deal with the WD publisher at the time, Kelly Messerly, that I would write the self-study curriculum for WD, they would sell 200 print copies from September – December, and afterwards the rights to the work would revert back to me.

So naturally, after waiting all of this time, I am very excited to share the concepts I developed with you in the Build Your Author Platform Workbook.

This eight-chapter companion workbook in PDF format was written to go with my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform (Writer’s Digest 2008).

I feel confident that my Build Your Author Platform Workbook brings the platform development concepts in Get Known up to date without muddling any of the basic thrusts, which are as sound as they ever were.

One thing has changed for writers, though: no writer is merely a traditionally published or merely an “indie” author any longer. We are all both now. We are all everything and anything that we decide to do. And who knows what that’s going to look like in 2012.

It’s an exciting time to be a writer. I hope that my workbook will help any writer navigate what can otherwise feel like a confusing spectrum of choices.

I’d love to work with you, if you want to work with me. But I understand that not everyone wants to work with me in a six-week email class environment (although there are those who seem to love it). I also understand that not everyone can afford my class fees or the conference fees where I’ll be speaking this year. Of course, this is why I offer scholarships but even that can only go so far.

So here’s my chance to make my teaching affordable for every writer. I could have priced the workbook higher. In fact, I seriously considered it. But I’m going low instead because that’s in alignment with my 2012 mission to empower as many writers as I can using my best tools, old and new.

The Build Your Author Platform Workbook is a mental workout any writer can use annually to assess platform growth thus far and reassess it going forward as a writing career takes root, grows, and prospers. Folks who are already fans of Get Known Before the Book Deal will especially appreciate the opportunity to organize all the scribbles they’ve already made in their books! (But don’t forget to update your ideas to reflect your present accomplishments.)

The workbook is on sale now! You can purchase the Build Your Author Platform Workbook to accompany your paperback or digital copy of Get Known Before the Book Deal for only $39.99. I will send the workbook right over to your inbox soon after you order.

Folks who have taken my Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform class will appreciate having a workbook to help them with their annual platform update and goal setting. And during the month of January 2012, all of my current and former students and dream teamers can purchase the workbook at a reduced price of $29.99.

The only folks who SHOULD NOT ORDER this workbook are those who ordered it via the Writer’s Digest premium collection in September or December. (Please contact me at christina at christina katz dot com if you are interested in discussing use of the workbook in your group class, program, or organization.)

Please click here for more info and how to order Build Your Author Platform Workbook.

Happy New Year, writers!

And happy ongoing and evolving platform development for many years to come!

In less than two weeks, I start teaching one of my favorite classes again. The class is Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform.

There are many things that make my approach to platform development unique. For one thing, I understand that platform means everything to writing career success. At the same time I am able to balance that idea with the knowledge that the best, most authentic and well-rounded platforms don’t just spring up overnight.

My classes take six weeks, and I’d say that six weeks is the minimum amount of time any writer should spend developing their platform concept before they jump online and start blogging or building a site.

Why?

Because every writer has a unique platform dynamic yet most writers are not aware what theirs is. In my class, Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform, we take our time uncovering that platform dynamic, exploring it, and most importantly, making sure it is authentically meaningful to the writer.

You can take the class whether you already have an idea of what your platform should focus on or not. Because guess what? It’s not dollar signs that are going to motivate you to establish your name and get known for what you write, it’s loving what you do so that you can sustain the effort long enough to get known and attract readers.

I hope you are in the platform journey for the long haul because it’s a career-long effort. For the past six years I have been teaching writers how to build a platform alongside their writing in order to amplify their reach, make an indelible impression in reader’s minds, and create future revenue streams to sustain their writing efforts.

Here are several reasons why you may wish to work with me rather than someone else:

• I wrote the book on platform. It’s called, Get Known Before the Book Deal. It’s one of the first and most comprehensive books on platform for writers.
• I recently wrote a workbook on platform called, “Build Your Author Platform & Prosper.” It’s a companion to my book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, and it will launch on January 1, 2012.
• I have written several feature-length articles for Writer’s Digest magazine on platform for writers across the genres and from the perspective of all levels of writers from aspirant to bestselling author.
• I have worked with hundreds of writers over the past ten years, working with many of them over time as they write, get published, build up clips, establish a specialty, break into national publications, write ebooks and books, and create lasting and profitable platforms.
• But perhaps the most important reason to work with me rather than someone else is because I am not interested in leveraging your platform for my own or others’ financial interests. I have my own platform, I have my own paid writing work, and I already teach and speak in a distinctive niche. This means when I am focused on you, I am focused on what is best for your career in the long run, not what you can do for me in the short run. I want you to prosper by establishing your own platform and growing it over time.

Platform development for authors is one of my specialties as a writing career coach. I work with writers across a range of skill sets, so I understand how platform matters in every phase of a writer’s career development.

I prefer to work with writers in this class who are just getting started identifying their strengths and understanding how to better position their platform in the marketplace. My former students have the option to continue working with me via my training groups, if they so choose.

I understand writers, the state of the industry, and the unique challenges that writers face on a daily basis. I don’t want you to sell your soul; I want you to listen to what your inner voice is telling you to do, not what external forces want you to do for them. I want to help you declare and maintain ownership over your career while at the same time helping you partner wisely with others.

Establishing a platform is a whole lot easier, when you take the time to understand your motivations and make the most of your strengths.

You do not have to be a woman, a mom, or a nonfiction writer to take this class. It definitely helps if you are already an established writer and you have some idea of the direction you’d like to go with your writing but you will learn that in the process of the class, anyway.

I will be updating the class in the fall and raising the price accordingly, which means you have three chances to register between now and then. Here are what some past students have had to say about Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform:

Christina embodies what it means to be a great coach. She is direct, honest, not afraid to say what a writer struggling with a particular issue needs to hear. Christina has the tremendous confidence that comes with experience; that confidence made me strong when I needed it. She told me, with conviction, that what I have to say is important, and that I shouldn’t hesitate to say it. ~ Valorie H.

Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform is a great class for writers at any stage of career development. I had been doing a small amount of platform development prior to the class and found that I could enfold that work into my plans going forward. Now I feel so much more professional, focused, and confident. These six weeks of class work have moved me forward months (even years) in building my platform.  I know now where I’m going and can communicate that clearly to others. ~ Lara K.

I highly recommend this class for writers struggling to define their niche or confused about how to communicate it compellingly. Christina is a wise guide who facilitates the kind of inner exploration it takes to find and flesh out an authentic, sustainable platform. This class helped me get clear on who I am and what I bring to my audience. And that’s priceless. ~ Heidi L.

Christina Katz’ Discover Your Specialty & Launch Your Platform class was a combination of therapy and boot camp. She forced me to dig deep and deeper yet, to discover what motivates and inspires me to write. ~ Sandra F.

Christina’s exceptional class focused my thoughts to build a specialty platform plan. Her assignments challenged and helped me look deeply into lifelong experiences to build an organized plan for getting published. ~ Bill H.

Building a platform isn’t for the faint-of-heart, but the clarity I found after digging into the possibilities was an invaluable learning experience. I now have a clearly defined roadmap to follow and a better understanding of how to continue building my writing platform grounded in practical techniques rather than just dreamy possibilities. ~ C. Hines

This course not only taught me more about myself and what inspires me to write, but also showed me concrete actions to take in order to establish a strong platform for my writing career. With Christina’s practical advice and informed guidance, I learned exactly what steps I need to take to reach my writing goals. ~ Sarah L.

Before I took this class, I was struggling to identify topics that would be of interest to editors and readers. Now, I have the beginnings of a platform that will help me generate as much work as I want or need just by developing and marketing my area of expertise. ~ B. Meleski

In an uncertain publishing environment, platform has never been more important for writers. I’m so thankful to Christina for providing me with an opportunity to strategize and for helping me come up with a workable platform plan. ~ Sharon V.

Christina is a real, honest-to-goodness teacher. When I wasn’t working to my ability, she noticed, demanded more, and gave me the tools to succeed. Nobody ever gets where they’re going without a great teacher. Christina helped me find my wings. ~ Lynne S.

I found this class to be much more than I expected. Don’t sign up unless you have plenty of time to devote to it (not to mention paper and ink!) because you will not want to waste the opportunity to have Christina help you find, develop, or fine tune your image and point you in the right direction. ~ Carol A.

Learn more here. Space is limited. Register by December 28th for the class that begins on January 4th.

I hope to work with you in 2012!

This is part three, in a three-part post, in which I attempt to answer the question:

Are your voice and your platform dynamic the same thing?

If you have already read the first post in this series, where I talked about voice and the second post in this series where I talked about platform dynamic, they by now, you realize that voice and platform are not at all the same thing.

I say “not at all” to clear up any confusion like: Yes, but isn’t your voice KIND OF like your platform dynamic?

Nope, it’s not kind of like it.

Your voice is the expression of who you are as a writer and is a tool you flex to suit various forms and formats. Your voice is the expression of all that you have written and all that you currently write, wielded skillfully to articulate whatever you are attempting to say.

Your platform dynamic is similarly holistic. It encapsulates and draws on all that the writer has ever written and done, however the comparison stops there.

You don’t have to consciously choose to have a voice. You already have one. You were born with a voice and it is likely coming through whether you realize it or not.

Writers usually recognize the power of voice, and turn it up and down to suit their genres and readers, as I discussed in the first post of this series.

We all have also likely encountered writers who are prone to making too much of their voices, to the point where the effect becomes self-conscious. This just shows that when you mess with voice too much, instead of just letting it happen, you can muck it up and this impacts reader trust.

When it comes to voice, appropriateness, tone and volume are all. You use your voice when you are writing and when you are supporting your writing and when you are just living. Embrace your voice as the instrument it is. Learn to use it and you will grow to trust it and wield it wisely. But don’t expect your voice to be the temple where we are expected to worship, because that’s just taking voice too far.

On the other hand, platforms rarely happen by accident. And they should be constructed and launched in conscious ways that make the most of a writer’s strengths and past successes. That’s why, when I wrote my second book, Get Known Before The Book Deal, we chose the subtitle, Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform. I fought for that subtitle and I’m glad I did. Because your platform is not just about your strengths, it’s about what you decide to do with them.

Therefore to understand your platform dynamic, you need to be aware of your strengths and you need to channel them in conscious ways that support the overall success of your writing career.

Your platform dynamic is not merely your writing, it’s your writing and everything else that you offer, the way you uniquely offer it. It’s what you do, how you do it, why you do it, whom you do it for, when you do it, where you do it, and whom you do it.

This is why, when all of the other writers in your genre are following one trend, you should buck that trend and turn inward and proceed in the way that is appropriate to your integrity.

Your platform dynamic springs from your most precious values. It do not suggest you merely start doing things because they are fashionable or even if they worked for another writer.

As a writer, you have to follow the dance of your creative spark in order to succeed. And as a writer with a ever-evolving platform, you have to consciously build step-by-step, day-by-day, growing stronger and more visible as your grow.

You may use your platform to establish a niche, develop a community, become a media mogul, or create connections. And all of these things are conscious choices that go way above and beyond a writer who posses a strong voice because you will use your platform dynamic to create the results you envision.

Certainly a writer’s voice comes into play in honing in on a platform dynamic but it’s not nearly enough information to go the distance. There is much more work to be done, and there is much interplay among the various steps, as I have described in my forthcoming book, The Writer’s Workout.

So, voice typically comes before platform dynamic, and voice can inform platform dynamic, but you can’t expect your voice to do all the heavy lifting in helping you become visible and stay viable in the marketplace. To expect this would be to put too much pressure on your wonderfully unique, but also delicate instrument.

Let your platform dynamic lead instead. It’s how you do anything and how you do everything. It’s who you uniquely are as a writing professional, and that reputation proceeds you everywhere you go anyway. Trust it and it will trust you back.

Questions about voice vs. platform dynamic? Put them in the comments and I will answer them in a future post.

~ Photo by sean dreilinger

I’m ba-ack. Both of our family vacations were awesome and now I’m back in the saddle and ready to get back to work!

First on my list is this reminder: there are only NINE more days to pre-order my new book, The Writer’s Workout and get entered into a drawing in which you can win an hour-long session of platform coaching!

And guess what? I have a brand new method of Platform Power Phone Coaching that kicks in beginning September 1st.

I hope you guys are up for it because you will never look at your own platform progress quite the same way once you’ve done it.

And here’s another reason to order today: I’m raising my rate for phone coaching as of September 1st, which makes this offer for free coaching a huge steal!

All you have to do to enter is pre-order The Writer’s Workout by August 31, 2011. And then e-mail me your receipt. (It’s okay if you order other things on the same receipt. Don’t worry about that.) Just don’t forget to e-mail me the receipt after you order! Please send your reciept to “katz christina @ comcast dot net.”

And thank you so much to all the people, who have already pre-ordered and entered the drawing. I really appreciate your support and wish you the best of luck in the drawing.

After September 1st, my Platform Power Phone Coaching rate will go up to $199/hour for non-students and $99/hour for former students. So don’t miss your chance to get quality coaching for the cost of a paperback. The winners will be announced on Tuesday, September 6th right here in this blog.

This offer is only available for the first 50 people who pre-order The Writer’s Workout and submit the receipt to me by the end of the month.

Look forward to working with all the folks who are ready to take their writing careers to the next level!