Change it: “I want to connect with my readers”

Hi everyone, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by, as we’ve reached the end of our January series on changing resolutions. It’s been a joy, sitting down each week and discussing how to better our resolutions, before we get any further into the new year. If you haven’t been around this month, I’d strongly encourage that you go check out my other posts from this month, before we get into February.

As you know, this month we’ve been talking resolutions, and how to word them and write them so they’re things we can achieve, things we can work toward, and things we’re more likely to succeed at doing.

And this week, for the last week of the series, I’m talking to all of my established authors.

Change it: “I want to connect with my readers”

I’m so glad that you do! I do, too. I really do. It’s something that I’ve been struggling to find a way to do, over the years. With social media always changing the ways things work, it can be very much a challenge to find a way to connect on a personal level with readers all over the interweb—but it’s something we have to do, in this day and age.

And yes, this is actually one of my resolutions, this year.

But right now, it’s not a very good one.

What does it mean, that you want to connect with your readers? How do you want to connect with them? What sort of relationship do you want to have with them? Is there another author who you’ve connected with, that you’re using as a benchmark?

That’ll all be extremely helpful for you to know.

But yet again, I want to know why. Sit down and really think about it, really ponder why you want to connect with your readers, what it is that draws you to them, that draws you to want to connect with them and learn more about them and understand them and be a bigger part of their lives. Why do you want that?

Once you know, I want you to make a plan. If there’s an author out there who you want to emulate, then I want you to look at their work. Look at what they’re doing, especially on social media, and see what you can do to emulate it.

That, that right there, should be your resolution. Quantify what it means to connect with your readers, and qualify what you want to have, in your relationship with them. That’s the only way you’ll be able to make this resolution a reality.

“I want to connect with my readers.” Don’t we all? So let’s change it to, “I will open up on social media, reach out to my readers, and make a community for them, centered around my books and myself.”

That’s a good resolution, a continual resolution, for all writers.

[love]

{Rani Divine}