Welcome to or welcome back to my little corner of the internet, depending on whether you’ve been a continued reader of my content or are just discovering me for the first time.
This is a continuation of a series of blogs where I give you, the reader, a look behind the scenes at my life as a writer. Or, more importantly, the things that I’ve learned or am continuing to learn about the field of authorship that I like to call. “Wish I’d Known Before.”
A series where I dive into all the things about being and becoming an author that I didn’t know were a thing before I decided to try my hand at this writing thing. Trust me, there are many.
So, let’s take a headlong dive into the next topic.
Getting Out There
I don’t know if it was cluelessness, or just something I hadn’t considered before writing. How does one sell their books?
By being known, duh. I should’ve known that, I guess.
The problem for me, and one I struggle with every day, is that by nature I am quite hermit-like in personality.
I envisioned or idealized a fantasy of a writer circa the Victorian or American Romanticism and Realism eras. Someone hunched up at a desk, toiling over a pad of paper or typewriter (my weapon of choice is the computer, obviously) dropping down prose like nobody’s business. Once the story reached its final breath, it got packaged up and just magically sold.
In my prior research about being an author, I’d come across the term “Author’s Platform” several times. I paid little attention to it. In my mind, I didn’t need to concern myself with that. I hadn’t even finished a short story at that time.
Fast forward several years, and now, I’ve completed my first book, Heartland Strike. The big day had come. With the book completed, edited, cover design done and all the other bells and whistles. Time to release it, and profit from the great monumental success that it brought me.
Well…not quite. In the years that it took me to complete the novel, I’d forgotten about the “Author’s Platform” part.
With the book’s release approaching, I still had not made a name for myself. No one outside of my immediate family and friend circle (which, by the way, is very tiny. Remember, hermit-like personality here,) knew that I was about to release a book.
I’d had some ideas early on about how to make a name. Start a website and post my short stories for free. Which I did but never saw the traffic I needed to build that name.
What’s another way to build a platform? Getting out there. Getting your face and name out for people to see. For them to get to know your name and who you are. For me, that is where the problem starts.
I don’t enjoy being in the spotlight of…well, anything.
Now, for those who know me, they’d call me a liar at this point. I am not saying that I don’t have a personality. Rather, I have a big one to a degree. I am a constant joker, am sarcastic, and possess a dry sense of humor.
It’s not that I have a problem talking in front of people. I’ve given hundreds of presentations. I taught first aid and CPR classes to hundreds of people. Conducted countless hours of training with coworkers. Once engaged in a social setting, I warm up pretty quickly and can become a central focal point of conversation. However, that’s never my intent or goal. It just happens.
My obstacle is the fact that I never choose to seek those interactions. In fact, they happen almost entirely at work these days. I don’t make it a habit to go out of my way to have daily discourse with people. I am content with just sitting at home with a book to read, a game controller in hand, or a laptop in front of me crafting my next story or blog.
Maybe I find it difficult to “get out there” because it’s different when sharing your personal work with others, that I can sometimes find it uncomfortable to put myself out there in front of people that I don’t know. Nerve-wracking, almost. It’s hard to judge how others will see and judge you or your work. I am not a performer; I am a writer.
So, how does one go about getting out there? Well, for starters, creating a website and posting blogs about personal things. That’s a good way to start. Or by releasing something that you’ve spent hours/years working on for the masses to consume.
I am coming around to the fact that if I want to be successful at this writer gig; I need to step out of my comfort zone and help build a name for myself. Do the work. Do the thing most of us fear. Face my fears and just simply.
Get Out There.
Copyright @2025, Michael Williams.