I'm Branded: Google Me - My Author Platform Will Come Up

Google me - I dare you! Keith Heimpel. I'm not famous - nobody is googling my name and there's no content out there outside of what I create. But go ahead and do it anyway! My author platform will come up.

The midwest is still digging out from Blizzard '11 and all my friends were on Facebook. They had little choice: they were trapped wherever they were and Facebook compelled them to login and update us on their snowy experiences. Twitter was pretty active too. Social media receives a lot of internet traffic these days! (And YES - that's meant to be an understatement.) If you haven't set up your writerly presence on these sites perhaps you haven't heard of social media. (YES that's meant to be facetious.)

Facebook and Twitter help you rank high 

when someone searches your name.

The genre I write in is speculative, so let's speculate:
Sometime in the future, I'll be a published author. In my case it'll be for short fiction (I've thrown down that gauntlet - my short fiction will be published in 2011) and I'll get traffic because my blog will come up, on the 1st page of Google, along with my Facebook page and my tweets. My readers will easily connect with me.

Now at this future point I'll have a website, KeithHeimpel.com, which at present forwards to this blog. I have no fiction credits right now so I don't feel the need for a website. But why have the domain name?

I've secured my name as a domain name, so I'm ready for business.

Imagine getting published and then trying to secure your name as a domain, only to discover it's taken. When was it taken - last week? Doesn't matter. It's gone. The same goes for Twitter. Although it's hardly a common name, I know of at least one other individual named Keith Heimpel and he might want to brand himself. How dare he!

Once I've got some fiction credits, I'll compete for search rankings with those periodicals where I've been published, then Amazon.com, then reviews, etc. Why not dominate page 1 of Google now, while it's easy? Your readership will then find it easy to connect with you and buy your fiction through your venues.

Writers: You've Got To Start Somewhere... Research Your Market, Enjoy Your Craft, Submit Your Work

It's hard to start isn't it? I'm writing this as much for myself as for any writer out there. Writing is solitary, therefore you should write for yourself.  Do some research, not just on your subject matter, which you already love, but your market. Market research is fun too! Find out what's getting published, then write something you can enjoy spending time with - that you think an agent can sell.

Merging commercial, with artistic goals should be your goal, because writing is hard: it's hard to start and it's really hard to finish.  It's hard to finish something you don't feel passionate about, especially with no deadline. Many people call themselves writers because they started writing - I say that I can call myself a writer because:

1. I'm obsessed.
2. I've finished several short stories.
3. I've submitted those stories I've finished.

If starting is hard, I'd have to say finishing is brutal.  We're perfectionists, yes?  That's good, but you ultimately need to finish.  Orson Scott Card says it best in The Writer's Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy: get a 'wise reader' to review your work, then revise it. Then submit it! Rejection is incentive to get better. Constantly revising is incentive to never submit.