You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
Anne Lamott
Recently I composed a series of articles on author newsletters, which I’ve produced for over 20 years. In the articles, I stressed the importance of connection to our subscribers and readers. As I wrote these pieces, I started to think about our purpose as writers.
Our connection with people has so much to do with our stories, both the themes and how we tell them.
We don’t always personally know our readers, whether for our newsletter or for our books we publish, but we do know they are like us. After all, they read our stories, our adventures we shape and detail onto the page, and they feel a sense of kinship. They perceive we “get” them, in a sense, that we understand them and what they need, and they are more drawn to our work.
Our author newsletter is a mere snapshot of us—our brand and our work. It is a golden opportunity to open conversations with our fans. But we want to take them even further.
Writing is a giving occupation
As we outline our stories, create our characters, and place them in a space of reflection and action, our objective is for a suitable outcome. We get to shape that. We, as writers, get to choose the decisions our characters make, and where they will end up. And then we put those stories into the world in the hopes our readers will feel as we do, whether that is incredible joy and satisfaction, or closure and a deeper understanding of life. The role we have is to entertain with our prose, and readers seek us out.
When you think about it, our desire to share our stories and writing is truly a giving occupation. We are not out for glory or prestige. And just as we learn from and about others through their work, our readers do the same with us.
Connecting with others in this way is a pretty cool job when you think about it. As Margaret Atwood said, “A word after a word after a word is power.” Did you ever think of yourself as a superhero? Well, you are. You and your ideas, your articulated sentences, and your pen (or computer).
To this day, there are many stories that I remember well and still resonate with me. “Anne of Green Gables,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Vanity Fair,” “All Creatures Great and Small,” “The Secret Life of Bees,” “The Forgotten Garden,” “Pride and Prejudice.” I could absolutely go on.
But the point is we, too, are in the fantastic place of crafting stories that will resonate with our readers. You should be proud of what you do.
I know I am.
A word after a word after a word is power.
Margaret Atwood
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