2016 Goals: Pushing Out of My Circle

I also started coloring this past year. I especially love the ones with quotes.
I also started coloring this past year. I especially love the ones with quotes.

At the beginning of this year I challenged myself to break out of my circle, meaning I needed to get myself and my books in front of people I didn’t know. I’m happy to report that since then I’ve added the following experiences to my list:

  • 2 3-Day Conferences (Women’s Expo & Comic Con)
  • 2 Radio Interviews
  • 6Β Guest Blog/Interviews (links here) (Edited to include my guest post on SCBWI Michigan!)
  • 1 article in the local paper
  • 9 Book Signing/Sales Events
  • 1 Book Launch Party
  • 1 Writing Conference
  • 1 National Writing Award (I still can’t believe this)

I have to admit, when I said I’d aim for one new thing per month, I didn’t really know if I could do it. After all, last January I only knew a handful of local authors and while my books were in the local bookstore, not much was happening. The Women’s Expo in March introduced me to a dozen wonderful writers, and the events started rolling in.

But there was still one problem: I heard about these wonderful opportunities from other people. It was all reactionary. Sure, many of them were successful and I’m grateful I was included, but I didn’t seek anything out on my own.

Which leads me to my goal for this year:

To PUSH Out of My Circle

Sounds a little like birth if you ask me, but I need to be proactive. To seek out opportunities and make them happen. And I’ve already started.

  • After a friend sadly passed in October, several of us have stepped up to organize this year’s book booth at the Women’s Expo.
  • I was a little pushy and landed myself an interview on a local radio station.
  • And I entered my first writing contest at the end of last summer (and we now know how THAT turned out!).
  • Next month I’m attending the SCBWI Writing Conference in New York β€” my first major conference. I’m polishing my current wip and may query agents with it in the spring.

Proactive.

(not the acne medicine)

What are your goals for 2016?

4 Comments

  1. And you contributed a guest post to the SCBWI-MI blog!
    http://scbwimithemitten.blogspot.com/2015/08/things-i-learned-while-writing-trilogy.html

    This is really helpful information for you to share – that you had a specific plan to help your book find readers. If you’d like to write about it in a little more detail for the Mitten blog, I’d love to have you back as a guest poster. Although, I think you’d have a good shot at getting an article about this published in the SCBWI Bulletin too. It would also make a great workshop for one of the SCBWI-MI Shop Talk events.

    Great work, Melanie!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.