You just have to rethink how you go about it.

Just follow these steps. 

1. Shop Around

The best place to start for a great newsletter is by knowing, in general, what you love in a newsletter. So for a couple weeks, go ahead and sign up for every single email newsletter you come across. Other authors, news outlets, experts, shopping websites, everything. 

Then, watch it all come in. What trends do you see? How are different people and companies going about their emails differently? What kinds of layouts catch your eye? Take it all in, and question every piece of it. 

And more than anything else, pay attention to what you enjoy. For some, it might be the top quality curated links a certain person has an uncanny knack for pulling together on a theme. Or, maybe it’s the simple elegance of ample white space. Maybe it’s the digestible quick hit of a top 5 list, or the satisfying deep dive into a topic you’re passionate about. 

There’s no right or wrong answer here, just note your observations. 

2. Create Your Own Template

This is where it starts to get fun: Consider the notes you took in step one as you took in all different kinds of newsletters. 

• If a snarky headline enticed you to open an email right away, find ways to add your own humor into the subject lines. 
• If a picture of an author’s dog gave you the warm fuzzies, your cat might do the same for your subscribers. 
• If you lost yourself in the latest updates about an author’s creative process, find ways to give your own subscribers a glimpse into how you work. 

Don’t think in terms of topics, here — think in terms of sections, pieces you can offer a variation on every time. Then stack them together, keeping an eye out for balance between meatier content that will offer readers a bit of depth and smaller bites that will give snackable satisfaction. 

And of course, don’t forget your goal is to keep in touch with readers who will want your books. As long as you have reasonable tie-in to what you write about in some way, you’re golden. 

3. Commit to a Schedule

Now that you know what combination of content is going to keep you excited to write a newsletter, it’s time to figure out your schedule. 

How frequently can you create the content in the template you created, at top quality? 

Once a month? Once a week? Once a quarter? There’s really no right or wrong to this, just find a workflow that’s a reasonable commitment. (Okay, if you can’t  commit to once every three months with confidence, reassess what you’re including in your newsletter and make it less demanding to create —that’s a bare minimum frequency).

And hey, no pressure. If you commit to a frequency that later proves overly ambitious, you have the power to change it. You’re the boss of this little publication, after all. 

4. Promote 

While there’s nothing wrong with slow, steady growth, a newsletter is undeniably more fun when you have an audience to address. Which means you need to invite people to subscribe. 

Start by creating a snappy description of what readers can expect from your newsletter. This works best when it’s specific, short and matches the tone of the newsletter itself. 

Then, drop that thing everywhere you can–your website, your social media profiles, your email signature, swag, everything. Your fans will be sure to catch on!

Have Fun with Your Newsletter

Newsletters are an amazing way to stay in touch with readers, share more of yourself and your work, and stay in touch between new releases. So don’t let the idea of a newsletter intimidate or frustrate you–choose to include content that you’ll enjoy creating and sharing with your fans. 

Over time, you can learn more about what your readers love by monitoring your engagement analytics and hone it even further if you need to. But by starting with a formula of content you know you’ll love creating, you’re much more likely to stick with it. Odds are, that enthusiasm will be contagious, and your subscribers will have more fun, too. 

By day, E. J. Wenstrom is a content marketing and public relations expert. By early early morning, she’s the award-winning author of the Chronicles of the Third Realm War series. Join her email list for bookish news and a free download of the TRW series prequel RAIN at www.ejwenstrom.com.

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Writing Fanfiction Helps You Follow Your Passion

I personally find writing fanfiction to be the perfect remedy for beating burnout, because you can focus on your passions. Writing fanfiction requires the writer to engage with their fandoms and, therefore, likely sources of inspiration to reignite their love of the medium. If not for a love of writing itself, it can provide something valuable to anyone: an escape. 

Writing Fanfiction Lets You Experiment

Fanfiction is the ultimate sandbox medium because you enter with all the sand you could possibly want to play with. You can comfortably borrow the rules of a world, a character, or a trope to play around and see what works. 

This isn’t just about experimenting with content (though, seriously, who hasn’t reimagined the Star Trek heroes as werewolves meeting in a space coffeeshop?) One of my favorite fics of all time showed the life of a beloved character through the perspective of his sweater. Drabbles and vignettes offered tiny slices of life that could be combined to hint at without ever directly seeing the larger picture. It’s also about experimenting with form and perspective. If you want to play with a different genre or length of story, fanfiction is a fun place to find out if it works for you. 

For this reason, fanfiction isn’t just the place to write out fantasies for your favorite fictional world. It’s the place where you can play with fiction and, if it doesn’t work, you can just try again next week. 

You Can Develop Your Personal Style

Writing fanfiction can also teach you more about yourself as an author. You’ll be working with characters you already know with established personality traits. So how do you, as a writer, show this? What differentiates you from other fanfiction authors? The more relaxed you are, the more you’ll write. The more you write, the easier it will be to discover what comes naturally to you and what you might need to work on a little more. 

Maybe you’re a first person writer. Maybe you’re third. Maybe you favor singular points of view. Maybe you jump around. Maybe it varies based on the story. There’s a great way to find out.

You Can Use Fanfiction as a Practical Classroom

Writing fanfiction is, to a degree, an interactive activity. Most people write it and post it online, which means encountering an audience. This can be terrifying, but it’s also a great way to acclimate to feedback. What do people respond to in your writing? What earns reviews and what doesn’t? Over time, it can also teach you to differentiate between helpful and unhelpful feedback. 

It’s also a great way to learn what people respond to in your writing. Writer are their own worst enemies. We’re often hardest on ourselves. Maybe a reader won’t review. Maybe they won’t like the story. Or maybe, just maybe, they’ll think it was so much better than we imagined.

It’s Low Stakes & Low Pressure

I don’t mean to say there is no pressure involved in fanfiction. If you become heavily involved in the community, there can certainly be an expectation to produce certain content in a certain time frame by readers who might be no kinder to you than to a published author. But here’s the most magical thing:

You are the only person you have to write for. 

Fanfiction has no financial incentive, so there is nothing forcing you to write or continue with something you no longer love. There is nothing stopping you from branching out or trying something new, from getting experimental or indulging in a beloved trope or cliché. 

If you tire of a fandom or discover a new passion, there’s no requirement for you to stay. In the end, we’re all storytellers. Why not indulge in a storytelling medium for which the reward is, ultimately, the story you tell?

CM McGuire is a born-and-raised Texan, where she still lives near family and with her two cats (aka the needy terrors who prevent her from working at home).

CM started writing at a young age, much to the relief of her mother, whose ears needed a break from her nonstop stories. It was her passion for stories that led her to pursuing a major in history, minors in theater, and anthropology, and onto her current masters in Creative Writing. It also led her to her membership in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. 

The post #5onFri: Five Reasons for Writing Fanfiction appeared first on DIY MFA.