I was sitting in a workshop at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, watching Scott Russell Sanders field questions about his career. If you don’t know Scott’s work, he’s written a bunch of books and made his living that way, with a side of teaching thrown in. He’s the kind of writer who teaches you about craft and what it means to be a decent human being in equal measure. This guy had a huge impact on me. (In fact, I wrote about him HERE and HERE.)
I’d been won over by an essay of his years before, one where he described his father’s drinking: “My father drank. He drank as a gut-punched boxer gasps for breath, as a starving dog gobbles food—compulsively, secretly, in pain and trembling.” (You can read the whole essay right HERE) That description resonated with how I experienced my own father’s drinking. Scott’s willingness to tell the truth with love and compassion—something he’d go on to teach me explicitly—made his work unforgettable.
But that day at Bread Loaf, a number of us were curious about something more practical: How the hell did he build an audience for his books before release date?
This was before social media had taken off, when the internet was still finding its footing. Scott explained that back then (think 80s and 90s), you essentially had three choices: Keep your head down and finish your manuscript, banking on the publisher sending you on book tours to make your book a success. Submit standalone pieces of your manuscript to magazines to build awareness and credibility. Or some combination of the two, which usually meant doing neither particularly well.
He was honest about the challenges of that second path. Taking chunks of your manuscript and submitting them to magazines isn’t as easy as it sounds. The key is making those pieces stand alone, which requires a ton of crafting. And the submission process is something of a bear, requiring a lot of time and patience. Time that takes you away from the work at hand—finishing your manuscript.
Banking on luck wasn’t necessarily the way to go, he acknowledged, but if you wanted to finish your manuscript, that was probably the choice to make.
For years, I watched the writers in that room split into camps after that conference. Some took his advice and finished their manuscripts. Others got busy creating blogs, submitting standalone pieces, and building platforms—which was key to getting published—and never finished their manuscripts.
I was one of the latter.
For years, I told myself I was being strategic. I was building my audience. I was establishing my expertise. I was doing what writers “had to do” in that publishing landscape. But the truth was harder to swallow: I’d fallen into the content creation trap, endlessly producing material without ever completing the bigger project I’d set out to accomplish. You know, whah, whah, whah.
Here’s what I’ve learned since then: with the advent of social media and modern publishing, you don’t have to fall in one camp or another. There’s a middle way that doesn’t require you to bank on luck or devote so much time to audience building that you never finish your manuscript.
The secret is treating your book like a building project—hence the title of my upcoming book, Brick by Brick.
Think about how a house gets built. You don’t construct the entire thing in secret and then reveal it to the world. You lay one brick at a time, testing the foundation as you go, making sure each section is sound before moving to the next. Your book should work the same way.
Those self-contained pieces Scott talked about? They’re your bricks. A compelling story that illustrates your main point. A framework that solves a specific problem. A case study that demonstrates your approach. Each piece should be valuable on its own while also serving the larger structure of your book.
But here’s the strategic advantage modern writers have that Scott’s generation didn’t: you can test these bricks with your target audience as you create them. Share that story in a newsletter. Present that framework at a conference. Post that case study on LinkedIn. You’ll discover which content resonates, which needs refinement, and which ideas you should abandon before investing months in a full manuscript.
This isn’t just about building an audience—though that happens. It’s about ensuring your book delivers real value to the people you’re trying to reach.
Throughout Brick by Brick, I’ll show you how to build your platform for your book in a way that supports rather than detracts from your ultimate goal of completing your manuscript. You’ll learn to leverage your book-writing journey to establish expertise, connect with readers, and create anticipation for your finished work—without falling into the endless content creation trap that derailed me and so many other authors.
Because the question Scott answered that day at Bread Loaf? It’s still the right question. But now, finally, we have a better answer.
Brick by Brick releases in November.
