Resonating with your Readers…

Note to readers: Originally posted on Lisa Orchard’s blog.

If you write it, readers will come. Or so you thought. But what if your readers don’t come? Worse yet, what if they can’t find you in an ocean of authors begging and bartering for attention? Writing is hard work. The business of writing is even harder work. So how DO you RESONATE with your READERS? I think the key here is that you have to RESONATE with YOURSELF first. Think the Law of Attraction: like attracts like, and you’ll know what I mean. You attract what you want (or don’t want) through your thoughts and feelings to create your life circumstances.

Let’s start by defining the word resonate:

Resonate: to be resonant; resound. To produce resonance.

Hmmm…let’s look up resonant and resonance:

Resonant: resounding or reechoing. Increasing the intensity of sounds by sympathetic vibration. Full of, characterized by, or intensified by resonance.

Okay, then. Sit tight. I narrowed down the next definition to reflect this post specifically for writers:

Resonance: an underlying or pervasive quality or a particular type, especially in a work of art or literature.

And just for fun, here’s what my thesaurus says about the verb resonate: echo, reverberate, resound, ring, vibrate, boom, have far-reaching effects, impact, have deep consequences.

 

Now we’re getting somewhere! In order for authors to build a readership, they have to LOVE what they write. They have to be passionate about what they’re writing. Don’t do it for the money, that affair won’t last. You’ll run out of steam before you even get out of the station. Remember Amanda Hocking? She was deemed an overnight success with her paranormal romance books. Um. Yeah. No such thing as an overnight success. That girl had a tough day job, then came home, did what she loved to do (wrote and published books), and sold over a million copies of her ebooks. Amanda is considered one of the exemplars of self-publishing success in the digital age. Her books also resonated with readers because of the genre made popular by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight explosion. Boom!

Here’s the BIG question: Who are you writing for? If you answered ‘ME’, that’s a step in the right direction to create resonance with readers. Write what you want to read, what makes your heart sing and vibrate (resonate) to a different beat. There’s an old saying, ‘Do what you love and the money will come.’ It certainly came for Amanda Hocking. And it will come for you too. As long as you permeate the publishing world with books written from your heart.

What genre do you love to read? Are you writing what you love? Or are you writing what’s popular or trending at the moment? Would love to read your comments! Cheers!