Using All the Tools and Having Fun, Too

Thursday, June 13th, 2019     by Debra DuPree Williams     Start the Conversation

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams
I’m at that point in my writing journey where I must bring all things together and put a brand to me and my writing. It’s called branding yourself. I’ve been to a lot of conferences and I’ve met a lot of authors along the way, and I understand what branding means, but applying it to oneself is a lot more difficult than one would think. 
But the good news? This is the fun part of writing. Don’t get me wrong, I love sitting down and putting words on the page, but I also am a creative person in other ways, and I enjoy those aspects of the writing process that allow me to use all the gifts God so graciously granted to me.
 
I’m no artist. Not a trained one anyway. I’ve been known to dabble in paints or with fabrics to make something lasting and hopefully, beautiful to at least a few.

 

If you are a writer and you haven’t dipped a toe in some of the things at your disposal, you will not believe how much fun this can be. It’s time to bring out some of those tools.
 Your Author Brand

 

Today, I want to share with you a couple of things I’ve done this week. The first one is I purchased a book for my Kindle, but you may purchase the paperback if you prefer. The author is Rayne Hall. I have several of her books on writing. The one I purchased this week was Author Branding. https://www.raynehall.com/  I highly recommend this little book as it is packed with valuable information about how to brand yourself. And that is lesson one. You are branding you, and your work falls under that umbrella. If you read the book, she makes this perfectly clear. The title meme here is one I made while playing around with colors and fonts I may use. I’m still a WIP.

 

Miss Hall goes on to talk of choosing colors or one main color to represent you. It’s about who you are, how you see yourself. She gives a list of archetypes and you choose one of those. Then she has words which represent each of those archetypes. Everything you need, laid out in plain, albeit in some instances, British, English. 

 

Once I had read through the entire book, I made my way back to the beginning and began plotting out my brand. Since this is all new to me, I needed to read everything through once and then go back and dig in for the hard work. But it is actually fun, so don’t be intimidated by doing any of this. You will likely learn things about yourself you never knew, or perhaps suspected but never really said, “Hey, that’s me.” 
One of the Fun Tools

 

Then the fun part begins. I went to Canva for this. I was able to go in and look at color combinations that are seemingly endless. Remember, this color represents you, not what you write. Your writing will just fall into this as this color palette represents who you are, and your writing is from your heart. Though, for instance, if you write sweet romance, you wouldn’t want to choose dark, gloomy colors. It wouldn’t make sense. https://www.canva.com/

 

I spent part of the evening and this morning pouring through color combinations. Canva makes this easy for you by having made countless combinations of many, many color palettes. But under the heading My Brand, you may choose your own colors by using the convenient color wheel provided for you. While in this area, you will also choose a font that you will use on all your social media posts. Author Branding clearly explains these things.

 

I hope you will take the time to explore this book and Canva.But be warned, once you start learning your way around all the things and design ideas available for you there, you may as well consider that a day of necessary work and not a writing day. It’s that addictive. 

 

Y’all go check out Miss Hall’s book and give Canva a go. Even if you are not a writer, but your children must do school projects or you have a business of any kind, Canva is a great place for all manner of things. Go check it out—you’ll be glad you did. While you’re checking out this site, be sure to try PicMonkey, too. You use the one you like the most. https://www.picmonkey.com/

 

 

 

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