Today’s New Writers installation is a Q&A with Robert Brewer. I became familiar with how well Brewer helps writers network by following #MNINB and through his 2012 platform challenge.

Brewer is Senior Content Editor for the Writer’s Digest Writing Community. In addition to editing books and writing a poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine, he blogs about poetry, freelancing, and living a successful life. Here he discusses balancing a heavy workload and a big family, author platforms, developing writer networks, and freelancing.

Photo courtesy of Robert Brewer

You’re exceptionally busy yet you manage to pull off all your efforts with aplomb. Some of your posts have mentioned how all of this has affected your health. How have you learned to balance it all?

The one thing I’ve learned is that I can’t do everything I want. So I’m constantly breaking down tasks into To-Do lists on a grand scale and by day—and I’m always evaluating whether my workload is feasible. As soon as I notice projects getting off track, I decide whether I need to change how I’m doing things or if I need to remove tasks. After my health scare a few years back, I realized my health needs to come first. Then, my family. After that, I prioritize work, writing, hobbies, etc.

How do platform challenges benefit writers?

I hope it benefits writers by making it easy for them to understand ways to improve their platforms as writers and professionals. The challenge itself is a starting place to give writers specific tasks and inspiration to build their connections and then take it to a new level. Building a platform helps writers get books published, secure speaking opportunities, pitch articles, and more. It’s really about career building that can go well beyond writing.

What the heck is an author’s platform? For instance, my WIP deals with spanning the globe as an architecture writer. My work has published in many countries. It’s never been in The New York Times or New Letters, though. Assuming I’m not the next great voice in nonfiction/memoir/travel, how likely is it that I find a publisher as reputable as the publications I just mentioned?

Platform is the reach authors have to their target audience. For architecture, this might include a blog dedicated to architecture that gets 5,000 unique visitors a month, or a newsletter (print or electronic) that’s distributed to 500 subscribers a month. It might include publication credits in architecture magazines, journals, websites. Awards related to the field or covering the field. Speaking gigs to architects—or people interested in architecture. Basically, platform tries to quantify how many potential book buyers an author can reach once the book is published.

What the best advice ever given to you about writing?

The best advice ever given to me was by a college advisor who only met with me once, but he stressed the importance of picking a name (in my case, Robert Lee Brewer) and consistently using it from that point forward. I know it’s not craft advice, but I think it was important for me (someone who had several nicknames growing up) to choose the name of my brand as a writer.

How did it work out for you?

It’s worked out great. My blog is at robertleebrewer.blogspot.com (and is even titled My Name Is Not Bob); my Twitter handle is @robertleebrewer; and I can be found on Facebook as Robert Lee Brewer. Really, it’s the “Lee” that sets me apart from so many other Robert Brewers—some of whom publish poetry like myself.

What literary technique do you strive to improve?

I’m always trying to learn and improve in every phase of my writing life, whether that’s time management or slicing adverbs from poems. Additionally, I love experimenting with new techniques and forms, because they give me a new lens to view my other writing.

To what blog would you direct people who want to improve their freelance writing? For instance, in our efforts to make our WIP more marketable/build our author platform, many of us submit to high caliber journalistic publications. I, for one, have hit a wall there.

Besides the blogs at WritersMarket.com and WritersDigest.com, I would actually suggest Carol Tice’s Make a Living Writing blog. She’s really in tune to what’s happening for freelancers in today’s environment.

Named the Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere in 2010, Brewer’s first full-length poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems, will be published by Press 53 later this year. He’s married to the poet Tammy Foster Brewer, who helps him keep track of their five kids (four boys, one girl).

View previous NW columns with novelist Rebecca Kanner and short story writer Doug Silver.