Writing Advice
Are You Looking For Your Niche?
I ended up with three!
Here’s how I solved the niche problem.
Loving My Writing Career of Essays, Book Reviews, and Tottenville History is in the Modern Women Self-Promotion section, but I believe it to be much more than self-promotion.
Sure, it tells the facts of my writing career and gives access to more about my work.
More importantly, however, it offers you insights from my career that may help in your own writing journey.
What writer hasn’t heard, “Find your niche.?”
Merriam Webster defines niche as
“a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted.”
Looking for that special fit for our writing to not haphazardly try to be everything to everybody, we sometimes find ourselves frustrated.
What is our perfect niche?
I started out as an essay writer, my love of books led me to be a book reviewer, and as an investigative reporter for a local newspaper I discovered my love of the history of Tottenville.
My writing over the years grew an audience for all three.
Some of my audience is exclusive to only one niche, but others of my audience overlap into the other two niches as well.
In learning and practicing the rules of writing I developed my craft enough to discover that I could safely bend the rule of having only one niche.
To do so, however, when I am writing I give my full focus to each niche with a distinct mindset.
- When I’m writing an essay, I’m bringing myself and my life into the topic, sharing my perspectives of the experience to give value to my readers.
- When I’m writing a book review, the critical me comes into play, looking objectively at another author’s work, sharing the strengths and weaknesses to give readers an insight into the book.
- When I’m writing Tottenville History, the historian in me researches and substantiates facts, but then the essayist in me reflects on the facts to make all that research come alive for my readers.
By utilizing separate focus I found my fit in three niches, loving the variety that keeps my writing fresh and relevant in the process.
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