Writing “to Brand”

In a couple of weeks on NovelMatters  (a website where I and other Christian novelists share insights) I will be introducing a discussion on branding — the concept of making oneself unique and identifiable because of his or writing style, genre, or subject matter. Specifically, I'll be sharing how to write what is called a branding statement.  Mine appears of course on the landing page of Latayne.com.

However, underlying the concept of branding is an assumption about writing. Branding assumes that a writer's work will have some of the same identifiable characteristics of previous works. 

Branding also assumes that expectations raised in the reader of an author's first work — To Kill a Mockingbird, for Harper Lee, for example — will be met and perhaps even expanded in a second work. That would be what we would call, “writing to your brand.”

Not all of us (whether to our good or bad) have written to brand. I remember writing the first edition of The Mormon Mirage and when asked for a followup, I truthfully said I had written everything I knew about my experiences in Mormonism in it. (Not until years later when a publisher asked me to write a book chronicling the experiences of other ex-Mormons did I return to that subject, and then with great reluctance.)

In the interim, I wrote what I had passion and conviction to write: a book about hospitality in the Bible, one about the elements of love in 1 Corinthians 13, one about the stewardship of time, talents and possessions, one about crisis (our daughter's eosinophilic skull tumor and later closed head concussion), and poems and articles. Looking back, I probably did not meet the expectations of those who had high praise for the uniqueness of The Mormon Mirage. I certainly did not write to brand. Even after writing three subsequent books about Mormonism and cults, I wrote a children's book, a book about Bible marriage customs, one about Rahab.

But even so, all of those (with the exception of the children's books) were heavily-documented non fiction. Now I've gone and done it again — written a novel and started another.

So I'm not a one-hit wonder. But I deal with the fear of many others who write in various genres and styles: Is only one of my books a wonder? Are any of them?

The answer for me lies not in sales figures. It lies in a series of thick folders from people who have written me over the years and said that God used my writing to help — and in many cases, change– their lives.

I doubt that my agent (had she been my agent, those years ago) would have advised me to take the track I took. But I would want to believe, have staked my professional career on this hope, one I urge other beginning writers to consider: that I have indeed written to the expectations of the reader. 

One Reader, in fact. He's the wonder, the One I want to shine, the brand I want to have.