We caught up with the brilliant and insightful C.W. Allen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
C.W., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear you experience with and lessons learned from recruiting and team building.
The League of Utah Writers has been supporting the arts community since 1935. We’re a nonprofit run entirely by volunteers, which creates some interesting dynamics for recruiting—candidates need to have the skillset and experience to represent a longstanding and respected organization, but the altruism and schedule flexibility to do so without a paycheck.
When I joined the executive team I felt that I was standing on the shoulders of giants. Attempting to create such a vibrant and multifaceted community from scratch would have been daunting at best (and in reality, frankly impossible) but since there was a fantastic team already in place the ongoing maintenance to keep things running smoothly felt much more doable. Since our volunteers are devoting so much of their time to this goal, many of them can only sign on for a year at a time before stepping back to focus on work, family, or their writing. This means we are always in recruiting mode, since the natural leadership flow in various committees means there are always a couple of open positions.
It has been interesting to learn that the best recruits are not always the first to volunteer, nor are they always the most experienced. The skills I prize most in searching for new talent are professional communication skills, emotional intelligence, and willingness to operate as a team member. Software programs and organizational policies can be taught, but even the most motivated volunteer won’t work out if they lack the ability to operate smoothly within their team. The most effective strategy I have found for recruiting stellar team members has been to notice people’s strengths and interests and invite them to consider a position they seem like a good fit for. Often, those who are best suited to a position tell me they would not have decided to apply for it without that vote of confidence.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
First and foremost, I’m a writer. I like to quip that I write long stories for children and short stories for former children. That means I wrote a series of novels for kids ages nine to thirteen, and a bunch of my short stories appear in books that collect work from multiple authors around a common theme. My work is multi-award-winning and published around the world. I feel so lucky to have eager readers who want to come on imaginary adventures with me.
Writing is a largely solitary pursuit, so the support and camaraderie of other writers is absolutely essential to fuel the long hours it takes to polish a story. When I moved from Utah from the Midwest five years ago, I immediately joined the League of Utah Writers. And since I had settled in a rural community hours away from any of the League’s existing chapters, I had to start one of my own. I still serve as the president of the West Desert Wordsmiths chapter, but over time I collected even more “hats” within the organization, serving as the state board’s newsletter editor, on the masthead of their literary journal, and now as their President-Elect.
I love the League’s unique board structure. The President, Past President, and President-Elect all work together simultaneously to make sure the organization has a firm footing in established best practices and an eye on future continuity, rather than making major course adjustments each time one President completes their term and the next one takes office.
Both my personal writing career and my post with the League have led to lots of opportunities for public speaking, which I was surprised to learn I absolutely love! I know for many people public speaking is the stuff of nightmares, but personally I find speaking on a topic I’m excited about and had plenty of time to prepare in advance much more comfortable than on-the-spot small talk. I am a frequent guest teacher at writing conferences, giving presentations on the technical aspects of writing, and occasionally I get the chance to speak to elementary and middle school students about all the fun stuff I learned from the research it takes to write a book, like the history of secret codes.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The principle that guides all my writing is that I want to tell “stories where kids succeed BECAUSE they’re kids, not in spite of it.” In essence, I want to celebrate what’s special about being a kid. The characters in my books face their challenges by coming up with solutions an adult would never think of or wouldn’t be able to pull off. For example, all the grownups overlook the secret codes posted all over town because they’re disguised as nursery rhymes – since nursery rhymes are for children, they are dismissed as unimportant. With the help of a rogue grandma, they discover that kids make ideal secret agents because they’re consistently overlooked and underestimated.
I find that a lot of popular media – cartoons especially – only manage to let kids win by making all the adults around them unbearable idiots. I wanted to find a better way to craft a kid-centered story where the characters succeed because of the qualities that make a child’s perspective unique rather than lowering the bar for success.
Of course, it’s not all about the drama of solving mysteries and saving the day. I want readers to have fun, too! The magic of writing is that you get to tell precisely the kind of story you want to read, and that’s exactly what I strive for: writing a book that twelve-year-old me wouldn’t be able to put down. So, of course, I had to sprinkle in a dog sidekick, floating hovercraft, shapeshifting swords, secret hideouts full of spies, a flock of dodos, a couple of robot stampedes, and a castle with secret passages hidden behind the paintings.
My stories for adults encourage readers to rediscover the way they viewed the world as kids, even though the banality of their daily routines has worn off some of the shine. Is that an ordinary rabbit scurrying through the sagebrush, or could it be a killer jackalope? How might social media companies be tempted to use our data two hundred years from now? What if all the senior citizens in town expressed dissatisfaction with the status quo by going on a crime spree? How did the Utah Monolith get into the Moab desert? (Hint: it’s not aliens). The situations might be unrealistic, but the ideas explored along the way still feel familiar, like the struggle of balancing your boss’s goals and expectations with your morals or finding a way to relate to a child or grandchild when you feel like you don’t have anything in common.
Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?
When my first novel was published, the most common advice for debut authors was that you had to be active on social media to connect with readers. In practice, I have found that social media is actually better for connecting with colleagues in the publishing industry. Social media posts are at the whim of shifting algorithms, so only a tiny fraction of my followers will ever see something I post, let alone new contacts to expand my reach. The best way I have found to stay in touch with my readers is through an email newsletter. This is also true for my work with the League, where our newsletters are more about connecting writers with publishing opportunities or community events than selling a product. There are no algorithms to feed or strategies to game the system—subscribers will see my message whenever they happen to check their email next.
When I meet readers at book signings and writing conferences, I keep a printed QR code on my table with a link to my newsletter signup so it’s easy to subscribe on the spot. The software is set to automatically email new subscribers a free short story, so they’re getting immediate results and a positive interaction while waiting for the next regular edition to go out.
A book can take several years to go from first draft to bookstore shelves, and nobody likes constantly being marketed to anyway, so it’s important to keep reaching out to readers even when I don’t have a new book to promote. I foster a more personal connection with my readers by sending an update every month or so talking about what I’m working on, things I enjoy watching and reading, and my hobbies outside of writing. It’s more like having a pen pal than suffering through a sales pitch. I also use that space to boost the work of my colleagues, if it’s in a similar demographic to my readers, so I can foster relationships with other writers and give back to my professional community. Publishing isn’t a zero-sum game; readers are always looking for more great stories, and promoting reading in general creates a “rising tides lift all boats” atmosphere.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cwallenbooks.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cwallenbooks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/LeagueofUtahWriters/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwallenbooks
- Other: Newsletter signup: https://www.cwallenbooks.com/contact
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2983485.C_W_Allen
Non-book merchandise: https://www.teepublic.com/user/cwallen
The League of Utah Writers homepage: https://www.leagueofutahwriters.com/