Day 21 - Looking Forward

One of the things I love most about being an author is the ability to use that gift to help others. I have put on two different charity events while promoting my work. While the energy expended is incalculable and the frustrations can and often do lead to periodic breakdowns it is worth it in the end. In fact the success of the For The Love Of Books event that I and my partner put on this past February has pushed us to do another one next year. We will be sticking with the same name but this year we are moving to a literary charity and cannot wait to have a focused theme.

The multi-author For The Love Of Books 2017 worked with a veteran charity. There were flyers and social media ads promoting the event. We had a great group of authors come out covering a number of genres and were able to raise our goal financially while exceeding our goal of donated items by almost three hundred percent. one of the biggest successes for me personally came when one of the attending authors said they would love to be a part of any event we put on. It meant they were happy with the outcome and gave confidence to us moving ahead for the next one.

There are a number of aspects to work on when doing an event like that. Advertising, recruitment, and of course things to help raise money and draw people in are major priorities. There is one part that most people overlook and that is the amount of time it takes to put something like this together. We only had six weeks from beginning of planing to the day of the event. This year we will have closer to ten months. We are already making lists of things to and going over items from this year we would like to change for next year. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done but we are capable and with each other's support plus the help of our fellow authors I am positive we can make each event bigger and more successful for the very deserving charities we work with.

Knowing the concerns we faced this year I am glad we have so much more time to plan for the next go round. I am equally grateful for the support of our friends to come out and make what we do matter. We love being authors, it affords us the unique ability to make money and make a difference using the knowledge and creativity in our hearts and minds. We are fortunate enough to love what we do so we give back by using what we love to help others that aren't quite as fortunate. I am looking forward to sharing details as the plans for next year begin to come together.