This week we read a blog post entitled 10 Things I Do Every Work Day. There is nothing in the author’s list that is earth-shattering or life altering, she just makes a point to complete these 10 things every day. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t, but it always remains a constant to do those 10 things, and those 10 tasks are what help keep the author successful.

In honor of habits and the spirit of getting things completed, we took our inspiration from this post and came up with: 10 Things to do Every Week (because while it would be nice to do them every day, we realize most independent authors write as a hobby or side project). So print them out if you have to and put them somewhere where you will pay attention to them in order to achieve those writing goals.

Be like Santa! Make a list, check it twice.

10 Things to do Every Writing Week as inspired by the aforementioned blog post:

1. Read something related to my genre – whether it’s industry news or another author’s work, know what’s going on in the space where you’re writing.
2. Read something related to writing skill development – the resources to hone your writing skills are endless. Sites like Daily Writing Tips and The Write Practice are reputable places to start.
3. Send out two tweets of meaning to try to connect with potential readership  – Send out two tweets to connect with your potential readers. Don’t know who they are? Searching “#insertsomethingrelatedtoyourbookhere” on Twitter is usually a good place to start. You’d be surprised what people are hashtagging these days.
4. Respond to two social media posts related to your work in any capacity – Join the conversation, this is nothing new, but consistency is key!
5. Complete a word count target – Writers love to set word count target goals, but if we’re being honest, how often do we really reach them? Let’s just try lowering our word count and just focusing on achieving the goal for a few weeks.
6. Have a short non-writing related conversation with a family member or friend. Always chatting up friends to read your latest piece, or always talking about that character your researching? Put it on pause for a minute and ask how your family and friend are doing.
7. Identify the top goal for the week for my book, and two other goals that will be coming up in the near future.
8. Identify and execute three tasks that may be involved in achieving that one goal.
9. Post five valuable pieces of content on all of your major social media accounts.
10. Take five full minutes to appreciate what you’ve already accomplished and how far you’ve come.

Happy Reading and Writing!

Did you know that April is national poetry month? Not only does William Shakespeare celebrate his approximate birthday this month (April 23 a.k.a. talk like Shakespeare day), but poetry lovers around the world take time to celebrate and honor the form of literature that impacts our lives in such significant ways. From the poems we’re introduced to in school, to the ones that we seek out that speak to us, to the ones that others write for us or we write ourselves poetry touches us all.

Now that you know it is National Poetry Month, what are you going to do to celebrate? Poets.org provides 30 ways to celebrate national poetry month, which you should definitely check out if you want to have something poetry related for every day of the month; however, here are our three simple suggestions on ways to celebrate:

• Read poetry – Not only are there great classic poets to explore from E.E.  Cummings to Allen Ginsberg, to Maya Angelou, but there are so many undiscovered poets out there that may speak to you as well. Explore the social networks and blogosphere, and find an undiscovered poet who speaks to you. Check out some of the collections of poetry on Kbuuk. Maybe even reach out to them. Poetry is powerful like that. Someone can make your day, and you can make his or hers.

• Memorize a poem – In high school I had to memorize Poe’s “The Raven”, it’s been a while since I’ve memorized anything else. I’ll probably spring for a Whitman this time around, maybe a Lord Byron. The trick is to choose a poem that really resonates with you, something applicable to your life that connects you to a collective human experience.

• Publish poetry – Lastly we’d love to invite all of the poets or aspiring poets to publish their work on Kbuuk during April and any month for that matter, but especially this month. We’ll be publishing our own sonnet project in the upcoming weeks in both ebook and audiobook format. Be sure to check back soon to enjoy what we’ve deemed as Twittertry an ebook compilation of some of the sonnets that have appeared on Pentametron.

So go out and enjoy National Poetry Month starting today!

No, Happy Birthday to you, Dr. Seuss!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss – Oh, The Places He’s Been

The very first book I learned to read was Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? That is a lie. The very first book I memorized and recited as if reading was Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? My babysitter sat astonished, mouth agape when, at three years old, I read her my beloved book while sitting in her lap in a rocking chair. “The child’s a genius!” she exclaimed, only to be let down gently when my mother explained that I’d been memorizing that book my entire three-year life. Regardless, I’ll always be indebted to the Doctor for helping me score those few precious moments of someone thinking me a prodigy.

Fifteen years later, one week before graduating high school, he showed up again. During one of our senior banquets, as we all prepared to graduate and start college, an English teacher stood on stage and read us Oh, the Places You’ll Go. We’d been listless during the other speeches, but once we heard the first words, and imagined the brains in our heads and shoes in our feet, we sat captivated, just as that babysitter had done over a decade prior.

Upon graduating college I began working as a reading and writing tutor for elementary school children. Hour after hour I practiced the dreaded “th” sound with my kids. “Tongue under the teeth! Like this – th,” I said, blowing air through my front teeth. Most of them finally caught on, and we were able to properly read about Thing 1 and Thing 2.

And after I got married and moved to Houston, lo and behold if I didn’t I bump into Mr. Seuss again while I sat on a blanket with my new husband and watched an outdoor theatre performance of Horton Hears a Who.

All this to say, Happy Birthweek, Dr. Suess! Love, a lifelong reader.

Two Types of Christian Literature I Enjoy

Image courtesy of the Patron of the Arts Facebook page

If you read my last post about Christian fiction, you know I’m a big fat snob and dislike most of it. However, my gripes are generally against that certain type of Christian lit: the type with hidden agendas, flowery titles and miscarriages (so many miscarriages in Christian books!). There are other types, however, that I’m all over. Well, two to be exact…

Type 1: Christian almost murdered while defending faith and lives to tell about it. I read one of these before heading to Rwanda last year. Left to Tell is the story of Immaculée Ilibagiza, a Rwandan-born Christian who survived the 1994 genocide by hiding in a bathroom with seven other women for 91 days and praying like nobody’s business. Say wha? Another treasure, which you likely read in high school – The Hiding Place. It’s one thing to survive a Holocaust, it’s another to nearly die in a concentration camp while thanking God for everything, even the lice crawling over your body. I’m telling you, Christians can be kick-butt tough. And I for one enjoy reading about them.

Type 2: Anything by C.S. Lewis – I loved The Chronicles of Narnia before I even became a Christian. Come on – you can’t tell me Aslan isn’t the coolest superhero ever to die and come back to life. And then there’s The Screwtape Letters. This book is a compilation of correspondence between a demon on earth to his mentor down below. Crazy-smart writing, shockingly accurate depiction of the struggles of Christianity. (And super-snappy character names like Wormwood.)

You know why I enjoy these books? Nobody is hiding their agenda in the disguise of a bunch of ladies playing bridge. Nope. Aslan obviously represents Jesus, and Corrie Ten Boom really does love the Lord above. No sneaky prose to secretly convert us, just good stories to convey what life is like believing the Gospel. I’ll take two.

Word Matters

Remember on Friends when Rachael wrote Ross a twelve-page letter requesting he take responsibility for everything wrong in their relationship? It resulted in an explosive fight in which Ross screamed, “’You ARE’ is spelled Y-O-U-APOSTROPHE!-R-E!” There you have it. Good writing matters. This isn’t an original thought on my part though (“No?” you ask in disbelief). Nope. Seems others, in particular Kathleen Taylor, who wrote this article titled “Why Good Writing Matters” have the same opinion.

As I read Taylor’s article, outlining the fallacies concerning fuzzy, ambiguous wording and how it impacts everything from science to politics to the bedroom, I grew more and more impassioned and self-righteous, thinking my own writing and word use entirely accurate. Once when I was five, a neighbor asked me, “Do you not want to go with us to the store?” as she stood outside her station wagon. I thought for half a second and replied, “No,” meaning I did want to go to the store. The neighbor then haughtily drove away with me yelling, “I said I didn’t want to NOT go!” after her. Even then, I was passionate about correct wording in daily conversations.

Alas, I should simmer down. Even on this blog I’ve make glaring errors that Heather, Kbuuk’s marketing director, has graciously corrected (think adverse vs. averse – they sound so much alike, yet unlike I’d hoped, cannot be used interchangeably). But while I admit my own writing suffers greatly, I still love a good talkin’-to from experienced writers to those who lack the same wordy smarts. Quips like this line: “And a skilful writer has more armour against the linguistic trickery of others, another reason for learning to write well.” Yes! I love what we can achieve with words.

While I go call that old neighbor to explain myself and find out how the trip to the store went, you all start achieving your own great accomplishments with words, which can be published right here at Kbuuk.

Oscar Nominations and My High Horse

Photo from the official Oscars G+ profile

Any time Hollywood turns a book I’ve read into a movie, I fight a strong desire to show up at the movie theater and shout – “I’ve read this! You have no right watching this movie! It was mine first!” I’d say that’s a mark of a good book though – if readers want to claim it as their own, something nobody else can have, much in the way we claim our animals. “This cat, mine. That book, mine.”

It started with The Outsiders for me. I felt like the book and movie were my personal possessions, and if anyone else mentioned them I was sure to counter – “Yeah but I read the book AND own the VCR tape.”

As I view the list of Oscar Nominees this week, I’m fighting the urge all over again. The Hobbit is up for Best Visual Effects. I’m tempted to hire a limousine to drop me off on the red carpet so I can announce that I read this book before the previews even came out, “So all you actors and actresses can go home now, okay?” But then I see Anna Karenina is up for Best Production Design. I’ll dismount my high horse now – I never finished Anna Karenina. But there are plenty of other movies based on books to go around. I mean, have you seen the list this year? It’s like a library! Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook – I’m telling you – authors rock! I can just imagine waves of readers across the county lifting their noses high in a “Oh, you all are just hearing about Lincoln? Too bad I read all about him like seven years ago” kind of way.

While I go try on gowns to wear to the Awards, you all get to writing so that we’ll all have something to read (and watch) in the years to come.

While conferences are a great place to meet industry professionals, network, and get your name into the community, they can become a costly undertaking. If your a self-publishing author or small publisher, and you don’t have all of that money (these conferences cost in the $1000s to attend, but thankfully much of their content can be obtained online via streaming or afterwards for free). However if you’re still looking for answers on this tricky business of publishing, you’ve come to the right place.

We asked Christina to peruse some of the topics being discussed at TOCCON because we knew these are the very same issues we’re tackling at here at Kbuuk. One of the topics we decided on was “Service Changes Everything,” delivered by Søren Peter Sørensen of Systime, a Dutch company, and the following was her unique response to the topic.

Q and A and How You’re Going to Buy Me a Chandelier

Did anybody go to the Tools of Change for Publishing conference? Yeah, me neither. But listen, you don’t even have to go! Allow me to answer all of your publishing questions in one sitting, dear Kbuukers. Then, kindly send me the cash you would’ve spent on that conference because I’m shopping for a new chandelier.

First, allow me to present you with the answer to every question the audience is going to pose at the conference: Kbuuk’s Publishing App Store. So you can all put your hands down now.

The questions:

Q: How does the role of the author change in service publishing?

A: You get to stop acting like a dang fool badgering your mailman every day about whether or not he’s delivering a rejection letter to your box. Instead, publish your work, and use all Kbuuk’s handy tools to make it cooler.

Q: So what is the author responsible for?

A: How about just writing the books? I’m thinking authors should focus on writing, not begging. Writing. And you know what Kbuuk will do, do ya? Everything else. You want Kbuuk to design an in-your-face cover for the book you’ve written? Done. Don’t want to fool with a tape recorder and microphone? Kbuuk can create an audio book for you. Need help pushing that novel out to the masses. On it.

Q: What can the publisher do to help out authors?

A: Provide clever means to enhance your readership. Like this one, where Kbuuk supplies you with your very own QR code that will link to your book, your author profile page, or anything else you’d like. Then slap that bad boy onto a postcard, and you’ve got yet another way to share your words with the world.

Alright, readers. You start perusing the app store, and I’m off to pick out my chandelier.

Writing About Relationships…Zzzzz

If you’ve read any of my other posts, you know by now that I’ve plenty of literary pet peeves. I know, who am I to tell writers what to do? Ah, I’m a reader, that’s who I am. And that’s why I get to bash a story this girl with whom I went to college wrote. (In fairness, my own stories were quite bad as well.)

It was in a creative writing class. One particular student always showed up with stickers on her face and hot pants on her bottom half. One day she turned in such a detailed, tedious romance story that it was obvious the whole thing was absolutely. . . true. And this chick didn’t want to embellish a bit. Want to make us like your characters? Nope. Make us care if they end up together? Nuh uh. How about a conflict other than they guy just stopped calling? Nah.  It included all the nuances of any university fling – one night stands and “I can’t believe he didn’t call” and gossiping to roommates about whether or not they should be together and monotonous conversations with her lover about “But you said last night that you wanted to be together and now you’re doing this?” When the time came to discuss her story, a thoughtful classmate asked, “Is this true?”

“Oh yeah,” she proudly told us. Yeah, that’s why it was so boring. Listen, I know real life romance can be way better than fiction much of the time (think I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree, by Laura Hillman), but in the event that it’s not, l think we should keep those romances between us and our diaries. That, or write a fiction piece and embellish the heck out of that boring old romance.

So let’s start writing some crafty prose about deep relationships with quirky twists and turns, and allow Kbuuk to take care of the boring parts, of publishing that is.

What do you do when a mysterious meteorite come hurtling towards Earth in the early morning hours over the Ural Mountains?

First, you pray, wish, hope (pick your verb) that the residents of the affected areas are OK. That the 1000+ individuals seeking medical attention are doing so for the treatment of minor injuries like cuts and scrapes from all that exploded glass. My heart sincerely goes out to all of the families affected by this event, physically, emotionally, and economically. But the second impulsive reaction, especially if you are a mystery or thriller writer, should be to let your inner writer’s imagination run wild and go with it. Use this event as fodder to inspire your next story. It has the makings of a Dan Brown-esque novel to me.

Let the conspiracy theories abound. My first reaction, “Meteor? Yeah right, sounds like someone is testing weapons.” Initially I read reports where Russians cry foul by Americans, and someone injected an Israeli hypothesis. So far no radioactive material has been found near sites of impact, and the mass was supposedly formed of iron and rock. Also, NASA recently confirmed that the meteor in Russia has nothing to do with DA14’s projected flyby. Wait a minute, there’s something else orbiting out there?!

DA14′s projected trajectory photo courtesy of NASA

Let the questions guide your writing and see where they lead you. Are all these meteors and asteroids a sign of impending doom foretelling the beginning of the end? Melancholia, anyone? Is it possible the Mayan calendar is off a few months from all those leap years and daylight savings time? Is this meteor inscribed with a message from a distant galaxy? Infested with a mutant super virus? Has Superman arrived in Russia? Is it even a meteor at all? And if it is some nation testing weapons, what is their motivation? So many stories just waiting to be told!

We’d love to hear your wildest stories in response to this morning’s event, and we’ll be happy to publish them in an ebook and give you credit if you leave your responses in the comments below. And if this occurrence inspires your next great masterpiece, we encourage you to publish your work on the Kbuuk platform and share it with the world via Kbuuk, Amazon, Kobo, and Nook.

Happy Writing!

A Lesson in Love: Valentine’s Day

The Kroger next to my house now has a giant tent outside advertising roses and stuffed animals and chocolates. I’m so tempted to turn this into one of those soapbox blogs about holidays solely created for marketing purposes, but I won’t. I’ll be good. Let’s move on…

On our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple, my husband and I went to the Holocaust Museum (bet you wish I’d just kept this as a soapbox blog, huh?). Just putting that out there so that you are aware of my limited knowledge about how to celebrate this love struck day. But, I’ve seen other couples celebrate, and I’ve taken notes.

See, ten years ago, around Valentine’s Day I was curled up in a bookstore reading decorating books, when a very noisy, very high girl walked in with a guy who was busy trying to calm her down and avoid causing a scene.

The drugged girl wandered over to the bookshelf beside my cushy chair and loudly began reading book titles. She then exclaimed, “This must be the erotica section,” as she turned slightly toward me, imploring me with her glance to laugh at her witty remark. Nope. Not getting anything out of me.

At this, her poor date begged her to talk just a bit quieter, to which she boomingly replied, “It’s a bookstore, not a f%#&ing library!” Then she proceeded to pull out a large coffee table book and request her date buy it for her. “A present. I want you to buy me this as a present,” she demanded.

What can we learn from this darling couple, hmm? While I wouldn’t take any life advice from them, I do think that chick was on to something when she requested a book as a present. What’s even sweeter? Writing a book for your Valentine (published and polished here at Kbuuk). While you work on that, I’m going to protest at Kroger. Happy Valentine’s Day!