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my Boo Crew
I had to pinch myself.
I guess not many people think being in enclosed spaces with thirteen year olds is something to go out of your way for but for me, this was the chance of a lifetime to write and be read by the most valuable focus group ever – the kids who haunt the Ghostmistress. A Boo Crew that keeps growing.
Each week, I posted a part of a ghost story I am writing. They read it, critiqued it, wrote their own stuff and posted it on the site. I learned what made them tick, they learned how to be good reviewers in an online community. We wrote stories, poems and screenplays. I brought cookies. Ghost cookies made by my friend and Seth’s carpool buddy, Joanne.
Ghostmistress cookies
Here’s what the Boo Crew looked for:
Dialogue that drives action
Descriptive writing that created a character or a place
Characters that revealed their thoughts
Cliffhangers that provoked curiousity
Characters with complex personalities and unexpected actions
Fast paced stories
Challenges they could relate to such as bullying, being the youngest child, liking someone
I looked forward to seeing the comments the day after I posted each scene. No matter what I thought of what I wrote, I was always surprised and often startled by their opinions. Always, always grateful for the chance to have my stuff read by my target audience.
As I work on finishing Ghostmistress this summer, I will imagine a group of blue clad young critics ready to devour the 1000 words I write with a critical appetite. They have already sharpened my sense of what rings true and what makes a good story they would read. They have pre reviewed and pre critiqued my young adult story and I am so grateful to them for helping me write a better story.
This makes sense to me.
Need to know what your readers, your audience, your market likes? Give them a way to tell you. Let them in on your creative process – a little unnerving, yes, but vulnerability is really appealing. I created the Ghostmistress site which they took creative ownership of and where they could discuss my story.
How are you connecting with your readers?
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If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
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Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
photo by kocojim
“Let’s invite the carpool ladies over for a soiree and talk about romance.”
Seth thought this was a fabulous idea and so did the carpool. On Saturday evening, we held our first Romance Soiree.
Curious why?
I am flirting with the idea of writing a romance novel. It occurred to me that truth is always always always stranger and more startling than fiction so why not bring together people who are immersed in all kinds of daily truths, feed them, give them pink champagne and then sit back and take notes?
And that is exactly what I did.
To start the conversation, I came up with some questions. They are actually ice breaker dinner questions that a friend of mine came up with. Here’s what happened with the first question:
What do you look for most in a mate –
“Personality. My mother always told me to look for someone who could be a friend you could laugh with.”
“My father said its just as easy to marry rich as it is to marry poor. So why bother marrying twice? Get it right the first time.”
“I also think that looks matter less as you get older. Maybe that’s why I always look at a man’s teeth first.”
“You do? I look at their shoes. If they look scuffed up and shabby that sends a message to me that they probably will not follow through on a commitment.”
“Wealth is not that important. I make my own money so I’m not looking for someone to support me. That would be like looking for a bra.”
“Speaking of bras, there was a woman I knew who wore a double D and she told me she had a thing for a guy in her office so one day, she took off her bra, lifted up the cover of the copier machine and photocopied her chest. After she did that, she thought it probably was not a good idea so she threw the picture in the garbage can.
What was she thinking? Of course someone found it. Everyone could tell it was her. And once that happened, a few other things happened as well. Such as her divorce, the wife of the guy in her office becoming suspicious and jealous of her and eventually the affair becoming exposed. Just like her double D’s.”
“Wow, if I was a double D, I wouldn’t leave the house!” Seth chimed in as he poured another round of champagne. ”Hey, you girls lead exciting lives.”
I am not sure what all of this adds up to, or what my story will become. All I can tell you is that the research is a lot of fun.
Hey, if you have story about an office affair, or a love story with a twist, tell me in the comments!
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
This post first appeared on The World’s Strongest Librarian
photo by jag9889
I have a secret superpower.
It is my amazing ability to change my world into syllables.
The girl who makes me a cappuccino in the local Italian bakery tossed me an approving nod the other day when I told her every meeting I have deserves una bella scatola di biscotti.
“You are – ” she leaned over the counter and pushed the bakery box filled with hazelnut and chocolate biscotti towards me. ” – how you say, smart? No, not smart.” I kept smiling although I wasn’t sure where she was going with this and I was still waiting for my cappuccino.
“You know how to – fix things. Like a the guy who come to clean out that stupid pipe in the back. Madonna! What a mess.”
I slowly started to turn on my superpowers to take control of the world. Take a deep breath, clear my thoughts, focus my mind on the task before me.
Coo-kies and cof-fee…
I lowered my eyes and pulled out my unread New York Times and concentrated on changing her from an absent minded bakery employee into an efficient milk steaming barista.
For a morn-ing meet-ing of…
She turned to her machines and started making the coffee. Suddenly she slapped her forehead and said with a wide eyed look of triumph, “Ah! I know. You know what you are?”
So close, my cappuccino is so close. Must remain calm and the world will be mine. All I need is one more line and my coffee.
“Di me, bella. What?” I said in my best superhero-under-duress voice.
In a conspiratorial whisper she breathed, “You are one of - i cognoscenti, the people who know.”
I cognoscenti.
I cog-no-scen-ti
I closed my hands around the coffee cup she handed me and I opened my eyes to meet hers.
Cookies and coffee
for a morning meeting of
i cognoscenti
Perfect.
Mission accomplished, with cookies for later, coffee for now and my morning captured forever in a spillproof haiku. But what impressed me more was an article in the newspaper that caught my eye as I was syllabicating the world to my liking (is that really a word?). I realized that my superpowers pale in comparison to what the deceptively simple haiku can accomplish.
What can a haiku do?
It can transform a one of the city’s largest eyesore of a landfill into “urban oasis with wildlife habitats, horseback riding, mountain biking and meandering nature trails”. The City’s Parks Department invited people to envision what this future Staten Island park could be like in a seventeen syllable snapshot, a haiku. The results of their third annual Freshkills Haiku Contest include this gem:
Somewhere underneath
The bike paths I will ride on
My old love letters
-Stevie D’Arbanville
Imagine that! The power of i cognoscenti in seventeen syllables can change the world, one landfill at a time.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
When you ask for water at Cafe Bar in Astoria, this is what you get.
Now I don’t know about you but all I need is a glass to go with my water.
I am amazed that someone actually figured out how to reconstruct water, bottle it and get it on a menu.
I love packaging.
I love stuff that is put together for me, made easier for me, cleverly wrapped and boxed for me. If the actual thing is something I actually need, that’s a home run. I appreciate the thinking behind the product. Ask me how many pairs of #9 knitting needles I own. Go ahead. I must have a dozen pairs and will probably continue to merrily acquire more.
Because they came in these OMG!-must-have knitting kits that came with a beautifully styled photograph of a fabulous knit quelque chose, some yummy yarn, and a pair of knitting needles in a cute little bag. Could I have gone out and put all that together myself among all of the boxes of knitting stuff that has slowly taken over Seth’s side of the closet? Of course! But I put all that, and the vision of thousands of loose needles, skeins of yarns tumbling out of shoeboxes and towers of knitting pattern magazines and willingly flung down my credit card because I was blissfully seduced by smart and sexy -
packaging.
What about your brilliant career?
Here are some thoughts that ran through my mind about you.
Do you have a product you are passionate about?
I have been talking to a lot of writers who want to know more about marketing and telling their story. Well, besides the obvious book, there are other ways for your words to work their magic. A set of poems in an ebook? A serial romance on a local radio show? A reading of your newest work?
Can you picture your perfect customer – their likes, weaknesses, impulse shopping habits?
Who would buy your book? Is she like you, does she read on a Kindle, what genres does she read, does she belong to a book club? The more you know about your customer, the better you will be at getting her to become a loyal fan of yours.
Are you making it easy for people to buy who you are or what you have to sell?
People are lazy. If you can create something that is easy to understand and either solves a problem or promises a unique experience, people will take notice and buy it.
Be creative. If you need some inspiration, have a nice tall glass of reconstructed water.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
photo by daniele martinie
What is it about you that would inspire someone to give you money?
Are you a charismatic, mysterious, enigmatic character with a violent past with piercings and a tattoo of a dragon curling over your upper body? And even if you are, so what?
What makes someone take your grant application from the stack sitting on their desk and place it in the In box? Your passion to do what you believe will make the world a better place? Maybe.
Have you ever wondered about what goes on in the minds of funders as they decide which projects are worth funding and which ones are not? Of course, why wouldn’t you? Businesses need to understand why their customers buy from them.
You need to think like you’re in business. The business of writing for money.
OK, how do you become the one they award funding to?
Grantwriting is part of a skill set that transforms your dream project into a killer package that gets funding. For many small and emerging groups, this can be a valuable source of income that can not only support the project of your dreams, it can sustain your infrastructure, pay for consultants, and even help acquire physical space.
How to write a killer narrative
As a grantmaker, I appreciate concise, clear and brief writing. It is easier to write more than less. Brevity forces you, the writer to really think about what you do and how to convey that message.
Without question, your narrative must answer who, what, when, where, why and how. I like seeing this done in the first sentence. And if you can tell me the answers to the following questions, I am even more impressed and likely to personally walk your application over to the Inbox.
What is your story?
Tell me in seven words or less and I will be impressed. That tells me you have thought a lot about who you are. You probably have an elevator speech, a tagline and a marketing message or brand that is uniquely yours.
Why do you deserve to exist?
Ask yourself this question. Your answer will tell you if what you do makes a difference in the world. Another way to ask this question is: If you disappeared from the universe, would anyone notice? Here is a great interview by Pamela Slim about changing the world from her keyboard. Wow, the world would be a duller place without Pace and Kyeli, founders of the Connection Revolution and creators of the World Changing Writing Workshop, and their love of bringing about change through words.
What is your tattoo?
This is my way of asking you what is your special gift to the world? What added value do you bring? What sets you apart from the crowd? I am inspired by creative thinking that produces new and innovative ways to do things.
Why are you unique?
Lispeth Salander is an expert computer hacker with a photographic memory. She was the perfect employee for a security company. Think about all of the resources you possess that can enhance your funding appeal.
What is in it for me?
I have a board member who constantly reminds me that all funding relationships are a fluid conversation at a table where there is something for everyone. If you get funded, who else benefits? Your audience? Your community? How about your funder? Does your project give your funder something to be proud of? Let me offer you a tip: Be a good listener and take good notes. Remember, it is not about you. It is about the world.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
– Subscribe and get a little Wow! every day
– Forward the link to someone you think would be interested
– Link to a post on Twitter (follow me @hylkrakauer)
– Put a link to the blog in your Facebook status update
Thanks so much! I really appreciate your help.
Word of mouth is the best way to share, don’t you agree?
I write about the art of happiness with style notes for creative people who want to make life their everyday passion. What's yours? 
