LEGO robotics and girls and awesomeness

This past fall I had the opportunity to coach a LEGO Robotics team through the FIRST LEGO League, aka FLL. In short, it was *awesome.*

I coached a team of 7 girls, all Girl Scouts with the Girls Scouts of Northern IL, all fourth grade students at Da Vinci Academy in Elgin, IL. The Girl Scouts of Northern IL had received a generous grant from the Motorola Solutions Foundation to sponsor this kind of STEM activity for girls (please tell me you know what STEM stands for. Please? Okay, I'll tell you *again* -- Science Technology Engineering Math. Sometimes you'll see it with an "A" for arts added, to make it STEAM. It's a shorthand way of referring to these kinds of sciency techy mathy things, particularly as it relates to kids.) The girls' school, Da Vinci Academy, provided us the space for meetings and opportunities for mentoring from the experienced FLL Coaches who coached two Da Vinci middle school teams this year.

FLL is a great organization - you should read about their mission and goals. A quick overview/summary that in no way does the organization justice is that they want to get kids (ages 9-14 in the US/Canada/Mexico. Ages 9-16 globally) excited about science and technology.

Hey wait a minute. *I* want to get kids excited about science and technology! That's why I write science fiction for kids. This is what we call a win-win. Wintastic. Wincredible. Windelicious.

At some point I'd love to delve into the details of this great team of fourth graders and their enthusiasm and excitement as we went through the process of learning what the competition required and how to program the robot.

For today, though, I'll share the really fun and really exciting part that happened after the dust had settled, after the competition had completed, after the girls had the opportunity to present their skit in front of a crowd of 400 or more at the regional competition. (!!!)

The exciting thing was when we were invited by Kim Moldovsky, The Maker Mom, to appear on WGN - TV (a local Chicago TV station with wide syndication to other markets. Where else would you find your reruns of The Jeffersons and Family Ties and broadcasts of the Cubs?) during National Robotics Week. Here is Kim's post after our shared appearance.

The studio was small, so we brought two of our seven girls. They did a fantastic job, though they also learned a bit about how fast time passes on television. And how sometimes you don't get a chance to say what you meant/wanted to/say anything at all. And about how the robot doesn't always do what you want it to (in fact, this plagued the girls during the competition, too. Learning to handle the frustration with grace is, to me, one of the better lessons the girls learned through their participation in FIRST LEGO League.) And a special bonus, the girls got to watch the news anchors do the newscast, and discovered that the cameras that shoot the news anchors at their desks are all ROBOTS!

So please enjoy this clip, and if you have any questions about robotics in general, the FLL in particular, girl scouts, awesome girls, coaching a group of kids on a science/tech kind of endeavor, or anything, ask in the comments! Thanks, and enjoy!

Media and Design Club for Kids Meeting 2

Media and Design Club for Kids
Meeting 2

Activity 1: Door Investigation
Activity Objective: Evaluate design choices by touring the school and counting the different types of door styles we encounter.

Discussion: This was a hands-on exercise where we walked around the whole school and noted and counted the different door designs we saw. I had the kids bring notepaper and pencils so they could keep track. Some drew the doors, some wrote down descriptions of key features. Before too long we had amassed a list of 30 different door types in our very small school!

This gave rise to the opportunity to talk about design features and constraints. For instance, most of the classroom doors have a hydraulic arm on the top, in addition to hinges. We talked about how at a school, one of the most important features of any design is going to need to be safety, so the hydraulics were used as a safety feature to keep doors from slamming. At home, where usage is much lower, we don't generally have these kinds of features.

We discussed design variations, too. We noted several classifications of doors - the "bathroom door" type, which has no window, and came in several varieties (with lever handle, push bar), the "classroom door" which has a skinny window and aforementioned hydraulics. The "School door" which is all glass. I began introducing the design concept of "affordances" - wherein certain styles of design afford certain uses. A pushbar on a door affords pushing, a pull handle affords pulling. This is a concept we'll come back to as we move into different styles of design, as it is particularly relevant in information design of computer systems and webpages.

Activity 2: Business Card Investigation
Activity Objective: Translate some of the concepts of design to the world of business cards.

Assignment: I handed out business card magnets (conveniently stolen from my own garage door where business card magnets go to retire and pass a quiet existence.) One by one I asked the kids to bring their magnet up to the whiteboard, place it with the others, and then talk about what kinds of information was on their business card and what they thought some of the reasons or rationale behind the design of the card were.

Discussion: I was absolutely astonished at how even the 3rd and 4th grade students could talk about things like the use of color on a business card and friendly graphics in an attempt to convey a warm, welcoming storefront, or the way a pizza place used a photograph of pizza with a checkered table cloth and raw materials in the background to show they used fresh ingredients. We also talked about other design concepts like boldface, larger fonts, and the use of whitespace to separate key areas of information on a card. The kids got a kick out of the fact that on some business cards, the "whitespace" wasn't white at all, but yellow or blue like the rest of the business card.

We will revisit this concept using some ideas from another blog about design that I found called Bluemoon web design. Using this as a resource and our business card exercise as a reference, I'll start introducing the general design vocabulary of things like Line, Form, Texture, Value, as well as big picture design concepts of balance, movement, repetition, etc. This is the exciting part, I love introducing this whole world to these kids, each time I tell them something new or give them a word to describe something they observed (e.g., "whitespace") their faces light up and I can practically watch the gears turning as they start asking questions about other examples, firing off comparisons and anti-examples too. Fabulous!

Activity 3: Draw your own business card
Activity Objective: Apply the ideas discussed to your own design, having to make tradeoffs in how you use space, what information you give priority to, etc.

Assignment: Using the ideas we discussed with existing business cards, make your own business card for any made up (or real) business. Dog walker, web designer, secret agent, whatever you like.

Discussion: We ran out of time so we will take a look at business card designs at the next session and discuss the tradeoffs people made.

Media And Design Club: Meeting 1

I've started a Media and Design Club for students at my children's school. It's an idea that started out of a desire to get the kids involved with the creation of the school yearbook, which has previously been done by parent volunteers who are more time-constrained this year than usual. 

Rather than just doing a "Yearbook Club" though, I wanted to aim a little broader. We have a lot of time before the school yearbook needs to be completed (I am starting the club the first week in January that we're back in school.) I also have this not-too-secret goal to help kids understand what careers in technology look like beyond just the stereotype of the geek (male) programmer. 

So the idea with the Media and Design club is that we will talk about various elements of media - audio, video, writing, as well as design. Why are things designed the way they are? Why do things in the world or online work the way they do? 

This is the first in a series of writeups of our Media and Design Club meetings. I encourage you to steal these ideas wholesale (like Austin Kleon recommends in his blog post Steal Like an Artist) for your own Media and Design Club (which, for the record, we're calling the MAD club, which amuses me to no end.) Any questions? Hit me up by email or write in the comments. 

Meeting 1:
Activity 1:
Activity Question: How do we sort and categorize information?

Materials: plastic baggies filled with objects that are similar but not necessarily the same. Throw in some zingers. I used:
- A bag of coins from around the world
- A bag of US Quarters from many states/years. There were some duplicates
- Paperclips, some large, small, some plastic-wrapped, some funny shaped
- Buttons, many shapes, many numbers of holes, many colors 

The idea is to give the kids a group of objects that are *hard* to categorize. Where there are tricky calls to make. Does the large white plastic paper clip go with large paperclips or the colorful ones? Does the coin from Ireland go with the coin from England or with other silver ones? 

Assignment: Take these objects and organize them however you like. In 3 minutes (it took more like 2) be prepared to talk about your organization choices and how you decided to organize things the way you did. 

Activity Objective: Understand there are many ways to categorize things. Many different "indexing keys." 

After this activity, we talked about the many ways we could organize a big batch of photos taken over the course of the school year - by date, by event, by who is in them, by class. 

Discussion: For the Yearbook, we are going to need to sort and organize photographs into some way that lets us easily find images we want. How should we organize them? What are some ways we could organize the photos? 
The kids brainstormed and came up with this list as possible ways to organize potential Yearbook photos:

- Field Trips
- Cool Projects
- Sports
- Clubs
- Grades - class pictures, etc.
- Social events - Fall Festival, Pi Day, Spirit Day
- Auction (fundraisers)
- Holidays

How do the decisions we make about organizing things change when the objects are virtual like digital pictures? 

Activity 2:
Activity Question: What would be useful to know about this object?
Materials: A number of odd household objects. I used:
a knitting mushroom
a set of wooden nesting dolls
A knife/fork/spoon camping tool set
A USB extension cord

Discussion: Kids came up with many questions to ask/answer about the objects. Examples:
Where was it made?
What is it made of/what materials were used to create it?
Does it have any symbolic significance?
What is its function?
What's inside?
What's written in/on it?
How it looks
What color is it

Activity Objective: Understand the role of "metadata" - the information about the information, as I explained the concept to the kids. Understand how the function of an object is influenced by its design and vice-versa. How something is designed influences how we can use it.  
Think about how things are designed all around you. Chairs are a certain height, pencils a certain length. Why? 

Activity 3:
Activity Question/assignment: Design an alarm clock with only two buttons
Give students 5 minutes and a plain piece of paper to design an alarm clock with only two buttons. I erred on the side of giving them very little information, I wanted to see what directions they went with the assignment rather than guiding them to consider all the functions an alarm clock can perform and figuring out how to map those functions to only two buttons.

Activity Objective: Start to understand the idea of requirements for an object or function. Start to understand design constraints. 

Discussion: The kids came up with some creative ideas1 My own child spent time trying to explore a rube-goldberg type of sledgehammer/stone design to the single-use alarm clock (since it would be destroyed after one use.) Another came up with a solution that involved dials and toggles, in addition to buttons. Interesting expansion of the design because the spec didn't limit the use of dials or toggle switches. One incorporated a pie-in-the-face wakeup solution, focused much more on the end result versus the mechanics of getting the current time and wakeup time set.

How I wrote a novel in 20 minutes a day (and you can, too!)

I just wrote "the end" today on my middle-grade science fiction novel. I wrote it over the course of forty days, with a short break in the middle to finish a novelette that was burning on me (so forty non-consecutive days.)

I'm somewhat astonished with this fact, as it didn't feel hard. I've written four National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo) novels, and they all felt hard. Hard to find the time, hard to catch up when I fell behind, hard to stay on top of, a race to the finish.

True, this one was shorter. It's complete at 44k words. It'll possibly grow to 50k words in edits, but that's the absolute max and I'm comfortable with that length. As a middle-grade novel, it's aimed at 3rd - 8th graders, kids aged 9 - 14. 44k = about 176 regular pages, which is a nice length. Of course since I'm indie publishing my work on ebook platforms these days, it's however many pages show up on the ebook reader.

But I'm convinced there were some easy tricks in the way I've been writing this summer and I'm here to tell you that you, too can write a book in twenty minutes a day. Here are my tips/suggestions/lessons learned:


1. Increase your typing speed.  
By hook or by crook, you need to get to where your hands can somewhat keep up with your brain. This is important. This is an investment in your future. This is worth your time. Take typing tutor programs online, practice typing in things from the newspaper or favorite novels (it's actually a great way to learn about writing, to type in another writer's work and feel it play out under your own fingers.) Set aside 15 minutes a day every day to practice and you'll find yourself writing speedily before long. Google typing tutors or typing test to find some options, like this site.

When I was 8 my family got our first personal computer, and my mom encouraged us all to learn to touch-type, teaching us about home keys, loading the typing tutor software (which because the computer was such a novelty was extremely motivating for us as it gave us more computer time!) I will forever be grateful to her for this encouragement, as I can now clock north of 80 wpm when I'm trying hard (and looking to perform well on a speed test) and can comfortably average 50 wpm when in that awesome "writing flow."


2. Know what you want to write...approximately.
If you're an outliner, go ahead and invest the time in your outline ahead of time (otherwise the whole 20 mins a day will be busted.) I'm more of a seat-of-the-pants writer. I have a general idea of what I want to write, the main themes I want to play with, the first set of main characters, etc., but I don't over plan. Over planning has never worked well for me.

3. Aim to end each writing session on a hook. 
Because of the kind of writing I was doing (middle grade) I could comfortably write about 1000 words/day, and that's a comfortable chapter length (4-5 pages.) By the end of a writing session, I worked toward building to some kind of hook, conflict, or something else exciting, so as to entice the reader to turn the page to read the next chapter. This is one of those general lessons you'll hear in writing all the time, but the big bonus it played out for with me was that it gave me something to fix/resolve/solve the next day in my next writing session! Can't emphasize enough how important that was for me.

4. Set (and keep) daily goals.  
Some kind of daily goal helped me tremendously. In my case, it was the use of the site 750words.com. I've talked about that site before, but the general premise is that you write 3 (250 words per) pages each day. "Morning pages" which turned out to be another of my tips (get your word count in early in the day, that way if you have more time for writing later in the day you're just creating gravy!) Because the number was low, because I type fast, I knew I could manage 750 words a day, at my average clocking along 50 wpm rate, that's fifteen minutes, sometimes less if I was really trucking. I might not have an hour a day to write right now, but I can spend fifteen minutes doing something that feeds my soul. (Arguments for giving more time to writing are put aside during kids-home-no-activities-scheduled-summers. They won't be young forever.)

Look, I know writing is hard. The old adage "Just stare at your computer til your forehead bleeds" is true for most of us writers at some point or another in our writing journey. But what I have discovered in the course of this summer project is that sometimes what's hard about writing are all the trappings I put in the way that make it hard. Not the actual writing, the writing part is easy (right? Because otherwise why on earth would we torture ourselves so?)

Come on, if you're a tortured writer perhaps that's because you either think you should be or want that for yourself. Me, I write because it's a joyous experience when the words flow or I re-read something I wrote a different day and realize it's not half bad. And as my bio says, I write for all the geeky young women out there because I have their stories to tell.

So no more complaining that I don't have time to write. I wrote a freaking novel in forty days writing only about twenty minutes a day. I wrote a chapter at a time. I ended each writing session on a hook. I gave myself daily goals, and they were SMALL approachable goals. I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go. And I wrote.

Now it's to you - can you write a novel in twenty minutes a day? If you're writing other genres, other styles, you might need to write more days. If your typing speed is still growing, you might need to write thirty minutes to get the same output, forty perhaps. But can you do it? I did, and I'm astonished that I did. So now I think I might try to do it again and make sure it's not a fluke!

Indie ebook publishing links and website recommendations

Independent Publishing Links and Website Recommendations

I was asked to sit on an author's marketing panel tonight with my writer's group. We got together with a group that's more focused on book marketing (our group is a "writer's support group" - we talk about craft and do writing exercises and cheer each other on. It's a little different spin than many critique circles you'll hear about.)

I represented the indie epublishing point of view, and knowing I was likely to be in the minority (I was) in terms of doing the ebook formatting and watching the ebook industry, I put together this list of resources as a handout. Thought it would be useful to capture here, too. As is typical for me, this list leans heavily toward fantasy/science fiction/speculative fiction writers, but not exclusively.

What other resources do you rely on for information about independent ebook publishing? Add them in the comments!
 

Dean Wesley Smith

A prolific writer, DWS has published more than 90 novels via traditional methods and is now at the forefront of the indepedent publishing movement. He writes a series called "Think Like a Publisher" and another called "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing."

Together with his wife and others in the writing community, he leads workshops on marketing, publishing, short story writing, and others out on the Oregon coast.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Married to Dean and a writer in a variety of genres, Kris also writes about freelancing and the business side of writing in her two series, The Business Rusch, and The Freelancer's Survival Guide.

Joe Konrath

Local Chicago author Joe Konrath has made headlines over the last several years as he's moved away from traditional publishing and made a name for himself (and met with plenty of financial success) in independent publishing. Joe's worth reading because he shares numbers, something many authors are hesitant to do. He also brings in an interesting string of guest bloggers.

Michael Stackpole

Michael Stackpole writes about industry topics and lights fires under writer's behinds in his House Slaves series.

Amanda Hocking

Was the first author to make headlines for making millions publishing her own books. She began independent publishing her books only just over a year ago and has hit the big times. In recent months she's been in the headlines again for accepting a traditional publishing deal for a new book series. She's notable because she's finding a way to have her cake and eat it too. Her "Magic Hand" post from last fall is one of my favorites.

Other interesting writers/observers of the independent publishing realm:

• Passive Voice - this former lawyer has a very interesting perspective on all kinds of indie publishing topics.
• Zoe Winters  - (in particular read the 99c ghetto)
• Dave Farland - sign up for his "daily kick" - a free email (not always daily) with writing tips and suggestions. Dave is known for traditional publishing but has begun carrying the independent flag lately.
• Kevin J. Anderson - Traditionally published but independently publishing his backlist, author Kevin J. Anderson has some interesting things to say about ebook pricing and process.
• John Locke - site of author John Locke, another independent who has sold over 1 million ebooks on his own, no publisher required.

Don't forget, my own novel, Convergence, is now out in all ebook formats!

CONVERGENCE - by Karen T. Smith, a YA Sci-Fi novel

Desperate for some new summer reads? My young adult (young end of YA, perfectly appropriate for most middle-grade readers) science fiction novel CONVERGENCE by Karen T. Smith is now available on all ebook platforms (amazon kindle, barnes and noble nook, smashwords for most other e-readers. Note: Kobo and Sony Reader distribution should be within the next 1-2 weeks. Apple mail trail a bit longer.) Paperback to come sometime soon, there's a bit more work on my end before it's ready.

First of all, isn't the cover gorgeous? I had a fantastic cover model (one of the kids' babysitters!) and my really awesome friend Renee of The Cover Counts worked on this cover with me. We found some fantastic images, tweaked the heck out of them, and spent god knows how long talking about fonts. Did you know there are literally thousands upon thousands of fonts out there? Absolutely crazy!

I'm beyond thrilled with how it came out, though. It's pretty much as close to how the whole space station setup is pictured in my head barring an actual artist's rendering.

What is it about? Well, one of the taglines we came up with when brainstorming this cover was:

Space Station, high school, some really terrible hair days, diabolical plot. Things just go from bad to worse for Anya.

But the one we went with (after a completely unscientific facebook friend poll where this one won by a landslide):

It's bad enough getting dragged to the space station Convergence to attend high school, but when Anya uncovers a diabolical plot aboard, she'll have to rely on her wits and new friends to stop it.

And here's the full blurb from the product description:

Anya is pissed when her family moves from earth to the Space Station Convergence. Everything is strange from the food (soy paste in all its colors and forms) to the frequently changing gravity conditions at her new high school.  Anya soon uncovers a plot to take over the central computer’s core processor. While this might not bother your typical geek, Anya is anything but your typical geek. She has discovered that the central computer is self-aware, and that computer is Anya’s first friend on the Convergence. Anya will do anything to protect her computer friend, Isis, even if it means breaking into Central Computing and telling her other new (human) friends about Isis.

But don't just take my word for it, read it for yourself and let me know what you think! Reviews as always are GREATLY appreciated!

Book Review - Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

I recently reviewed the book Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi, over on my mom blog - Suburban (in)Sanity. I really enjoyed this book, even though in general I'm tired of future-told dystopia stories. Hunger Games overkill I suppose. This one was fantastic, though, and kept me up late reading.

E-book Formatting Checklist

How to Format your e-book for independent publishing

In formatting ebooks for independent publishing, I've found that the detailed information offered in the Smashwords style guide, while top-notch and something that EVERY indie publisher needs to read, is a bit hard to parse when you're going through the routine of formatting another book/story for publication, so I (with the help of my 9 year old son) documented the process in a simple(r) checklist, so I could be sure I was following the correct steps as I went. This is heavily based on that Smashwords style guide, so you really need to read that if you want to publish your own books, but look--this is simple. My 9 year old could do it, so can you!

The main reason? You don't want the epublishing sites like Smashwords, Amazon Kindle Publishing, or Barnes and Noble's PubIt! to puke on your file. You want things to go as smoothly as possible. You want your readers to read a nice copy of your book/story, right? One that adapts to their specific hardware, be it Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony Reader, or their teensy tiny smartphone screens.

The meticulous formatting you do to put your book up for sale makes it so that readers of all types on all kinds of hardware can see the book as you intended, rather than having line and page breaks appear randomly, being unable to adjust the font size on their reader, or having a book filled with so many formatting glitches that it's unreadable. Trust me, I've bought a book or two like that and it's infuriating, don't do that to your readers! Your readers love you. Really, they do or they wouldn't waste their time on YOUR book, they'd go read some other person's book.

E-Book Formatting Checklist 

1.     Save back up copy

2.     Select all

3.     Change every thing to normal paragraph style

4.     Choose show formatting

5.     Turn off auto format

6.     Select all text

7.     Copy and paste into a blank text edit document

8.     Copy and paste into a blank word document

9.     Modify normal style

a.     Times new roman 12 pt

b.     Select format paragraph

c.      Choose indentation->special first line->.3"

d.     Make sure spacing is 0 for before after and line spacing is set to single

e.     Go to line and page breaks tab and turn off widow/orphan control

10. Check document to see if indentations look right, check copyright page and chapter headings

11. Remove extra lines between paragraphs

12. Save the document

13. Check formatting, re-insert bold and italics, make sure you are still in normal style. MS Word likes to mess with you and switch you off the style you selected, so check this often.

14. To insert hyperlinks, select the text, then right click, hyperlink, and enter the full web address (including the http:// portion.)

15. If you use page breaks, insert a carriage return on either side of it (or 2 or 3) because not all formats recognize page breaks. (RTF and PDF do, others don't.)

16. To separate chapters, insert a consistent number of returns (smashwords suggests 3 or 4, but never more than 4 as it will cause your book to get rejected from the premium catalog) and then centered text like tildes or stars.

17. To insert pictures - use word's "insert: picture: as file" option. Remember to uncheck "plain text" option when publishing if you do this (or leave plain text checked if the pictures are nice but not essential.) Use width of 500 pixels or less, 5M filesizes or less.

18. In case centering hasn't worked properly - define a custom style to do centering. Choose New Style - give it a name (Mine is called "KTS Centered") - base it off Normal style, style type is paragraph, check that the font and size are the same as the rest of your doc, then click the centered option, and "automatically update."

19. Remove headers and footers, remove auto page-numbering.

20. For chapter names, use a heading style but only apply to one line, not multiple lines.

21. If you use the word "chapter" to name each chapter, smashwords' meatgrinder will pick that up and use it in a useful way. If your chapters aren't labeled beyond Chapter 1, Chapter 2, you may not need a ToC due to this feature.

22. Tables of Contents:

a.     If you already have one, make sure it doesn't have page numbers.

b.     Don't use Word 2007's auto-ToC feature.

c.      Doing a linked ToC as below will make a ToC for EPUB, MOBI, and PDF, but might not work for HTML and Javascript views, FYI.

d.     So create your ToC, type it out in NORMAL paragraph style.

e.     Choose to bookmark a link - the bookmark location is the target, where you want the reader to go after clicking on that chapter name.

f.      Go through the document and highlight each chapter heading, choose Insert: Bookmark. Name it according to the Chapter/Indexed item. Bookmark names can't have spaces or special characters. NOTE: If you used Heading styles for chapter headings, your chapters may be there for you to select from when you create the bookmarks.

g.     Go to the Table of Contents you wrote at the beginning of the document, highlight the words Table of Contents and Insert:Bookmark, TOC or some such. This way you can link everything back up to the TOC.

h.     Then add hyperlinks to your chapter listings. Highlight the item in the TOC, right click, hyperlink, choose "place in this document." Bookmarks should be listed. Selec thte bookmark and lcick ok. Rinse, repeat for every chapter.

i.       You can link your chapters back up to the table of contents if you want. Choose to hyperlink back to the TOC (which you helpfully created a bookmark to just one step earlier.)

j.       TEST ALL OF YOUR LINKS. Ugh this is important. Don't forget!

23. If you want to do blurbs, do them at the very top of the document and make them brief.

24. You are required to include a title and copyright page next. Center the text, but don't use tabs or indents!

25. Depending on the epublishing location you're using, you'll need different boilerplate content. You basically need to establish that you own the copyright, that this is a Smashwords, Kindle, or Nook edition. Smashwords says "Although some Smashwords authors consider Smashwords their publisher, we consider you the publisher. Smashwords is your ebook publishing and distribution platform."

26. Required info (from Smashwords, but Kindle and Nook are very similar):

a.     Book Title

b.     Authorname

c.      Published by [publishername] at Smashwords

d.     Copyright 2011

e.     Optional - link to your other stuff at Smashwords or Kindle or Nook

f.      Don't write kindle edition or nook edition or printed in the U.S. or other garbage, it'll get you bonked out of the smashwords process (note: You should format your ebook once, then modify that file for the other sites. Save each site-specific copy as its own file in case you need to make changes later.)

g.     Don't be a doofus, only link back to your own website or smashwords if you're publishing on smashwords, and likewise on other sites.

27. For smashwords edition: add a smashwords license statement to your copyright page.

a.     Smashwords Edition, License Notes

b.     This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchase for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respending the hard work of this author.

28. To end your book, use ### centered to signify the end, then consider adding a personal message. Some suggested areas

a.     About the Author

b.     Discover other titles by Authorname at ebook distribution site. (remember to make sure hyperlinks have full http:// address.)

c.      Connect with Me Online: Twitter, facebook, smashwords, blog

29. Cover image:

a.     Title, authorname. These must match the metadata you enter about your title in the ebook distribution site, as well as the title and authorname on the title page.

b.     RGB color only (not CMYK)

30. Make sure you're eligible for premium distribution by not screwing up the cover (rectangle-portrait orientation, at least 500x800, legible title and author name), put your name in metadata exactly the same way as it appears on title page, e.g., Joe Schmoe, don't USE ALL CAPS FOR ANYTHING BECAUSE IT'S JUST STUPID. Don't use messy paragraph formatting or inconsistent formatting, etc.

Have fun! Post your completed projects in the comments section!

Obsessed

I am officially obsessed with the writing site 750words.com. Premise: write 3 pages (about 250 words/page) each morning. "Morning pages" some writers call them. So this semi-brilliant guy has written a website where you can do just that (he talks about the details here). Only the best part is, you don't have to do the pages in the morning. Any time of day will do (phew, us night owls all just breathed a big sigh of relief.)

So a friend mentioned this to me a while back and I looked and thought the site looked interesting, but then moved on (as is so often the case.) Yesterday, when mentally beating myself up for not having started my latest novel project yet even though we're a full week into "summer break" (I can hear all the moms laughing their butts off. Really, they have no butts left.) I remembered the site. Proof right there that I'm still sane. I took a look and decided to just ... start... writing... And ... huh. Day 1, 800+ words. Hmm. I'm actually really happy with the start, particularly considering that I'm pushing myself to write in first person, which usually weirds me out.

I watched mom tweak and tinker with a hard-wire switch. A tangle of colored cables disappeared behind her practiced hands and into the depths of the control panel on the starboard side of the bridge, or Brigitte, as dad always called the main control room of our family's space ship, The Depleted. Funny man, that dad of mine. He said he liked the idea of an exotic woman running our ship. Mom usually rolled her eyes at that, seeing as how she usually drove. I've learned more than a little about piloting by watching her. I've been more interested lately, something about turning thirteen got me more excited about the details of how we moved our big hunk-o-metal through space. Guess I'm finally growing up. Don't tell mom.

I can set up alerts to tell myself to write each day. Email pestering, it's how it all happens in my world. I honestly wonder how I got anything done before email. Day 2 dawns and my email is there nagging me at 9 AM. I, of course, was dead asleep at 9 AM, but by 10 I was up and at the computer.

Sadly, that was the last time I was at the computer for anything other than quick email checks until about 7 PM, but then there at 7 PM, glorious in all it's plain pagedness, was my started 750words.com bit for today. Nothing much.

I ruffled Adara's hair. Looked at mom. "We'll be fine, mom. We've done two before."

But it was time to write, and the cursor was blinking. And the site just keeps sucking me in. It was only later that I learned about the stats. And the metadata. Oh heavens, metadata on writing, a geek writer's PARADISE! I could see that on Day 1 my writing looked like this:

 Please share a geek-out moment with me. Clearly at minute 6 I was interrupted by something. Words per minute on the left, total word count on the right axis. The dot indicates when I reached 750 words. My chart for today looks quite wonky because I took basically a 10 hour break in the middle, but yesterday's is fascinating. I've charted my word output each day for National Novel Writing Month and have always been interested in the stories I could interpret from the data - the days when I could just really crank out the word count, the days when getting the minimum wordage down caused me physical pain (I'm not a tortured writer, though. I write because I love it. The majority of days are happy go-lucky writing days.)

In addition to the pure data, the site also runs some algorithms on what you write so you can learn more about what it is you're writing. I found this even more exciting. A word cloud for my writing session for the day! And a general read on elements of writing - time orientation, involving the five senses, etc. Cool!

I've gushed quite enough, but seriously, check it out. 750words.com Even if your writing isn't fiction, the way it tracks and gives you data to explore about your writing is fascinating. For someone who journals, this might be really insightful. And you decide on the privacy - my work is a novel-in-progress - I will share parts here but for the most part it's not meant to be shared until it's finished (which might happen faster than just 750 words in a day since I'm enjoying all the data and reporting, much more motivating than staring at the computer til your forehead bleeds!) So I can keep it private, these reports are not visible to other viewers of the site or people who look at my profile. But do feel free to friend me over there if you do decide to join. Karen T. Smith - the more the merrier!

Why Write?

This is one of those questions that comes up on writer's boards all the time. Why bother? What drives you to write? 

Well, here's my why:

I write because nobody has written the stories I wanted to read. The ones about a geeky girl who was good at stuff and had adventures and solved problems and was smart and cool and dorky and nice and confused and friendless and interesting and new around here and different and the same and interested in boys and uninterested in boys and...

I write for all the geeky cool girls out there, because I have their stories to tell.