Fill out these questions to generate your own silly mad libs letter instantly online! (Hint: a Verb is an action. A noun is a person/place/thing. An adjective describes a person/place/thing.)
When we were first together, my husband and I traveled to much to get a Christmas tree. We would get a small little tree from the Salvation Army and return it to them when moved again.
After a bad pine-needles-everywhere experience, I finally made peace with a fake Christmas tree… so we went to Target to buy a fake tree.
It came with lights built in and after using it for two Christmases, all of the lights have burned out except for the bottom third. I remember re-using the same strand for years after years as a kid — so it makes me quite sad to see how flimsy everything — even Christmas — has gotten.
Even some of the appliances we bought at our wedding a few years ago have already broken. What happened to quality things? I understand that companies make more money from constantly breaking things, but when do consumers stand up and demand better? Should we really be throwing out all of this junk when it doesn’t have to be that way?
Last week I was worried. I stayed up late fretting. My mind went over and over each little detail hoping it could find one positive outcome.
As I drove to work the next morning, I wondered What did I actually get from worrying? I got:
So I decided not to worry any more. (Easier said than done, I know). But next time I want to worry, I think I’ll try turning to a good book or movie instead.
Over Christmas break I was fortunate enough to have some beta readers take a look at my new space comedy in the vein of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. After discussing the plot with one of them, I got some of the best writing advice I had heard in a while:
My opening scene was this thrilling roller coaster with twists and turns everywhere. But the narrator was sitting on a park bench and describing the roller coaster. What the reader actually wants is to be on ride — strapped into the seat, being jerked from side to side and feeling their heart go up into their throat. You’ve got to be on the roller coaster.
When you’re writing or telling a story, what point of view are you using? Are you on the roller coaster or a picnic table a safe distance away? Are you safely eating your sandwich below or hearing the squeak of the wheel peeling down the track?
Fill out these questions to generate your own silly mad libs letter instantly online! (Hint: a Verb is an action. A noun is a person/place/thing. An adjective describes a person/place/thing.)
Feel like a coffee? candy bar? magazine? No problem! With a simple swipe of a card, it’s yours.
None of those things sound extravagant, but after enough of them (plus a dab of interest — who am I kidding: A LOT of interest) and you’ve got a couple grand on the credit card.
That’s why my wife and I went on a budget — not a strict, count-every-penny budget, but a weekly allowance for entertainment and fun things. We call this allowance our “Dream Bucket” because any left over money each week gets saved towards a dream purchase.
For a long time, we didn’t think we had the money to buy the things we wanted. (New fancy dresses and travel can cost a lot!) But we realized it wasn’t our income that was off, but our spending priorities. $5 coffees, $2 candy bars, $10 lunches out didn’t seem like much, but they’ve actually turned into weekend trips and nice clothes.
What I love about the Dream Bucket is that I find myself weighing each purchase against saving for my dream purchase. $5 coffees every day can quickly turn into a cocktail dress and $2 candy bars transform into a weekend hotel room… particularly if you go through as much chocolate as I do! By weighing each tiny purchase against saving that money for a dream purchase, we have saved tons of money and bought more of what we want. I’m much happier now that I’m spending my money on things that I love instead of mindlessly buying snacks.
So get started today: what do you really want to buy? How can you afford it? Where is your money actually going? What are your little guilty pleasures? How much do you actually spend on snacks and meals out each week?
If you want to print your own book, how should you get started? I think the best place to start is by picking a printer. If you don’t know what sizes your printer can print, how can you format your book?
Before my wife and I started our indie publishing company, we researched Print-On-Demand bookmakers. Print on Demand is a cool technology that allows your book to be printed each time it is ordered instead of doing a giant run of 1,000 books and hoping you can sell them. Since neither of us wanted to give up our closet space to store a thousand books, we knew we wanted to use Print on Demand.
If you’re looking to print a handful of books for friends and family, you could investigate Lulu, but we crossed that off of our list because we wanted to sell our books at Amazon and other major retailers. Despite its good reviews, we couldn’t print books at Lulu cheap enough to be competitive. That left CreateSpace and Lightning Source as our two Print on Demand options.
The quality and price of CreateSpace and Lightning Source are relatively similar, but there are some important differences:
CreateSpace is easier to setup and use. If you can type in Word, you can print a book with CreateSpace. It’s easy to get an account (don’t need much more than an email address), understand pricing (cool royalty calculators) and update your book (just upload a new PDF document). By contrast, Lightning Source has a long multi-step application, complicated pricing grids and a more cumbersome update process.
Lightning Source prints hardcovers. CreateSpace does not. But neither company publishes landscape books (books that are wider than they are tall).
Lightning Source has a better book store distribution network (if it’s important for you to get your book in a store), but CreateSpace hooks up instantly with Amazon (which allows you to sell directly to consumers). We’ve had much better luck selling our books directly to people instead of pitching it to bookstores — but that’s probably because we know more consumers than book store managers.
CreateSpace has free ISBNs, which is good if you’re getting started and don’t want to buy an ISBN number. (They cost $125 for one book or $250 for ten books!).
We use CreateSpace and Lightning Source since they both have their pluses, but if you are doing your first book, I would recommend CreateSpace. There are so many things that go into a book (writing, editing, illustrations, covers, marketing, distributing) that simplifying your printing as much as possible is important while you get your feet on the ground!
Fill out these questions to generate your own silly mad libs letter instantly online! (Hint: a verb is an action. A noun is a person/place/thing. An adjective describes a person/place/thing.)
Authors Steve & Natasha