KaBooM WritersKaBooM Writers

Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!

Welcome to the online presence of KaBooM, a writing group that has sustained the creative lives of a diverse group of women for over a decade. We hope that getting to know us will inspire you, too!

The KaBooM Writers Notebook: Our Blog

NaNoWriMo for the Rest of Us

By Susan, November 2nd, 2009 | Click to Comment

So we’re a day into National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWRiMo, and more power to all of you who are making the words fly. But for those of us who aren’t up to the challenge of drafting a novel by the end of the month, (maybe next year…) here’s another possibility.

water spigot_1

Dawn DeVries Sokol is offering a prompt per day for her version of this month’s excitement: NaNoJouMo, or National Nonstop Journaling Month. She’s a lettering artist who renders a word to serve as the day’s inspiration with style and personality. And if the thought of another writing project sounds more like an energy drain than a spigot for new ideas, this can be a journal for doodles and drawings—lines that convey emotion without using language. Sounds refreshing to me, like taking up a dowsing rod to locate a new well of creativity.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Creativity,Susan Christerson Brown —

The National Day on Writing in Lexington

By Susan, October 20th, 2009 | Click to Comment

These pictures were taken as the “Longest Short Story Ever Written in Lexington” event unfolded at Third Street Stuff. Everyone was invited to add a line, or several, to the story begun that morning at the Carnegie Center by Ed McClanahan. The tale grew at various locations in Lexington throughout the day. Listen to the WUKY radio report featuring Gail and Lynn.

Gail with the poster advertising Lexington's writing event

Gail with the poster advertising Lexington's writing event

Pam adds to the story as Jan looks on

Pam adds to the story as Jan looks on

One more writer in the parking lot considers what to add before the writing pad moves on

One more writer in the parking lot considers what to add before the writing pad moves on

The Herald-Leader article by Amy Wilson about the finished product, with photo by Pablo Alcala, are here.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Susan Christerson Brown —

Connections

By Susan, October 11th, 2009 | Click to Comment

I’ve been thinking a lot about connection lately. Since the release of the book and the launch of the website I’ve enjoyed meeting new people, both electronically and in person. I love that our website viewers and facebook fans come not only from cities across the U.S., but from four continents and several countries!

Sharing information, ideas, experiences, and perspectives was why we needed written language to begin with and why words fly through cyberspace today. Through writing we can know people distant in place and removed in history. When we’re lucky, the written word introduces us to like-minded souls, reassuring us that we are not alone in how we see the world.

A simple blog like this one can’t foster the same depth of connection as a work of art, but it’s a form that offers its own excitement. For a relatively small investment of time, reading or writing a blog is a chance to interact with a variety of people. It helps us find folks with whom we share something in common, including those whom we might not meet any other way. Those connections can even enable the building of communities through our reading and writing. And making a connection with another person is a gift, in whatever form it may occur.

Comments (0) — Categorized under: Susan Christerson Brown —

After Words: Making the Book

By Susan, September 7th, 2009 | 5 Comments

Welcome to the launch of the KaBooM Writing Collective blog! This is the latest project of our writing group, and we hope it will offer a connection with other writers and writers groups. We’ll be sharing news about what we’re doing in our meetings, what we’re reading, what kind of projects we’re working on, and whatever else comes to mind. Our group has seven members, and you’ll be hearing from all of us.

For the past several weeks we’ve been focused on the publication of our anthology, When the Bough Breaks, which will be out on September 10. For this post I’ll share with you some of the steps in physically making the book, a process we’ve felt privileged to be part of.

We thought we were intimately acquainted with our book when we finished writing and revising it. We had pored over every line until the day it went to the printer. But with this publishing project designed as a hands-on venture, we were just starting a new chapter, so to speak. We were about to experience a whole new level of knowing a book.

Mary and Lynn collating pages

Mary and Lynn collating pages

When the printed pages were delivered, our first task was to transform a roomful of boxes filled with paper into the recognizable innards of a book. There are many reasons to work with a writing group, and getting that job done was one of them. We collated the individual pages into six separate signatures, which are the small sections put together as if they comprised their own little book. They are later stacked and bound together to form the complete volume. That was a day spent with pages spread out on large tables, telling stories and trying not to lose count as we put boxes and boxes of paper in order. When the collating was complete, then the signatures assembled into books, we were ready to sew.

(Read more…)

Comments (5) — Categorized under: Sewing Book Bindings,Susan Christerson Brown —
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