First, I must state that I’m not comfortable about this post, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and that’s ask for help. Bottom line is this – would you like a writing teacher with 25 years of experience to visit your kid’s school to teach about creative writing, bullying, and boosting self esteem? Yeah, that’d be me, and I’d be going anywhere in the country. Maine to Florida to Michigan to California. Also, let me apologize now because I’ll be reposting this about once a week during June.
Kickstarter.com is a website for people to create projects and present them to others to potentially fund, donate, or back that project. It’s not just giving money to an artist. It’s getting something back for your money. Most projects are artistic – music, publishing, visual art and design, film and video, etc.
The artist sets a financial goal and a list of “rewards” that the donors get in return for their money. If enough money is raised, the artist gets all the money but also must do what they proposed, including providing the prizes that were offered. For example, if someone’s project is to raise enough money to record and produce a CD, that artist will offer free copies for certain monetary donations and possible a free concert for higher donations. I created a project, and now I need to direct people to check it out. It is not begging for money because donors get something for it. Regardless, it feels like begging for money.
My project (using a pen name, as I was advised to do) is about helping kids deal with bullies and raising self esteem. It’s a book aimed at middle school kids, specifically 5th and 6th grade, depending on reading level. It’s about a boy named Dillon, but his family calls him “Dilly.” He likes art, poetry, acting, and gardening, and thus he gets made fun of and picked on at school. He has an older sister, Rose, who helps protect him at times, but she’s trying to teach him how to deal with bullies on his own when she’s not around because in a year’s time she’ll be in high school and won’t be in the same school every day to help him.
But this post isn’t so much about the book as it is about the project. At this point, you can click on the picture up at the top, and it will take you to an embarrassing video with poor audio that I made with my daughter to introduce the project. Also on the site are the different amounts of money that one can donate – and also – more importantly – the rewards that you get for the donation. The best of those rewards is me appearing at a school for a day to teach some writing lessons as well as lessons about bullying and self esteem. Other rewards include choosing names for characters, dogs, towns, and other things in the story. Also available are copies of the book, both hard and soft cover, and supplemental material for teachers.
Maybe this is nothing you’re interested in, and of course that’s okay. However, maybe you know someone who would be interested. How do you know? You don’t know. But you can always pass it along, repost it, whatever you can do to spread it around. Maybe you can e-mail the link to your kids’ school and tell them to take a look at it.
Posted by brainsnorts 
