It’s the most wonderful time of the year. We’ve got presents, and downtime, and stacks of books, and a cup of good cheer!
It’s the hap-happiest season of all!
So here’s a little story about how we’re celebrating our clients, how the scariest writer in history will inspire your business, and how we’re going to be using our holiday time!
Writing is Essential
Let’s start with your business. If you’re selling anything, in any way, you HAVE to write.
There’s no getting around it. Whether you’d like to run a radio ad, or have your company on a billboard, or even those social media posts - you have to write them. There are words in everything we do because that’s how humans communicate.
And the best way to learn how to write is to read - a lot.
“A Winter’s Tale”
Stephen King (author of the short story noted above) may be one of the most-read authors of our time, but did you know he’s also one of the best read? This guy writes some of the most terrifying stories that have kept us up at night, even prompting Joey Tribbiani to put King’s stories in the freezer in a famous scene from Friends.
In my opinion though, the best book Stephen King has written is the incredible “On Writing.” One part memoir and one part writing manual. I’d been writing for a hundred sixty thousand years when I read it and I still learned something new on every page. Well, maybe I knew it but it hadn’t been phrased a way I’d ever heard it before.
There is one amazing quote in the book that’s been shared ad nauseum, but has so much relevance for anyone who writes anything for a living. It goes;
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or tools) to write.”
Page Turners
We Penguins are BIG readers. I mean, nightstands full of books, books as gifts, and even “iPads so full of books e-books you can’t even open some apps anymore” big readers.
So, when it came time to choose a *little something* (we are a small business in our first year after all) to thank our clients we knew it had to be book-related and it had to have a little pirate-y sass. What’s something every reader needs?
A beautiful bookmark!
Mark the Page
We designed our little gift with a couple things in mind.
One: We have clients all over the globe (Go us!), so it had to be small and preferably flat-ish to save on shipping to points throughout Canada and America. (Especially since we knew packages may be an issue for those using Canada Post.)
Two: It had to be US! Moody had to be front and centre and it had to have a little personal flair. So we each chose a few titles we’d read this year and loved and listed them on the stack of books Moody is standing on.
A lovely company helped us make them come to life with perfectly orange tassels and a luxurious shiny paper, and now we’re including them in our holiday cards, handing them out around town, and you may even be lucky enough to find one tucked in between the covers of your next book in your favourite shops or local library. ;)
The Happiest Holiday!
This Christmas, we want you to give books, read books, and share your favourites with us through social media. We know we’ll be celebrating Jolabokaflod - the Icelandic tradition of giving a book on Christmas Eve, and reading with chocolate all night. Will you?