Are all authors stationery addicts? I certainly am. One of the rules of this house is ‘Don’t take anything from the stationery cupboard’. My daughter sometimes begs to open the door and peek inside, but I only let her under close supervision.
I did let Anita Loughrey look inside once. She sat on the floor, opened the doors and marveled at the contents. I knew she was my true friend when she didn’t ask me to give her a single thing from my collection.
Anita is my kind of stationery addict.
She was also the perfect choice to accompany me to the London Stationery Show. We were hoping to worship at the altar of stationery and maybe pick up a few freebies along the way. But because it was a trade show, I felt a bit of a fraud which is why I suggested we set up Papers Pens Poets,
‘The place for writers and other stationery addicts to share their passion for papers and pens.’
Anita has written her own blog about the experience which you can read here.
It was a mad few days. Here is a rough timeline of what we did when. It’s amazing what you can do when you have passion and a tight deadline.
Thursday
- 16.37 Jo ‘Let’s create a blog and call it Papers Pens Poets’
- 16.38 Anita ‘Yes let’s do that.’
- 17.00 Register www.paperspenspoets.co.uk domain name.
- 17.30 Create contact@paperspenspoets.co.uk email address
- 17.31 Jo start fiddling around with business card designs
- 17.35 Anita gathers inspirational author/stationery quotes to use on cards
Family time
- 21.00 Jo has crisps for tea.
- 22.00 Jo sends first roughs of business card to Anita.
- 22.30 Jo convinces herself the card design is boring so makes a new one
We both go to bed after midnight
Friday
- 7.30 Anita says she prefers the first card design.
- 9.30 Jo places express order for 50 cards with www.moo.com
Jo goes to her writing critique group. Anita gets on with real work.
- 18.00 Jo discovers that Weebly have redesigned their interface. Help!
- 21.00 Jo registers with every free website hosting site in the universe and eventually decides to design the site in WordPress.
Saturday (NB Jo’s daughter’s 14th birthday sleepover weekend)
The whole day is spent with frantic phone calls between Anita and Jo. Jo designs the site while Anita works on the content.
12.00 Anita creates @paperspenspoets on twitter
Ideas are flowing thick and fast and clogging up both email boxes. This thing is going to work!
15.00 Jo bakes a birthday cake
Sunday
Jo walks her dog by taking him to Liverpool Street Station to collect the Moo business cards. They look great
Last few glitches ironed out. We’ve done it!
Monday
We launch the site and have 435 views on the first day. It’s a success!
Tuesday
We have a brilliant day at the London Stationery Fair and give out 50 business cards.Papers Pens Poets is a tremendous success. We’ve written reviews and articles. We’ve interviewed some authors and have a queue of others begging to be featured on our site. Do get in touch if you want to be interviewed about your love of stationery.Next job : Learn how to keep Papers Pens Poets in it’s place. Meanwhile we are having a blast.