Tales of Reinvention: Karen Quinn

Karen Nedler Quinn is another of the growing group of Corporate Expatriates. Karen's first novel, The Ivy Chronicles was published in January 2005. That was followed by three more, Wife in the Fast Lane, Holly Would Dream and The Sister Diaries.  This July is the debut of Karen's first work of non-fiction, Testing for Kindergarten. I had the opportunity to sit down recently and ask Karen a few questions about her latest project as well as the process of Reinvention.

Sometimes we choose to reinvent and sometimes it chooses us.  You've been reinventing for a while now. What was the defining moment that made you take this turn towards non fiction?
Testing for Kindergarten was unfinished business. When my son Sam was three we discovered that his problems in school were not due to capability but to an ear problem. He could not hear properly. He did terribly on his IQ test and we were told he would never get into private school. Fortunately for us my mother had a PhD in Early Childhood Education and knew what to do. She was able to give me exercises to work with Sam every night. A year later he took the test again and got the highest score in the class!

That experience inspired me to co found Smart City Kids, a company dedicated to improving every child's chance of acceptance to the school of their choice. I left Smart City Kids  and used my experience with Sam to write my first novel, The Ivy Chronicles. But always in the back of my mind I wanted to take what I had learned and make this information available to other parents. The resources I write about are more than just prepping for a test, they are about getting your child ready for Kindergarten.

Where did you get the idea for the board game for Testing for Kindergarten?
I had a desire to create a workbook to go with the book. However my publisher was not ready to commit to that so I came up with the idea of a board game. I wanted to make this a fun learning experience for kids. I took all the things Sam loved when I was working with him  and made it into play. It's an IQ Fun Park complete with the beach, the farm, the toy store and space babies.

Is there an on line or video version?
I get that question alot and the answer is no. Part of what makes this work is the time a parent takes with their child plus you cannot assess IQ without hearing a child talk.

How has your work experience and education prepared you for this?
It actually inspired it. I tutored children at one time, although I do not recommend tutors. I think it puts too much stress on the child.

What has been the biggest surprise concerning your reinvention?
The biggest surprise is that I am still reinventing. Smart City Kids was the first phase which took me to The Ivy Chronicles. I thought being a novelist was it, but the reinvention just never stops.

What has come the easiest for you?
The gift of leaving Corporate America is that I get to pursue projects I am truly, passionately interested in. That's the easiest. This book was easy, because I was in my pleasure the whole time.

Do you have any regrets?
Only ones that have to do with buying New York real estate!

What do you love the most?
That every morning I do not have to take a subway or drive to an office. I waste no time in commuting and I don't have to get dressed up every day.

What do you miss the most?
A regular paycheck. That everything I do depends on me. I miss having people around to talk to although I do not miss the politics.

What are you most proud of?
That I turned myself into someone I never expected or thought I could be. I never thought my novels would be considered for movies. I surprise myself with all the cool things I get to do and discover all the things I never knew I could do. It's fun to recreate.

What advice would you give to others contemplating shaking up their lives?
If you have an idea, just sit down and do it. Even if you don't know how, don't think, just do the work. If you're still working full time and only have an hour a day, use it. Create a community of like minded people. Attitude is very important. You need to surround yourself with your cheerleaders.

Testing for Kindergarten is available today. The game version would be out next month. Karen invites parents of young children to come to her website and sign up to get a free test prep Question delivered to their email boxes every day and/or sign up to follow her new blog, The Baby Ivy Chronicles.
You can follow Karen on Twitter at http://twitter.com/karenquinnnyc.

Note: In the interest of full disclosure Karen Quinn and I are members of the same community of six cheerleaders. We  check in on each other formally once every two weeks and never hesitate to reach out for an emergency 911.  Karen's path inspires my own. I am very excited for her newest project to hit the marketplace!

After The Fireworks

According to the Oxford American Dictionary to discipline oneself to do something is to train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. 


Discipline is key when you are creating, whether it is a new novel, a new business or getting in gear to find your next job. But it all disappears like a display of fireworks in the night sky on the 4th of July when you take a break. 


Breaks are important. Critical in fact for any work you are involved in. But if you are like me, as disciplined as I can be, after a few days away, there is a lot of walking in circles before I can focus again.
Like this morning. I treated myself to a long holiday weekend filled not just with company of good friends, lots of sunshine, the beach and yummy food, but to a break from writing and from the addictive world of social networking and the Internet.  Away from it all, I made lists of projects I wanted to start and all those to dos that needed to be done. I felt inspired and fortified and anxious to get back to it. But today I'm sitting here surrounded by those papers watching the morning fade. 


I'm a self starter. I always have been. It is an important attribute in the world of sales, one that I get to make good use of as an authorpreneur and coach. But having that skill and honing it doesn't make days like today disappear. They show up uninvited and torture my reinventor mind.
The trick is to figure out what one little thing you can do to break through the dam that seems to have been built during your break. As a sales person, it was often as simple as making one appointment and getting the hell out of the office. For someone looking for a new job, it might be as simple as picking up the phone and following up on your last three interviews. 

Photo courtesy of Nancy Moon Public Relations

For me this morning, it was opening my morning pages document, the one where I write from a stream of consciousness to see what comes out or as one former writing teacher called it dreck which I believe is Yiddish for garbage. This is what I got this morning. An idea for a post. You might still consider it dreck but for me it was a baby step to get back into the discipline of creating after those fireworks.

The Work Never Ends

Our culture is big on goal setting. We strive towards that goal thinking if only, if only and when I get there it will all be different.  Then I won't have to work so hard at it anymore when the real truth is arriving at the goal is just the beginning.

I started the process of reinventing my life two years ago. I lived in the delusion for quite a while that eventually I would arrive at a reinvented life as if it were my stop on the subway. I would be home. But as it turns out, reinvention is a work in progress and if I do it right, will continually be so.  I will tweak it and add to it and continue to make it better for tomorrow than it is today.

The same is true of independence. This weekend we celebrate our country's birthday. In 1776 the United States officially separated all ties from what was considered the tyranny of England. Accompanying that was a document known as the Declaration of Independence. One of the most famous quotes from that paper is the following:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."


A powerful statement at that time and one that has served as the foundation for the freedoms we have today.

Except that Declaration was not the end goal. It was just the beginning. The document  was written by the committee of five who happened to be all white men. It did not include those new found freedoms for women nor for men who were not white. Declaring this country's independence was not the end but the beginning.

This photo was on the front page of The New York Times yesterday.

I was struck by the circle of faces surrounding Elena Kagan, all white men, grilling her with questions based on their concerns that she may be hiding some deep dark secret that might make her unfit for the bench and undermine their freedoms.  In response to Senator Tom Coburn's  "absolute fear" that Americans are less free than they were 30 years ago Senator Amy Klobuchar offered this response. "Were we really more free if you were a woman in 1980?"

The answer is no.  Freedom is another of those things that is not a destination, but a journey. It has been 234 years since the beginning of the concept of freedom in this country. We've fixed that part about "all men" to include all people, but we are still on the journey.  And on this July 4, 2010 we are still evolving. If Elena Kagan is confirmed she will be only the 4th women to serve on the Supreme Court in a two hundred plus year history. No woman has yet to hold the highest office in this nation.

So yes, there is still tweaking to do. More to add. The process continues, the goals arrived at become sign posts along the way. But the work never ends. Not for reinvention. Not for freedom.

Shameless Self Promotion

I've always been a good promoter. It comes with the territory when you spend as many years in sales and the advertising world as I did. But it was usually for someone or something else. Rarely myself.

However, things change. As an authorpreneur with a growing coaching practice, I am learning that self promotion is necessary and can actually be fun once you take the shame out of the equation.

I  learned the art of bragging in the first class I ever took with Regena Thomashauer. Regena would use the analogy that you meet a man at a cocktail party and he could brag unashamedly about his golf score to the point you might believe he was ready for the pro circuit.  Ask the woman next to him what she does for work and in a rather small voice she might mention her latest book was just selected for a Pulitzer Price, qualifying  that it's really no big deal.

Women more than men have clung to the idea that we  live in a meritocracy, where good work will be rewarded but more importantly noticed. I learned that to be a myth. That without speaking up and bragging about our achievements, we might never get noticed or worse passed over because someone whose work wasn't as good had a louder voice.

It's more important than ever that we get past what Kelly Watson calls the myths of self promotion in  a recent article at ForbesWoman. There are a lot of big voices out there in our 24/7 world. There can be no shame in self promotion.

It's not an easy thing to do. When my detox tech series was published as a column in ForbesWoman last week I thought nothing of posting it on Facebook and Twitter, but when it came to sending an email to my non social networked group of friends to brag about it, I had to take several deep breaths and wait for the combination of cultural and familial messages that had been embedded in my psyche that this was wrong to do passed  before I could hit send. Old habits, die hard, but they must die.

For anyone who is reinventing, starting their own business or looking for the next move in their current career, shameless self promotion will serve you well.

In this month's Oprah Magazine, Donna Brazile says this on accepting compliments. "I thought acknowledging praise meant you were arrogant, but I've learned that knowing your strengths enables you to make use of them."

And that is what I think is key about self promotion. Learning what you are good at, owning it,  believing it is worth sharing and letting it be known.