Planning Your 2017 Calendar by Kitty Bucholtz
February 10, 2017 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing: It's a Business tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, time management, Valentine's Day
It might seem in December when the new year is looking bright and shiny and empty that you can get everything done you ever imagined! But when you look back over the last year, you may realize that you are often overconfident about what you can do.
Being disappointed in yourself erodes your confidence for the next year, which erodes it for the following year, etc., and I want to help you keep that from happening. So this is what we’re going to do: go get a calendar. Any calendar will do, but one you like and can use easily will be the best one for you.
Starting in January, cross off every day that you know you won’t be able to work on your goals. For instance, if weekends are always for family, cross off all the Saturdays and all the Sundays from the year. Your 365 days just came down to 261 – poof! Just like that!
About how many days were you home sick last year? How many days were you taking care of someone else who was sick? Plan a few sick days into your calendar, subtracting them from the total days left but leaving them “available for use.” There is no point in feeling guilty about being sick, and we both know that a good rest will often get you back to work sooner and better than trying to work through it.
Now look at your list of the 5 to 10 goals you wrote down since last month. You can either plan forward or plan backward. To plan forward, look at each goal and figure out about how much you can accomplish per day on that goal. Then plot it out on your calendar to see what date that last day lands on. Put a sticky note on that date with the goal. The sticky note is so that when things come up, you can move the goal without scribbling all over your calendar.
Or if you already have a goal date in mind, you can plan backward. Say you want to finish the first draft of your next book by May 1. How many days do you have left on your calendar, the ones that are not crossed out, between now and May 1? And how many words do you expect your first draft to be – 50,000 words? 100,000 words? Take the word count and divide by the number of days. This is your daily writing goal.
Continue in this way, planning forward and/or backward for each goal, until you’ve plotted everything out on your calendar. Now look at each of the twelve months. Is it challenging but doable? Does it make you break out in a cold sweat? Do you need to move a few things around? Did you schedule in a little down time, “you” time?
Kitty Bucholtz
Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her superhero books for women and romantic comedies are available wherever ebooks are sold, as well as in print and audiobooks. Check out her new Valentine’s Day novella, My Bullheaded Superhero Valentine.
TITLES UNBORN
February 5, 2017 by Tracy Reed in category Pink Pad by Tracy Reed tagged as #amwriting, 12 Titles in 12 months, Edgy Christian Fiction, Tracy Reed
Have you ever been too tired to think or create? That’s how I feel right now, but unfortunately, I can’t relax. Or rather, I tried to take a little time off from writing and creating, but my mind refuses to cooperate.
After the full writing year, I had last year, I figured I’d take some time off from writing and become more of a reader. For the past few years, I’ve been doing the GoodReads Reading Challenge. Last year, I read forty-five books, ten were my own. Not a lot for most romance readers, but for me, it was a lot, and I struggled to get those read because of my production schedule. This year I pledged to read forty-eight and decrease the number of titles I created. Unfortunately, the joke is on me. Instead of relaxing my creative muscle, I’ve been writing. What’s even more bizarre is I don’t know how to turn off my writing muscle or even if I want to.
Like most writers I use or follow a Production Schedule. Last year it was easy to follow or stay motivated with my schedule because I set a challenging goal, 12 Titles in 12 Months. This year, I knew I wasn’t going to set such a lofty goal for myself, so I was able to breathe a little.
When I sat down to do my Production Schedule for this year, I looked at the titles that didn’t make the grade last year. Although I published 12 titles last year, I had actually started and brought close to completion four additional titles. Technically, last year I wrote approximately a half million words. For some that may not seem like a lot, but for someone like me that hasn’t been writing that long, that’s a lot.
Those titles that don’t have 2016 as their birth year have become the stars of my 2017 production schedule. Now the question is, when will they be born? I’m not quite sure. So far, I have one of the titles completed, a non-fiction lifestyle book. I’m very excited and passionate about this title because it deals with a subject that is dear to me…being a fabulous Christian single.
Originally, I wanted this book out in January because that’s when most people are searching for help on how to change their lives. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish the book until the end of January after rewriting the last chapter three times and adding an additional chapter. Now I’m waiting to proof it before I send it to my editor.
The other book I’m struggling to finish was originally supposed to be my December 2016 release. What started out as a five book series became a short story which has been reborn again as a novel. In its resurrection, it’s also undergone a name change and protagonist change. And one of the biggest changes about this book is voice.
I started writing this book in third person, but as the protagonist developed, I felt the need to tell his side in first person. So now, the story is being told by both the heroine and protagonist in first person. When I made that simple change…who am I kidding, that was by no means a simple task. Changing the voice meant I had to go back and rewrite and add some chapters after being thirty-thousand plus words into the story. I’m very curious to know how this story ends.
So here I am with a production schedule that’s taunting me because I’ve already missed my first release date. I want to move forward with the stories. However, I’m creatively tired. If you’ve ever experienced that, post or email me [tracyreedwriter@icloud.com] how you worked through it.
As for the other two titles, one is approximately thirty thousand words away from completion. The other story so far is charting the opposite path of the one I’m currently working on. It started out as a short story, but after writing the first three thousand words, I fell in love with the character and see he has more depth than a short or even a novella. His story will definitely be a full-length book, and if he talks to me correctly, he’ll become a series.
Let’s see how my unborn stories turn out.
Happy writing and creating….
Fiction for Women Who Love God, Couture and Cute Guys
Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer
February 3, 2017 by Marianne H. Donley in category Writing: It's a Business tagged as Elena Dillion, Marketing, OCC/RWA Online Class, Social Media
What is visual content and why do you need it for your marketing strategy? And how does this apply to your author business? The answer is fairly simple.
Visual content is anything that uses pictures, graphics, video, etc. When you see a GIF of cats falling off tables? That’s visual content. A pretty graphic with a quote from a book? Visual Content. Those fabulous cooking videos where they make a cinnamon roll apple pie in twenty seconds? Visual content.
It’s what will get your content seen. As a matter of fact, statistically, your readers are 44% more likely to engage with visual content. Hmmm. 44%? Hard to ignore. We all want to work smarter not harder, right? In this class, you will learn:
How to decide what kind of visuals will work for you and your business
How to create all kinds of visuals
How to make one piece of content work in many different ways
Drive traffic where you want it to go (your website, lead page, Amazon or other retailer page)
Save time and effort in your marketing efforts
This class for you if you’e never created any kind of graphics on your own. It’s for authors who need to learn how to create visual content for their author business and are unsure about using new technology. We will go over:
Strategies for smarter marketing
Tools that make visual content easier to create and more manageable
How to plan out your content and marketing so it takes up less precious writing time.
And believe it or not? I’ll make it fun. I’ll teach you how to create a graphic while you’re standing in line for coffee. =)
Join me for the fun in the February 2017 OCCRWA Visual Content Marketing for the Confused and Terrified Writer class!
About the instructor:
Who Am I?
I’m Elena Dillon, an author of the award winning Young Adult ‘Breathe’ series. When I’m not writing, I love to help my author friends with technology and social media. I’ve taught Social Media for the Confused and Terrified, Pinterest for the Confused and Terrified, Visual Content for Authors and spoken at numerous conferences, chapters and groups about social media and indie publishing.
Most of the time, I’m a wife to my husband of twenty-six years, mom to my two grown kids and servant to my high-maintenance English bulldog, Brutus, while I wait, not so patiently, for grandbabies.
Enrollment Information
This is a 4-week online course that uses email and Yahoo Groups. If you do not have a Yahoo ID you will be prompted to create one when you join the class, but the process is not difficult. The class is open to anyone wishing to participate.
Enroll at: http://occrwa.org/classes/february-online-class/
Class dates: February 13 to March 10
California Dreamin’ Is Right Around the Corner
February 2, 2017 by A Slice of Orange in category Writing Conferences, Writing: It's a Business
Only seven weeks to go until the California Dreamin’ Conference, March 24-26, 2017 at the beautiful Embassy Suites in Brea, California.
There’s still time to register!
Here’s an update from your conference committee:
- We’ve opened the signup for book cover advertising. For $25, you provide the artwork, we’ll produce the slide. If you’re an author, you just need to provide your photo and one book cover image and we’ll do the rest. The slide show runs during certain portions of the conference for all attendees. Add additional covers if you wish for just $20 each. Deadline is March 1st. Sign up here.
- Want a chance to win free registration at the 2019 California Dreamin’ Conference? Sign up to be a volunteer here. Remember, the conference is a non-profit endeavor of the four Southern California RWA chapters, and it can’t happen without the help of many generous volunteers.
- Our Conference Extras page is open for business. Need a marketing consultation? A professional headshot? A massage break at the conference? Check out all the good things being offered as Conference Extras and sign up here.
- Do you want to be part of the official conference thumb drive that will go to every conference attendee? If you’re registered for the conference, you can take advantage of this fabulous promotional opportunity sponsored by Smashwords by putting up to three of your books on the 4GB drive at no cost to you. Find more information here. Deadline is March 3rd. [When you’re ready to submit your book, be sure to look for the registration confirmation notice you received when you signed up for the conference and retrieve the registration ID that was sent to you.]
- Our slate of special Saturday Night Tales events has been announced. Tickets to these exclusive events will be drawn at the Saturday keynote dinner. Find out more information at https://caldreaminwriters.com/
Featured Books
LILIANA’S LETTER
Hired to help an heiress snare a titled husband, a down-on-her-luck lady dodges her own shadowy past and the titled Lord determined to uncover it.
More info →
