What My 2026 Writing Process Looks Like
January 12, 2026 by Denise M. Colby in category The Writing Journey by Denise Colby, Writing tagged as Denise M. Colby, Planning, writing processIt’s a new year and I’m sharing what my 2026 writing process looks like for my first post of the year. Part of this is for me to do an honest review of what is working and what is not. It also reminds me of what I need to do. I’m currently coming out of an editing phase and need to dive into writing the next book. Remembering what works for me helps. I did some of this in my December 2025 blog post as I reviewed my word for the year – flourish
Then I thought it would be helpful to write it out and share it. Holding myself accountable, but also providing others with ideas that they may have not tried yet.
I have found that there are multiple things needed in order to complete a manuscript. Some of this is what comes inside of a person. Determination. Discipline. Action.
But as many authors have asked as they write. What type of action? How do I find time? What type of schedule do I keep? How do I know if I’m doing the right things? What comes next? Asked a bazilion times, over and over.
Writing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
When I got my contract, I had my first book finished and two rough drafts done. Or what I thought were rought drafts. I had to literally start over, and so the dates I had comitted to, I had to figure out how to deliver. It took my twelve years to write and publish the first book. Six months to write the next three. Add into that mix, editing sessions, proofing sessions, cover design, back matter, inside matter, launch team, promotions, newsletters, and the list goes on. There are a lot of things to juggle.
And you know what? I did it. I’ve released three books in the last two years, with the fourth one releasing in May 2026. Check out my Best-laid Plans Series page on Amazon.
It’s amazing when we have deadlines how we make it work.
But I also got more streamlined the further I went. This has helped me immensely.
The Writing Process I Morphed Into
By far there are a few things I know now I can’t live without in order to write, and I will continue to use these writing processes for 2026.
First is my critique group. Their feedback and support has been a continuous blessing. We send a chapter a week when we need something reviewed. Not all of us are in the writing phase so it’s not everyone sending a chapter a week. This helps. It’s like a rotation. And it has worked for us.
The next thing on my list would be the writing sprint group I belong to. It would be very easy for me to sleep in, get distracted by laundry, or not show up when it’s only myself. But having a 7am zoom call with others writers has helped not only finish three books, I have resources at my fingertips to ask during our five minute breaks.
So if you do not have a community of writers to work with, I suggest joining a local writing group, or an online group. There are many available by genre or in general. Ask here what you are looking for and I can provide links to one of the five groups I belong to (yes, five – and I love them all in different ways.)
I also set realistic weekly goals for myself. I love to cross out something on a list. So I write out all the chapters I need to write, figure out how many writing sessions (I use twenty-five minute sprints where I can write at least 500 words as my calculator) I need to do, then plan for so many words in a week.
When editing, I create a page with the chapter numbers and put a sticker by them to tell me they are done. All of this adds fun, accountability, and helps me see my goals accomplished.
Other writing tools I’ve used and will continue in 2026
Focus@will – this website has allowed me to pick music and sounds that fit my mood, and helps elevate my brain focus while writing. I feel I write stronger when I use it. It has a timer so I keep to the twenty-five minute sprints I’m now used to.
Scrivener – this is the software I use to write my manuscripts
Apple notes – I started using this two years ago and it has worked well. It syncs between my computer, phone, and ipad, so that when an idea hits, I can capture it and then access it when and where I need to. I have built a lot of folders within notes. One folder by book. When writing the book, I have scene ideas and brainstorms, then later I put all my launch info in one note (with links).
I’ve added a research folder and put all the links to things there as I find things. Yes, Scrivener has a place for research but I use that for book specific things. The research I’m leaving in notes work across my series. So in some ways I’ve made a little story bible within notes for easy access.
Other folders I’ve added include a social media folder where I type out my posts first (so I can control the spacing and links), as well as marketing folders for newsletters, bookfunnel promotions, blog posts (I have all my links on a page). This has come in handy when I’ve needed to find things quickly. Much faster than trying to find the file I saved.
2026 Writing Process improvements
I always love starting a new year with reflection and planning. Even though I hope this year is more of the same writing process I’m already doing, I hope it continues to become more refined. so I can write and publish more books.
What is part of your writing process wheelhouse that you can share with all of us?
0 0 Read moreFinding Peace and Joy Again by Kitty Bucholtz
January 9, 2026 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as ADHD in writers, It's Worth It, joy, Kitty Bucholtz, menopause, Perimenopause, writing
It’s been a rough few years for me. Burnout, butt-kicking perimenopause, then menopause that didn’t “pause” my symptoms much. I’ve felt broken. And every January, I hope and pray that this year will be better. This New Year’s, I barely let myself consider the idea for fear that I will be disappointed yet again.
And yet…
A friend of mine has been urging me for months to read some of the materials she’s found on ADHD in adult women. I’ve resisted, feeling these diagnoses are yet another fad created by Big Pharma to increase their profits at our expense. But I finally listened to one of the audiobooks over Christmas vacation. I felt as gobsmacked as when I took the CliftonStrengths test a year or so ago!
Suddenly, it seemed a light turned on in my head showing me what I already knew about myself but with a lot more depth and clarity and understanding. Both times, it was like I could see things I knew were there (like the living room couch, the TV stand, the window covered with blackout curtains) but now I could SEE them! The couch is red and has thick, soft cushions. The TV stand is small, made of pale wood, but the TV is quite large. And the window is bigger and lets in more light than I realized when it was curtained.
What a difference!!
Personality traits that I have been both comfortable with and frustrated by now appear to be different than I’d thought. Maybe I wasn’t actually broken; maybe some of my tools had broken. The tools I’d used to cope with life (we all have them, whatever our personality traits) stopped working as well when hormones and stress blind-sided me. But the books I’ve been reading have reminded me that I am not broken and I don’t need to be fixed. I’ve just been shoved, hard, off course and need to catch my breath and remind myself how to get back up again.
I have no interest in getting tested for ADHD by a psychiatrist or psychologist, but I am very interested in improving my toolbox: sharpening old skills, developing new ones, perhaps letting go of mechanisms that no longer work as well for me. And I think this is going to make a big difference in my writing.
I’ve just started reading The Artist’s Joy by Merideth Hite Estevez, and The ADHD Advantage by Dale Archer, M.D. Both are blowing me away and making me feel — I’m not the only one who feels this way!! (The book that I first read on my friend’s suggestion is A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD by Sari Solden, M.S.)
If you’re feeling overwhelmed with life, or lacking joy and passion, perhaps some of these books or other similar titles will help you get a better handle on what’s not working and how to get back on track again. I’ll continue writing about this in the future in case it’s helpful!
0 0 Read moreSeason’s Greetings
December 30, 2025 by Dianna Sinovic in category Quill and Moss by Dianna Sinovic, Writing tagged as holidays, short fiction, writing
Just one week until Christmas. This is my last craft fair for the season—thank god! I have been selling my hand-crafted greeting cards every weekend since early October, and let me tell you, I’m burned out. I’ve done okay, made my table fees back at most events, but it’s a grind. Today, I’m set up in a community center near Reading, along with what must be forty other vendors.
This is your last chance, people, to find the perfect gift! My perfect gift would be a medical miracle for my dad. He’s been unconscious for two weeks, since the car wreck on I-80. The doctors say he should recover—if he wakes up. But he’s pushing eighty. It may not happen.
That would make a good card theme, right? A get-well wish made for people whose loved one is in a coma. May they snap out of it. Or, how about: Wake up, sleepy Jean. But that’s my dark humor bubbling up. Damn it, now my eyes are blurry.
The crowd today has been steady, and there’s plenty of buying going on, judging by the packed bags people are toting around. Most of the merchandise has no appeal for me; I’m not into ninety-dollar stone reindeer, or fat crocheted cats, or ceramic tabletop Christmas trees, or polished plaques that say “What-cha cookin’.” To be fair, my stuff doesn’t appeal to everyone either. I’ve had window shoppers tell me point-blank, “I don’t send cards.”
Still, I have my regulars and I love ‘em. They buy from me every year, oohing and ahhing over my new designs. But the nonbuyers are right: Who sends greeting cards anymore? Especially when you can zap out an e-card or text an emoji or even write a general Insta post—that takes care of a lot of people in one sweep.
Greeting cards are special to me, though. I used to do a bit of calligraphy, fancy addresses on envelopes, cool name tags, that sort of thing. Then I discovered watercolors, and the people at work said I had talent, and here we are.
But you can’t please everybody. Some folks don’t like my designs. Not religious enough, they say. I say, my cards touch people’s souls; do you? Other folks want a poem inside—they’re the Hallmark crowd. I don’t do poetry, not that kind anyway. Make me write a poem, and I’ll give you Macbeth: Foul is fair and fair is foul.
And some people even expect me to mail the cards for them. If you pay for postage, I’ll think about it.
It’s about a half hour before this craft event is over and I can stuff my wares into my SUV and head home. Later, I’ll stop by the hospital and sit with Dad for a while. And keep my fingers crossed, hoping. Mom passed six years ago, and he’s all I’ve got left. My brother lives across the country and can’t be bothered.
I reach for a box beneath my table to start packing up. The place is emptying out; I doubt I’ll get many more customers at this hour. Then I see him, one of my regulars. He’s heading my way, his eyes roving my displays and finally finding my gaze.
“Hi, Roy,” I say. “It’s about time you showed up.” I rib him gently; he always buys a handful of cards.
“What’s new this year?” He stands about my height, stocky with a beard. His watch cap in Eagles green has slid up his forehead, revealing the worry lines that come with life. I know nothing about him beyond his first name. He’s friendly enough, but he’s never revealed anything personal in our interactions. Married? Loner? I have no idea.
I spin the rack to a new design, a swirl of deep indigo tinged with a hint of orange along one edge. The dark of the storm before the dawn. Before I can pick it up, he has his hand on it.
“Yes,” he says. “This’ll do.” He selects a half-dozen other designs, then stares at me briefly. “The storm clouds are thinning, I think.”
I record his purchase and place the cards and their envelopes in a slim paper bag. He hands over the cash. Without thinking, I blurt, “Peace be with you.” Where that came from, I have no idea. I’m not devout about anything but my cards.
He nods once. “Best wishes for your father,” he says, and strides away.
“What?” I murmur. I must have misunderstood. When I open my hand to count the money, mixed in with the bills is a Patriots key chain. My dad’s favorite team, even years after he left New England. “Wait,” I call out, but when I look up, Roy has merged into the trickle of customers. I no longer see him.
Odd. He must had carried the key chain in his pocket and pulled it out without realizing it. I run a thumb over the raised logo. A Patriots symbol deep in Eagles country, just like Dad. He’ll chuckle at the irony—. I stop my thoughts before I lose my composure. How did Roy know about Dad?
As I box up inventory and break down my racks, my phone lights up. It’s the hospital. Suddenly lightheaded, I sit on my folding stool, gripping the phone so hard my fingers ache.
“Yes?” I say, afraid to hear whatever news they have to share.
There is a pause as a connection switches and it’s the nursing station.
They say: My father is now awake and alert.
And he’s asking for me.
More of Dianna’s Stories
My WW2 Christmas Novella ‘A Soldier’s Italian Christmas’ was inspired by a special Christmas Eve in Italy and me getting kicked out of the convent by Jina Bacarr
December 11, 2025 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing tagged as Christmas eve, comics, Italy, World War 2, writing
‘I regret to inform you, but your daughter is no longer enrolled here,’ the Mother Superior announced to my parents on a cold, winter day in Bethlehem, PA. I was thirteen.
I hung my head, sad for my parents, but still not understanding what the hullabaloo was all about. It wasn’t like I was a longtime student at the convent school. I’d only been there a short time. Very short.
When my poor father asked why I wasn’t staying, the stern nun said in a crisp, clear voice: ‘She reads comics.’
Really?
True, the Sisters of Mercy catered to young girls thinking about joining the Order and with my sassy poetry writing and short skirts I was borderline — below borderline — but comics stashed under my hard pillow with my missal and rosary beads was the last straw for the pious woman. She knew I wasn’t nun material. I wanted to travel, meet cute guys, dance, eat chocolates at Ladurée in Paris…
And so I did. I had wild adventures up and down the Continent and spent Christmas with the troops in Italy. Yes, that’s me in the photo reading comics — I was with US Army Special Services on a trip with soldiers and their families to Abetone in the Italian Alps for a skiing trip. I found an Uncle Scrooge comic book in Italian and devoured it. I often read comics in different languages to learn the vernacular, slang, everyday expressions.
Not the catechism required at the convent.
But the good Sisters taught me about humility, giving, discipline. Traits that kept me out of trouble and helped me become a writer. So even though I wasn’t a good ‘fit’ to take the veil, I will always be grateful to the Sisters behind the revolving door of parochial and convent schools I attended. Sometimes the nuns uttered a sigh of relief when I left, others hugged me and cried over me leaving. They ‘got’ me with one nun giving me time during study hall to write my ‘Paris mystery novel’ when I was fourteen.
I often wondered if I should have entered a life of religious service since I have a strong need for detail and strict discipline to finish what I started, along with my fanatical dive into deep research mode for my stories, and my love of teaching children. Qualities needed to take that path and I just didn’t see it. That question prompted me to write a WW2 Christmas novella about a young woman who hides from the Nazis by becoming ‘Sister Angelina’ in charge of a motely group of orphan boys… then she meets Captain Mack O’Casey, an American Army captain who tests her faith…
Add to it a Christmas Eve memory at the service club where I worked in Livorno, Italy (we hosted a Christmas party for orphan boys and the nuns and how the EMs Enlisted Men helped me locate a lost little orphan named Daniele), and you have ‘A Soldier’s Italian Christmas’.
I hope you enjoy my video posted below near the end of this post! Merry Christmas!!
Jina xx
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My time travel back to WW2:
HER LOST LOVE:
Enjoy a trip back to Posey Creek, PA during WW 2 on the home front as Kate Arden prepares for the holidays… until her world comes crashing down when her fiancé ships overseas in ‘Her Lost Love’.
Available at e-tailers everywhere… print and audio book, too.
Find out more in HER LOST LOVE E-book links:
US Amazon https://amzn.to/2pcz2eN
UK Amazon https://amzn.to/31rF4pZ
Follow me on BookBub for new releases and promo deals!
Time travel back to Christmas 1943 on the home front with my holiday Women’s Fiction novel HER LOST LOVE
——————
On a cold December day in 1955, Kate Arden got on a train to go home for Christmas. This is the story of what happened when she got off that train. In 1943. In 1943 Kate Arden was engaged to the man she loved, Jeffrey Rushbrooke. She was devastated and heartbroken when he was called up for wartime duty and later killed on a secret mission in France.
But what if Kate could change that? What if she could warn him and save his life before Christmas? Or will fate have a bigger surprise in store for her?
Her Lost Love is a sweeping, heartbreakingly romantic novel – it’s one woman’s chance to follow a different path and mend her broken heart…
———–
HER LOST LOVE
Thank you for stopping by! If you like WW 2 romance, check out my holiday novella that takes place in Italy on the road to Rome on Christmas Eve during the cold winter of 1943: A Soldier’s Italian Christmas.
December 1943 Italy
He is a US Army captain, a battle-weary soldier who has lost his faith.
She is a nun, her life dedicated to God.
Together they are going to commit an act the civilized world will not tolerate.
They are about to fall in love.
Winner in the Novella Category in the I Heart Indie contest A Soldier’s Italian Christmas is available on Kindle ~Jina
Also, my Civil War medical drama: LOVE ME FOREVER is available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited Liberty Jordan travels back to 1862 as an re-enactor– I love the Christmas scene with Liberty tending to the wounded from both the North and the South…
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If you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner: LOVE ME FOREVER
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war. And time.
0 1 Read morePlanning for Peace by Kitty Bucholtz
December 9, 2025 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, menopause, organization, Perimenopause, Planning, writing
Everyone who knows me knows I’m big on planning. That’s because my brain gets all stressed out if I don’t know what’s going on, whether I have time to say yes to something, or when I’m afraid I’m missing out on something. That’s why I already know where we’re spending Christmas (with friends a few minutes away), what I’m bringing for dinner (a homemade chocolate pie, homemade cornbread, and drinks), and what I’ll be wearing (embroidered jeans, a lightweight knit shirt, and taking both a sweater and sweatpants for warmth and comfort later). All that in the first week of December! Woohooo!! And now I’m not stressed at all about Christmas. (Yup, Christmas shopping already done!)
But when it comes to still trying to balance the changes menopause is having on my brain and my energy with the goals I want to achieve in 2026…well, planning in a way that will bring me the most peace is critical. One of the things I learned is that cortisol, the stress hormone, can make menopause symptoms worse. So if I’m feeling stressed by how I’m feeling (or by how it’s keeping me from achieving my goals!), the stress actually makes the symptoms worse.
Not to mention the fact that unused cortisol (if there are no tigers to run from or I don’t walk it off quickly) gets stored as fat. Great. Talk about insults and injuries.
I bought a one-year subscription to MasterClass.com last Christmas because Halle Berry hosted a 90-minute “class” with interviews with several doctors and women going through menopause. Here I am two weeks before my subscription expires and I finally finished watching it and taking notes. There was a lot of good information in the class, but let me give you a few bullet points that fit with my topic of planning for peace.
- Decluttering — I knew this was not a time-waster or procrastination technique!! But I’d let people convince me it was, and my mess has been stressing me out all year. It’s gotten to the point, I don’t even like to spend much time in my office. Several items on my to-do list now have to do with sorting papers that are currently piled everywhere, filing the important must-keep stuff in boxes I just bought, and throwing out as much as I can. I need to let go of all the old plays I wrote a million years ago…even though I don’t really want to. I never look at them, won’t use them again, and don’t have room in our small apartment to keep writing only for nostalgia’s sake. (And no, for those about to leave a comment about scanning them or taking photos, it would take me weeks to do that! I have a lot of old writing!)
- Have a “launchpad” where you keep your keys, your wallet, your purse, your phone/charger, etc. I’ve never called it a launchpad, but I get the idea. I have a bowl I made in pottery class in college where I put all those things. It is so stressful when I’m rushing out the door for the train and realize one of those items did not make it to the bowl and now I have to look “everywhere” for it…because right now my brain can’t remember.
- Prioritizing tasks on your list before you begin. Many days I only have a few hours of functioning brain time, so I need to be sure that if I can only get one thing done today, it’s the right thing. And if I can get 2 or 3 things done, they are things I’ll be happy or relieved got done. Much as I want to watch the last episode of The Beast in Me on Netflix to find out how it ends, that is not the best use of my limited brain-time right now! And because limited brain-time has made me perpetually behind in all my goals, when I have a good day (like today!) and can get a dozen things done, I want them to be the things I desperately needed to have done last week and the week before.
- Organizational Skills Therapy — one of the doctors mentioned this and I have no idea what it is, but it sounds awesome!! I’m totally Googling it later!
So those four items are now on my list of tools I want to use to plan for peace in 2026. I have no idea what to expect next year. My brain seems to maybe be working better, but I’ve thought that in the past right before a new wave of menopause hell bowled me over. At least with these tools, I can get a few of the most important items done and choose to be satisfied with it, not stressing about what I can’t control.
I hope this is helpful for you as well! Whether you’re in need of this information or know someone you can share it with, it’s always good to have some reliable tools in your author — and life — toolkit. I hope you plan for a peaceful and joyful end of 2025 and that it spills over into all of 2026. God bless you! And Merry Christmas!
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