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The Power of a Restart – by Kitty Bucholtz

July 9, 2018 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as Goal Setting, Kitty Bucholtz, time management, Writing Goals, writing life

Since it’s early July, I’ve been thinking about and talking about and podcasting about hitting the Restart button. How have we been getting on with the writing goals we decided upon six months ago?

I know that I am way off from what I expected. Moving to another country will do that to you! So I’ve been thinking about how I want to adjust the year to finish with strong, achievable goals. I did a live broadcast presentation for the Yosemite Romance Writers in May, and decided to use the recording for a mid-year podcast. Here’s the link to the audio, and here’s the embedded video.

Right after I posted that episode, it occurred to me that it might be a good time for a personal goal review as well. When I started thinking about that for myself, I realized I had some changes to make in my life if I wanted to accomplish my new/biggest goal for the year – recovering from burnout.

Here is the link to the audio. And here is the video with my self-discovery. 😉

I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from people about the episodes where I’ve talked about my firsthand experience with burnout. (Here’s the embarrassingly honest look at my journey in audio and in video.) Now that I see how much it affects other people as well, I’m going to bring on more guests to talk about how to recover and how to avoid it. I hope my willingness to talk about both burnout and restarting helps others – you included! 😀

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Easy Goal Setting for Everyone by Kitty Bucholtz

January 18, 2017 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing: It's a Business tagged as Goal Setting, goals, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, writers goals, Writing Goals

Welcome to 2017!

It’s January, and you know what that means: time to plan your goals for the year. Right?

Don’t Be Discouraged!

Depending on how well last year’s goal setting went, this might be easier said than done. Maybe you’ve tried a lot of ways to plan and they haven’t turned out very well. The biggest thing to remember is to find a method that works for you.

I’ve been teaching a time management and goal setting class for the last eight or nine years (not this January, as I’m busy living and writing books in New Zealand!), and there are a couple of things I’ve found that seem to work for most people.

Write It Down

The first thing you need is a list. Write down every single goal you have for your life this year . . . personal, financial, spiritual, career or writing-related . . . anything at all, write it down. This is your Goals Master List.

It may take you a day or a week to get everything written down, but once you think you’ve got it all, go through and circle the five most important goals. These will be your Primary Goals for the year.

Now go through and underline the next five most important goals. These will be your Secondary Goals for the year.

Move Some Goals to Next Year

Look at the rest of the items on your Goals Master List. Does it seem like there is more than you can do this year? Let me give you a hint: the answer is almost always yes. If there is anything that you are willing to put off until next year, get another piece of paper and move these onto your 2018 Goals Master List.

Now you have your primary goals, your secondary goals, and your extra goals. The idea is that you will work on your five primary goals first, and when they are accomplished you will work on your secondary goals. Then, if you get all of your primary and secondary goals accomplished this year, you’ll work on your extra goals.

Rearrange Some Goals

If, when looking at your lists, you feel like this won’t work for you, then you probably need to move some of your goals around. That doesn’t mean adding more than five to the primary or secondary lists but simply exchanging one goal for another more important one.

Congratulations! You have your 2017 goals list!

Fewer Goals, Better Chance You’ll Achieve Them

Another way to do this, which arguably might be more achievable, is to look at your goals master list and choose no more than 7 to 10 goals for the whole year. That’s it. You can work at each of them a little at a time or work at one all the way through, it’s up to you. If you want, you can choose two or three extras that you will begin working on only when you finish the most important 7 to 10 goals.

Go back to your original goals master list and try the second method. Now, look at both final lists. Which one speaks to you more? Which one excites you more? That’s the one you should type up and print out.

Or if you’re feeling artistic, rewrite it with colored pencils and pens and stickers and make it beautiful.

A Daily Reminder to Keep You on Track

Post it on your wall, someplace where you’ll see it often, and make sure to look at it every day.

If you haven’t started your goal setting for this year, or if you feel overwhelmed by the thought of it or the thought of failing to achieve your goals, give this a try.

Then post a comment below or write me an email and let me know how it went. I know you can do this!

I’m super excited about 2017. It’s going to be a great year!

[Follow my post next week on Planning Your 2017 Calendar on Writer Entrepreneur Guides!]

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 novels, Little Miss Lovesick, A Very Merry Superhero Wedding, and Unexpected Superhero are currently available on Amazon . The free short story Superhero in Disguise and the new short story Welcome to Loon Lake are available wherever ebooks are sold. You can find out about her courses on self-publishing, marketing, and time management for writers at her website Writer Entrepreneur Guides.

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Going the Distance Time Management Class by Kitty Bucholtz

January 9, 2016 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as Goal Setting, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Online Class, time management, Writing Goals

I’m super excited to announce that my annual goal setting and time management class for writers is about to start up again! And in lucky year seven (can you believe I’ve been teaching this for seven years?!) I’m creating a new website and making an important change to the class.

The lessons will continue to be the same – helping you figure out your goals for the year, breaking them down into pieces for each month, and plotting everything on a calendar so you can be sure you have enough time for everything you’ve planned – but I’m also adding six (6) monthly live video calls to help you stay on track.

No matter how well we plan our days, something always comes up to knock us off balance, a little or a lot. Having someone there to help you set things straight again, to re-evaluate and restart your plan, is sometimes the difference between spinning your wheels and getting back on the horse (to mix some transportation metaphors 😉 ).

With this new version of the class, you won’t be left to your own devices. We’ll work to keep you on track for six full months! By then, you’ll for sure know what to do when things come up during the last six months of the year. Excellent!

The sign-up page is almost ready – I’ll edit this post in a few days when the link is live. If you have any questions about the class, please email me at kitty@kittybucholtz.com. I look forward to helping you make 2016 your best year ever!

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 novels, Little Miss Lovesick, A Very Merry Superhero Wedding, and Unexpected Superhero are currently available on Amazon. The free short story “Superhero in Disguise” and the new short story “Welcome to Loon Lake” are available wherever ebooks are sold. You can find out about her courses on self-publishing, marketing, and time management for writers at her website Writer Entrepreneur Guides.

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Goal Setting — When you don’t make a goal

May 3, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Book in a Year, Goal Setting, Louisa Bacio, OCC/RWA, President's Message, writer's tips

What happens when you donâ€™t make your goals? At the April meeting, I had two goals I had set. One was to finish and submit a contemporary novella, and the other was to log an additional 2,500 words on my Book-in-a-Year project. Only one of those happened.

For someone who can regularly sit down and do a #1K1HR â€“ thatâ€™s Twitter-speak for 1,000 words in an hour, you would think a mere 2,500 words in 30 days would be a piece of cake. Nope. Failed. The story haunted me, literally, so what happened?

Well, I can officially place blame on two occurrences. 1) I became distracted by a Call for Submissions by editor Salome Wilde for an erotic anthology featuring Shakespeare stories. Itâ€™s Shakespearotica. With my masterâ€™s degree in English, Iâ€™m a bit of a word-geek. Iâ€™ve admitted to that in the past. When the original April 1 deadline was extended to May 15, inspiration struck. Within 24 hours, I wrote the complete story, about 5,000 words (see where Iâ€™m going with the word count potential?). So when I could have been slaving away on my YA, another story stole my attention altogether.

Good news? That story was finished, edited and submitted, and now I play the waiting game.

The second setback came in the form of life: A child with the stomach flu. Sometimes, as a parent, you really canâ€™t prepare for lack of sleep and worry, and what itâ€™ll do to your psyche. In my case, with my husband out of town, it killed my desire to write. (Coupled with spring break, and there went my productivity.)

Anyway, why the excuses? Well, I know Iâ€™m not the only one who may not be making goals each month, and Iâ€™m here to say: Itâ€™s all right. You donâ€™t need to beat yourself up. As long as you know youâ€™re doing your best. You are pushing forward, and making progress.

Now to get a little more serious. I noticed someone had crossed their name off the Book-in-a-Year sign-up sheet. Iâ€™m not outing anyone. Itâ€™s â€œpublicâ€ knowledge. Anyone who wants to pick up the sheet and look at it, can. I didnâ€™t even look that close to try to see who the individual was. My question, though, is why? We still have more than five months to complete the book. PLENTY of time.

I know to some the task may seem impossible. But, many people do it. I have a book deadline of August 15 for a 50,000-word manuscript, and it really hasnâ€™t been started yet. Oh, I have the idea and a synopsis, maybe even an opening chapter, but all that accounts to less than 2,000 words. That one will definitely have to be finished before October rolls around.

Maybe itâ€™s time to reevaluate the goals youâ€™ve been setting. Are they reasonable? Do you mix maybe one tougher goal, and one thatâ€™s a bit easier to accomplish? Right now, we have four months down out of the year. Where do you want to be by the end of the year?

Hereâ€™s a look at my goals:

Submit requested contemporary
Revise and submit paranormal novella
Book 7 in The Vampire, The Witch & The Werewolf series
YA Book-in-a-Year
Third 1Night Stand for Decadent Publishing
Preppers Romance for Decadent Publishing
Complete second paranormal novella in new series
Holiday novella

Looking at that list makes me a bit tired. Some big goals there â€¦ and Iâ€™m on my way to completing them. Not finishing a goal may put me one step back, but have to keep pushing forward.

— Louisa Bacio

http://louisabacio.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/louisabacio

http://www.twitter.com/louisabacio

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