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A Filter For Your Writing Well by Kitty Bucholtz

August 9, 2010 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It

I had a bad week last month. I got a couple of my final school papers in the mail and I wasnâ€™t pleased with my grades nor all the comments from my teachers. I thought Iâ€™d done a lot better than I had. (If you didnâ€™t know, Iâ€™m getting my Master of Arts in Creative Writing degree at UTS in Sydney.) Like so many things in life, I didnâ€™t fully understand what had so upset me until a few days after my mini-meltdown.

The shortest explanation is one a friend had to remind me of â€“ the last year and a half has seen a lot of huge changes in my life. Regardless of the fact that I wanted most of those changes (moving around the world, going back to school), they still take a physical and emotional toll. Add in some short-term good things (company from America) and some short-term irritations (accountant needed more tax info from me that I had to find), and I found myself getting angry to one degree or another regularly, finally losing it when I received my school papers.

The reason I didnâ€™t recognize what was happening is that it was all on the inside. Iâ€™d get mad about something, vent, and move on to the next thing. Iâ€™d get frustrated, take some deep breaths and push through. Then Iâ€™d get down about something (grades) and find myself unable to get up again. Because I was focused on trying to push through, to be strong and keep plugging along, I wasnâ€™t paying attention to what was happening on the inside until I couldnâ€™t get out of bed one day.

The day that happened I knew I had some serious thinking to do. It finally occurred to me that I was low-level angry at all kinds of things a lot of the time. In the stress of my first semester of grad school, Iâ€™d let my interior monitor get out of sync. By the end of the semester, I couldnâ€™t even tell I was stressed about anything. But that morning in bed I realized Iâ€™d stopped making a conscious choice about how I wanted to react to the situations around me. Iâ€™d gotten into the habit of letting myself feel frustrated at every opportunity, at the world, at others, and at myself.

So for the last week, Iâ€™ve been practicing choosing not to be angry, frustrated, or depressed about things. Itâ€™s amazing how many opportunities there were for practice! But my interior monitor is getting re-synced. Iâ€™m getting better at reading myself again, and knowing when something needs to give, or change, or be left behind.

I was at a friendâ€™s house who has a reverse-osmosis filter at her kitchen sink. She reminded me to fill my water glass using the filtered water rather than the regular tap water. The parallel between the water and my bad week was instantaneous. She needed a filter so that the water coming through her old pipes would not bring up all the rust and other deposits into the glass.

We need the same kind of filter when we are writing. We need something that purifies the water coming up out of our inner well. For many of us, that filter is the joy of writing. But that filter needs to be cleaned regularly or it stops working as well. Iâ€™m trying to shine up my joy-of-writing filter every time I sit down to write now. I picture myself writing happily on my book, and I let that image seep into me until I can feel myself smiling over how much Iâ€™ll enjoy it. Then I start writing.

Like with any other rejection, I gave myself 24-48 hours to get over the sting of those first semester grades. Then I went back to work on my book, knowing that I understand my target market and believing that Iâ€™m doing a good job even if my academic acquaintances only half-agree.

If you havenâ€™t done so lately, take a minute and check your interior monitor. Do you need to take a break? Do you need a cleaner writing filter? Or is your writing well clean and full of fresh ideas? I think Iâ€™m going to try to add this to my monthly or quarterly routines.

Kitty Bucholtz is the co-founder of Routines for Writers, a web site dedicated to helping writers write more. She writes romance novels, light urban fantasy novels for adults and young adults, and magazine articles. She is currently enrolled in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing program at University of Technology, Sydney.

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The Cost of Writing by Kitty Bucholtz

July 9, 2010 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It

When I was in business school, I learned about opportunity cost. In general, if you have $20 and you want to see a movie, eat lunch out, and buy a new blouse, all the things you donâ€™t do with the $20 is part of the cost of what you do choose to do. So if you buy a new blouse, it cost you $20 plus eating a sack lunch plus not seeing a movie this week. If you go to a movie and have lunch out, it cost you $20 plus foregoing movie snacks plus foregoing a sit-down lunch and eating fast food instead plus waiting to buy a new blouse.

When you choose what to do with your time, what you donâ€™t do is the cost of what you chose to do. Every time I choose to watch an hour of TV with my husband, it costs me an hour of writing (or anything else I might have done with that hour). Conversely, every time I spend an hour writing or working in the evening, it costs me an hour with my husband. How many of us have gone to see a movie that we expected to be fun and came out complaining, â€œWell, thatâ€™s two hours of my life Iâ€™ll never get back again!â€ No matter what you do with your time, itâ€™s time you wonâ€™t get back again. That might be what someone was thinking when they came up with the slogan, â€œWork hard, play hard.â€

Instead of focusing on all the things we arenâ€™t getting done (this is me, every day), we need to focus on what is the best use of our time now. In an hour, we might want to stop for a second and ask the question again. Perhaps again in four hours, or in another 30 minutes. If we can tap into a kind of moment-by-moment wisdom and allow ourselves to accept that we likely wonâ€™t accomplish everything we want to do â€“ or perhaps even need to do â€“ we can find greater peace and deeper joy in every moment, no matter what weâ€™re doing.

Next week, Iâ€™m going to participate in a Book-in-a-Week challenge with my Sydney RWA group. To do that, it will cost me a great deal. I wonâ€™t be able to work on my taxes (the Australian tax year ends June 30); I wonâ€™t be able to clean my office; I wonâ€™t be able to do any but the most basic housecleaning; I wonâ€™t be able to hang out with friends, etc. But Iâ€™ve decided the cost is worth the benefit. I want to get my book out in August, and this is what itâ€™s going to take.

The following week, one of the first things Iâ€™m going to do is clean my office. While this can be a procrastination technique, sometimes not doing it has too high a price. The time it took me to complete my U.S. taxes earlier this year was nearly double because I couldnâ€™t find all my files after I moved. In the last ten months that weâ€™ve been in this apartment, I have spent 20-30 hours (conservative estimate) looking for things that I couldnâ€™t find because I never finished organizing my office (nor the office stuff that never made it into the office). The cost of organizing will probably be 10-15 hours of writing time. But the benefit will be 20-40 extra hours of writing time in the next six months because I wonâ€™t have to spend time digging through piles and boxes again.

Opportunity cost can feel double-edged â€“ no matter what good you do with your time (writing, helping a friend), there is some other good you are not doing (spending time with family, doing taxes). And I feel a hundred times worse when I look back and realize Iâ€™ve made a poor choice, not even a halfway decent choice. (Because I watched two hours of TV on my lunch break, I now have to write or do taxes when John is home so I canâ€™t spend time with him.) What is a person to do?

I find one of the best sources of wisdom to be the book of James in the Bible. James says trials and testing develop perseverance, which develops character. He says if anyone lacks wisdom, she should ask God who gives it generously to all. If we have faith, but donâ€™t follow it up with work, our faith is pointless. So if I believe Iâ€™m good enough to be published but I donâ€™t finish my manuscripts and send them out, my faith in my gifts is useless to me.

But James also encourages us to take a deep breath and remember weâ€™re only human and we all stumble in many ways. He reminds us that bitter envy and selfish ambition do not help us succeed in any goal. He says wisdom that comes from heaven is pure, peace-loving, considerate and more. (Youâ€™ll find these in a good writerâ€™s group.) He reminds us that we donâ€™t even know how long our lives are or what will happen in them, so not to get hung up on set-in-concrete goals. We should just say, if God and life allow it, I will do this or that. He also encourages us to have patience, to remember that a farmer does a lot of work, and then does a lot of waiting while the crop grows.

And that is the rounded view of opportunity cost â€“ we make goals, we count the cost, we ask for wisdom, we make decisions, we work hard, we remember weâ€™re only human, and we accept that life may change our goals over time. When I keep this mind, I find my life more peaceful, joyful and productive. I hope it helps you, too.

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Satisfaction Guaranteed by Kitty Bucholtz

June 9, 2010 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz

It’s the beginning of the end. (Thank you, God!)

Last night was the first of my final classes in semester one of my master in creative writing degree. I turned in my final paper for my Professional Editing class, wrote a sample back cover blurb for the manuscript we’d done a structural edit on, and then most of us went to the pub to celebrate with a drink and some potato wedges. Woo-hoo!

Now I need to do it again tonight. And tomorrow night. I finished tomorrow’s final paper only this morning. Talk about cutting it close! Last Sunday I woke up and did the math – I had four projects to complete in eight days. (They’d all been started.) That’s two days per project. Eek! I finished the first two projects in four days – totally on time according to my self-inflicted schedule. Then the third project took the next four days. Yikes! So I had only a few hours over the next two mornings to finish the last project – thankfully, the one for the last class.

By last week, I was already questioning my expectations about what I wanted to do – finish four A-quality projects in the time I had – versus what I thought I might have to do – finish as best I can. I even asked a few friends what they thought because I was seriously stressing out – tight shoulders, headache, sleeplessness. One friend told me I needed to lower my expectations to what I could really do at this point. Another friend said I shouldn’t try for anything less than an A, no matter what it took. (After all, it was only one week.) Well, kind of them to try to help but… I still had to try to decide what *I* was going to do.

In the end, it’s no surprise that I decided to put everything I had into it to get the closest I could to an A on every project. It’ll be a month or more before I know my grades, but at this point I’ll have no regrets. My expectations of myself were fairly high throughout the semester, and I’m pretty content with my work. But last night, I started asking my friends and fellow students if my expectations of the graduate program were off.

I’ve been more than a little irritated some days when I’m in class listening to an instructor cover an incredibly basic point – like properly formatting a manuscript. I’ve been writing and publishing since 1997 and started grad school to bring my skills to the next level, the novel-publishing level. But some of my fellow students have said in class that this is the first time they have ever written any fiction of any kind! It makes me want to scream!

Hence my question after class last night – are my expectations off?

I am so glad I asked. Turns out there are three writing programs – the master of arts that I’m in, a diploma program, and a certificate program. And many of us are taking the same classes. That’s why there is such a wide range of writers in each class – a few people like me who have had books get to the “almost” stage at a publisher, a few people at the other end who have never written anything, and everyone else in the middle.

Now I know my expectations were off. I need to think of my classes as more like high-level critique groups filled with all levels of writers. Then I can be willing to be helpful to others without feeling like some people are holding me back. Because I’ve chosen to change my expectations, I’m finding myself already calming down, de-stressing, and thinking about how I can just focus on improving my writing. Period.

Stress comes from expectations not meeting reality. When reality is less than what you expected, you experience distress and dissatisfaction. When reality is better than you expected, you experience eustress and satisfaction. It’s not always about raising or lowering your standards, but changing them as needed to accommodate changes in the situation or the available information. (Remember last week when I was trying to decide if my expectations of my work habits were off?) I’m not going to lower my expectations of myself, but I am going to modify my expectations of my classmates and my future classes. I’ll keep the pressure on myself to do what *I* need to do while allowing my teachers and fellow students to do what they need to do.

In the end, I think it will be more satisfying for all of us.

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Anti-Procrastination Month by Kitty Bucholtz

May 9, 2010 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz

At Routines for Writers, we have declared May to be Anti-Procrastination Month! We all have a pile (mental or physical) of work we’ve been meaning to do, projects we’ve been trying to finish, etc. But when will it ever get done?

This month!

To give you some ideas on what kinds of things you might want to catch up on during Mayâ€™s Anti-Procrastination Month, I thought Iâ€™d share with you my list (in no particular order).
Work on the category romance that I want to finish and send out by August 1. Yeah, the one Iâ€™ve barely even looked at since grad school started in March.

Choose which magazine to send the article to that was rejected last week by Writerâ€™s Digest, then get it out in the mail.

Submit a piece to the Christmas anthology that Iâ€™ve been meaning to submit to for weeks. (Oh, and actually write the piece!)

Catch up on all the readings that have been assigned this semester for all of my classes.
Read the Margie Lawson â€œDefeating Self-Defeating Behaviorsâ€ lecture packet that I started and didnâ€™t finish in January.

Read the other great Margie Lawson lectures I’ve bought and not finished reading yet!
Take the time (what time?!) to work on promotional items for Routines for Writers.

Continue to research for the superheroes book, and the new angels/demons story that Iâ€™m writing for class.
Read some more YA books as research for the story I’m writing for class.

Thatâ€™s the short list â€“ for now! LOL! And it doesnâ€™t include all the â€œregularâ€ or â€œhouseholdâ€ items that need to be done â€“ like choose and buy an anniversary present for my husband for our 20th anniversary this week! Eek! LOL!

The big question when I make a list is â€“ how in the world am I going to get this all done? Well, I was praying for wisdom this week and what do you know â€“ God really does use email! I subscribe to a daily email from Motivation in a Minute and a recent email had this quote from Amy Jones:

To do twice as much in half the time, you canâ€™t approach your goals haphazardly. A well-thought plan will keep you clearly on track towards your goal; and the methods of planning are as varied as our personalities.

I have a tendency to think that there is plenty of time to get everything done. But experience has taught me that optimism alone is not my friend. I need a plan. One that is too structured will make me crazy and Iâ€™ll quit sooner than later. A plan that is nothing more than a To Do list wonâ€™t help me stay organized and disciplined enough to get the most important items done first. (And since Iâ€™m now convinced I will die with a long To Do list with many items not crossed off, getting the most important ones done is crucial to my emotional well-being!)

Last year at Routines for Writers, I talked about my new routine â€“ My First Five. Itâ€™s been working! There are only so many things I can remember to do at once. And when Iâ€™m feeling overwhelmed, I need to know what the next thing is that I should do. Just one. So the First Five helps me prioritize. What I need to do now is create a Next Five, and a Next Five after that. I got my First Five done yesterday morning without any problem, then I watched a taped TV program later while I ate lunch and somehow the day just fell apart after that. Today, I did my First Five then looked at my list and put a bullet next to all the things that had to be done today. That didnâ€™t work as well as Iâ€™d hoped either. Because I also did several things that didnâ€™t have to be done today. So starting tomorrow, Iâ€™m going to organize my To Do List into groups of five items. Iâ€™ll let you know if I get more work done.

One last thing â€“ I recently heard about a software program called Freedom. Itâ€™s sort of a time-lock for your Internet connection. You can set it for any amount of time up to eight hours and during that time you wonâ€™t be able to access the Internet or send and receive email. Itâ€™s $10 and is available for both Windows and Mac. I think itâ€™s hysterical that Iâ€™m actually going to spend money on a program that will force me to focus! (Why canâ€™t I do that by myself??) Iâ€™ll let you know how itâ€™s working.

If you do better with a little accountability, stop by Routines for Writers and tell us what you want to get done this month! Weâ€™ll encourage you to keep going and find a routine that works for you. Happy Writing!

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A ROUTINE THAT DOESNâ€™T FIT by Kitty Bucholtz

March 9, 2010 by Marianne H. Donley in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz

Last month, we heard from over a dozen authors who shared their writing routines with us at Routines for Writers. If there is one clear take-away, it is that there is no one right way to write. Perhaps not even one right way for each person.

When I started to realize that I identified with both the structured writers and the less structured ones, I began to ask myself some hard questions. Am I really as structured in writing as I think I am? If I were, wouldnâ€™t I get more work done? If I tried more unstructured writing methods, would I be more successful?

The advice â€œlearn what works for youâ€ has never seemed more apropos. Because the advice Iâ€™ve been giving myself is not really working.

Iâ€™m a logical thinker in many ways. I worked in various areas of accounting and finance for close to fifteen years. I love playing with numbers, planning trips, and working with budgets â€“ just for fun. So when I started to get serious about writing, I applied the same techniques to writing that brought me success in accounting. While sometimes everything aligns so that Iâ€™m producing massive amounts of work for a while, it doesnâ€™t last. I finish books, but not with a routine or regularity that I can build a writing career on. At least, not according to conventional wisdom.

Which says to me that my routine is not working. More specifically, the way I think about routines and how to choose one for writing is not working.

Last week was the first week of class in my Master of Arts in Creative Writing degree. (Yay!) A very good time to re-think routines. Iâ€™m going to go back over last monthâ€™s guest blogs and highlight the areas that made me stop and think, â€œYes! I get that!â€ Many of those moments popped up when I was reading about the less-structured writers. A bit of a shocker really.

Maybe my creative brain is trying to tell me that the structure Iâ€™m trying to impose on my writing is simply not a good fit. Maybe if I listen carefully, I will hear my brain suggesting some new ideas. I canâ€™t wait to see how this year turns out compared to what I expected when I made my 2010 goals.

What about you? Did you have any ah-ha moments while reading any of the Author Crush blogs? Have you found that the routine you find successful in other areas of your life is or is not successful in your writing life?

Kitty Bucholtz writes light urban fantasy novels, romance novels, magazine articles, and really, anything that comes to mind. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers (http://www.routinesforwriters.com/ ) and a post-grad student in the Master of Arts in Creative Writing program at University of Technology, Sydney in Australia. Even though she loves talking about, writing about, and teaching about writing, sheâ€™s pretty sure she knows at least three people who arenâ€™t writers.

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