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What We Learn From Our Favorite Stories by Kitty Bucholtz

October 9, 2016 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , , , ,

For years, my all-time favorite movie was Sleepless in Seattle. Even when my screenwriting teacher in a professional program gave me the stink-eye, I wouldn’t change my answer. I have watched that movie so many times, I’m surprised the DVD hasn’t worn out. (I’ve owned it so long, I used to have the VHS tape, too!)

Then Richard Curtis wrote some big blockbuster romantic comedies that I love. Love Actually and Notting Hill are my two favorites. Even my husband, John, likes all three of these movies because they are smart and funny and have great lines of dialogue that you can’t help quoting later.

I love these movies so much that I’ll even watch them on Netflix, even though we own all three on DVD. And oh, Netflix, how I love you. Let me count the ways. That’s where I first watched The Decoy Bride with the hilarious Kelly Macdonald and the awesome David Tennant. I’ve watched that movie sooo many times! I bought it on Blu-ray because I wanted to make sure I could watch it in high quality forever. But then I had to buy it on DVD, too, because that’s the only way I could watch it on my computer. I’ve never done that before, buying more than one copy!

And what’s my go-to movie for sick days? The Family Man. Tea Leoni and Nicolas Cage are absolutely adorable, and those kids! And the best friends! The movie makes me laugh every single time I watch it.

I love romantic comedies. I love reading them, watching them, writing them, talking about them. Like I said, they’re my medicine for bad days. And lately, I’ve had truckloads of bad days.

Thank God for romantic comedy writers because I found some new medicine two weeks ago. I’d seen on Facebook that my friend Sean Gaffney (same screenwriting program I was in) had written a new movie called In-Lawfully Yours. I guess I’m a bad friend for not paying very good attention because I thought it was coming out in the theater this fall, but it came out on Netflix!

I was scrolling through the New Releases and saw the title and thought, how funny, Sean’s movie has that same title. And hey, the movie poster looks kind of – hey, that is Sean’s movie! LOL! I was having a bad day so I watched it during lunch. It is soooo adorable! The hero and heroine really played off each other so well! And the characters seemed like people I’d probably know, people I’d want to be friends with if they were real, not like pretend movie characters.

I felt so much better after watching it, just like medicine. I wanted to watch it again right away, but I controlled myself. I waited until lunch the following day. Aw, wow, it was just as funny the second time. It had been a stressful week, so I turned it on again at lunch for the third day in a row. Still had me laughing and smiling! If you like rom-com’s, you’ve got to watch this movie!

In addition to feeling better, watching a movie several times helps you consciously and unconsciously work through what you like about it, and why. You start thinking about what you don’t like and why. And if you’re a writer, you start going over your own characters and asking yourself how they can become better after seeing some other amazing fictional characters on screen or in a book.

One thing about the writing in In-Lawfully Yours. If they hadn’t gotten the right actors, it could’ve been a little dopey. That’s the risk with humor – it’s got to be the right kind, in the right amount, for the right audience. Of course, that’s the risk with movies in general. Wrong actor, bad movie. Right group of actors, amazing movie!

So when I watched this movie for the third time in three days, I had to stop thinking about these actors who had such good chemistry, and I had to think about the characters I write who will ever and only play out in people’s heads. And that’s when I remembered…

When I wrote Little Miss Lovesick, the first several drafts were aimed at Silhouette Romance (kind of like Harlequin, if you don’t know) and the humor was mild, the kind of humor they’d already published. But when I took a risk and wrote the kind of humor that had me laughing as I was typing, a whole new level of fun story developed! It was no longer the kind of book Silhouette or Harlequin or several other houses were buying. (That was a problem for me until self-publishing came along.)

But the readers who enjoyed Little Miss Lovesick really loved it! My risk paid off and I found my writer voice. Since then I’ve had to push myself to get to the edge of my comfort zone and see what else I can do. I can’t let fear or complacency take hold because I’ll lose what it turns out my readers want. (Plus, it’ll be way less fun for me!)

What stories do you read or watch over and over again? What are you learning from them? Are you letting those favorites push you to become a better writer? Give it some thought.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go watch In-Lawfully Yours again. Thanks for writing such a fun story, Sean! And thanks, Chelsey Crisp and Joe Williamson, for making me laugh with and fall in love with a new favorite couple! I’m such a happy Kitty!  😀

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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Two Classes For Writers – Self-Publishing and Book Promotion by Kitty Bucholtz

August 9, 2016 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing Classes tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

This month I’m teaching a brand new online class for OCC – “7 Ways to Market and Promote Your Book Without Breaking the Bank.” I’m excited to share the things I’ve learned about inexpensive promotions – including having an author newsletter – with my writer friends!

The 4-week class starts next Monday, August 15, 2016, and costs $20 for OCC members, $30 for non-members. You don’t have to be a member of RWA to enroll in the class. You can read more about it and sign up for the class here. I hope to see you there! [Note: Signing up is a 2-step process. You must hit the purple “Yahoo Groups Join Now” button AND then come back to the page and pay via PayPal. If you only do one step or the other, you won’t be in the class until you complete both steps.]

This week I also re-opened my full-sized online course, “Your How-to Guide to Self-Publishing.” I’m so excited about everything I’m doing on the new website! There are five modules covering every step you need to take to get from finished manuscript to published book. I’ve spread it out over eight weeks, which should be plenty of time to learn what you need to do in the lessons and then go apply it. And you’ll have lifetime access so you can come back to the lessons as often as you like.

I’ve included videos, audio downloads, text-based lectures, and worksheets to help you through the entire process. There’s also a private Facebook group where students can ask questions and share their experiences. Two of the three tiers give students access to weekly/monthly live video-based Q&A calls, and those in the upper tier also get a private coaching call with me.

There are payment plans for all three tiers, and bonuses for anyone who signs up by August 15. You can learn more about it all at WriteNowWorkshop.com. If you have any questions, please email me at kitty AT writenowworkshop.com.

I’m looking forward to helping more writers self-publish their books and find new ways to promote them. I hope to see you in one of my classes!

Kitty Bucholtz

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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Coming Out of the Writing Closet

August 5, 2016 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , , ,

Hi OCC Family. I am still recuperating from my first RWA Conference last month. The conference reminded me of one of the trade shows I attend. It’s also like going to a place you’ve always wanted to go. You’re exhausted, but want to see and do everything because it’s your first time and you paid for it.

This month, I wanted to introduce you to a new writer, John Bucholtz. If the name sounds familiar, it should be, because it’s Kitty Bucholtz’s husband. John is new to writing, and I think you’ll enjoy hearing from him.

Enjoy the post and I’ll update you next month on my 12 Titles project.

Tracy

Heeerrrreee’s John…

Coming Out of the Writing Closet 


A couple weeks ago, I chose to come out of the writing closet.

No, Mom, I haven’t lost my mind. 
No, my marriage to my wife is okay. 
I have decided to come out and tell everyone – I’m a writer. I have spent years hiding the fact that I write fiction from most of my friends and family. For some odd reason, I associated some sort of stigma to it. I always pictured stoop-shouldered figures bent over their computers writing for hours on end, finally emerging into the sunlight to scuttle off and toil away at their day jobs. People would look after them, shaking their heads and whispering to each other, “Oh, he says he’s a writer, but he still has a day job. He must not be serious.” 
But I discovered I was completely wrong. 
Writing is a passion. Writing is an art like painting or drawing that you want to share with the world. Writing isn’t just about trying to get published and make lots of money. (Well, okay, I would be lying to say I wouldn’t mind something like that.) It’s about sharing an adventure with someone else. It’s taking someone and showing them a world that you find interesting, amusing, and yes, maybe even scary. You write because there are these voices in your head that whisper to you to tell a story. (Please be careful what kind of voices they are – some require therapy.) 
But I guess writing is a type of therapy for many of us. We do it to quiet the voices in our heads. We do it to finally put words to the pictures and images we see that we think the world might find interesting, to situations that we find humorous, or to an adventure we want friends to undertake with us. 
I went to the Romance Writers of America (RWA) National Conference in San Diego in July with my wife. It was my first ever writing conference, the first time I thought about trying to be taken seriously as a writer. This conference was good for me on so many levels. Not only did I meet seasoned veterans of the writing world, but I had the opportunity to meet a handful of literary agents and a smattering of book publishers. 
I ran into a surprising number of wide-eyed and slightly frightened first-time attendees like me. It was comforting to see their mutual excitement and nervousness at being at a national conference attended by their peers. The classes not only catered to the romance crowd, but many of the classes could be applied to the writing of any genre. (For instance, I write books for junior high boys.) And the energy and plain helpful attitude of the more experienced attendees and staff quickly made me a little less nervous and more excited in attending the first of what I hope will be many writing conferences and seminars in the future. 
My wife told me something after my first day there that I quickly found true: “I think you’re going to find that these are your people.” I was surrounded by other people who heard the little voices in their heads, who created strange worlds and the many characters who inhabited them and the adventures they went on. My wife was one hundred percent correct. 
So I’m here to say to the world: Hello, my name is John Bucholtz, and I am a writer.

John Bucholtz 

Middle-grade author, husband, artist, funny guy but easily distracte…

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Cool Apps For Writers by Kitty Bucholtz

July 9, 2016 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , , , , ,

Some of my favorite apps and SaaS (software as a service) software for writers are well-known to many, but just in case you haven’t heard of some of them, I thought I’d share.

Evernote – great for organizing and storing information. I have separate “notebooks” for self-publishing, teaching, business, and more. Within each notebook, I also have dozens of tags that I can use in lieu of filing information in multiple locations. You can use it on your computer as well as your smart phone. Add “Evernote Clipper” to your browser and you can save anything on the Internet with a single click (websites, PDFs, whatever).

BookFunnel – great for giving away your ebook(s) to beta readers, reviewers, giveaway winners, and more. What I love most about this service is that the user answers a couple of short questions about how they want to get their free ebook, and then they get a short video explaining how to get the book onto the appropriate device. No more emails from readers asking how to put the file I emailed them onto their Kindle or Nook.

BookPlanner – great for giving you a step-by-step timeline of all the steps to bring your book to publication. There are several timelines to choose from depending on your needs.

Vellumamazing for quickly and easily creating all ebook formats. It automatically creates Nook links in the back of the Nook file for all your other books on B&N, Amazon links for all the books you have on Amazon in your Amazon file, etc. Several choices for fonts, flourishes to separate scenes, and much more. Only downside – Mac only.

MyFitnessPal – strange addition to the list? This app is directly responsible for helping me lose 24 pounds in 24 weeks. It will tell you what your daily calorie limit should be based on your age, height, and weight, and the amount of weight you want to lose per week. Hundreds of thousands of foods are in the database so you know not only how many calories you’re ingesting, but fat, protein, carbohydrates, sodium, and sugar as well. Even if you don’t need to lose weight, it’s good to know what you’re really eating. Want to track your exercise as well? Use MapMyRun for your walks, runs, bike rides, and more. Both are available for smart phones and computers, and free to use at the standard level.

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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How to Start an Online Course in Two Steps by Kitty Bucholtz

June 9, 2016 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , ,

You probably know that I’ve been teaching online classes for about eight years now, maybe longer. I absolutely love to teach! The “usual” tech for doing this for the last decade or more has been to have your students sign up for a Yahoo Group that you create, and then you send them emails with the lectures, the students email you questions, and you email the group back with your answers.

That was a great way to do it for a while. But I wanted to add more to the classes – audio and video and live Q&A interaction. Enter the new online class platforms.

There are a lot of websites, platforms, plugins, and course-building sites out there now. A lot. I’ve tried a few, but I’ve recently moved everything to CourseLauncherHQ. I want to tell you a little about it in case you’ve been thinking about creating an online course that’s hearty enough to satisfy the needs and expectations of your 21st century audience.

[Note: I’ve recently applied to the affiliate program for CourseLauncherHQ. That means that if you use this company to launch your online course, and you use a link I gave, or you give them my name as the person who referred you, I may get some kind of affiliate commission. Please understand that if I make a mistake here about what they do or don’t do for clients, that is my mistake. I don’t work for the company, so I may not explain everything 100% correctly. Whew! Now that that’s done, let’s continue!]

The basic two steps for creating an online course are 1) pick a platform that allows you to focus on teaching, not having to learn a lot of new technology, and 2) design your course lessons. In this blog post, I’m going to focus on step one.

First of all, the best part for me about CourseLauncherHQ is that everything is already included and integrated. All the parts are already working well together. The learning platform is LearnDash on a WordPress site, and students can pay using PayPal and/or credit cards (using WooCommerce). Then the email list is integrated into both the landing page (where people first learn about your class) and the classroom itself (after people pay – therefore separating your email list into two parts automatically – potential students and paid students).

The second best part is that the customer service is amazing!! I feel I’m pretty tech-y, but I’ve never used any of this tech. Sometimes a little knowledge can be worse than none at all. But every time I have a question, someone answers. If necessary, they arrange a video call with me to answer my questions. I can pay extra for them to do everything for me, but even though I’ve chosen to learn to do most things on my own, if I “break” my site by doing something ignorant, they’ll fix it for me! The class sites are all backed up every night so no data is lost!

And in the class they just started on Monday, you can learn everything you need to know and get your site up and running – and even start getting paid if you get students to sign up – in just four weeks! That’s what I did in December, and I’m going through the new class again now to make sure I don’t forget anything when adding in my class that I’d originally hosted on another site.

The best way to understand all this is to read the information on the page here, CourseLauncherHQ. If you decide you’re interested, you can still get into this class through next Monday, June 13. And if you mention my name, you can get in at the discounted pricing of $1597. I know, it’s a lot of money. But when I tried to put together all the little pieces myself last year, I spent more than that and had no one to help me when I screwed things up. Plus there’s a 60-day money-back guarantee!

This may not be at all what you’re interested in doing, but I didn’t want to not tell you about it and find out later (especially after the price goes up) that you could’ve used this information. Or maybe you have a friend who needs to know about this. Anyway, now you know. 🙂 I hope you find it helpful!

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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