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How Can We Write More? by Kitty Bucholtz

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

Most of the writers I know want to write faster. They want to get more words down on the page during every writing session. I’ve been one of those writers for as long as I can remember…and I probably always will be!

Over the years, I’ve gotten faster – and without learning how to type faster! Now, I’ve had friendly arguments with writers about why your typing speed does matter. You can think faster than you can talk. You can speak faster than you can type. So if your thoughts are in the writing flow, they are moving fast. So the faster you can physically type, the faster you can get those words down on the page.

So the fact that I learned to write faster over time was more about getting my thoughts deeper into the writing flow. If I also learned how to type faster, I would be able to get even more of the story down in each sitting.

Okay, so let’s say you’re not going to update your typing skills, and you’re not ready to try dictation. How can you write faster?

There are several ebooks for writers that have focused on or touched on this one main idea: organize your thoughts before you sit down, then set a timer and write as fast as you can for a set length of time.

Let me break it down.

Why organize your thoughts first?
Even if you’re a pantser, you probably have some idea of the very next scene you plan to write. Now, what if you spent 5-10 minutes and closed your eyes or doodled or whatever you do, and you really saw the scene fully in your mind? What if you didn’t start typing until you could really see it?

You’d probably write faster.

Why set a timer?
If you have an hour and that’s it, have you noticed that you tend to really get those words out on paper because you’re hurrying to beat the clock? (Let’s assume that you’ve organized your thoughts and know what you wanted to write at the beginning of the hour.) Or if you have 30 minutes, and you know what you want to say, and it comes rushing out – partially because you have to go do something else soon? That’s why setting a timer works so well even when you have 4 or 5 hours to work.

You end up getting more words on the page.

Why pick an arbitrary time to stop?
For the same reason you set the timer in the first place – you’re pushing to get your thoughts out on the page before something (the timer) tells you to stop. You don’t dawdle. You don’t take a bathroom break and then a snack break and then answer a text during that hour (or 20 or 30 or 40 minutes). You type. Then you can take a break, answer a text, check emails, and then come back to the next timed session ready to do it again.

And write even more than before.

I hesitated to try this until recently because I hadn’t fully understood the answers to the three questions above. Once I realized how and why the whole thing worked, I haven’t been able to stop using this method! I went from a record high of 5000 words in a day to 7157 words in a day – both at writer retreats where the only thing I had on my schedule for the day was to write.

On my previously record high day, I started my writing day at 7am, took a break a few hours later to exercise and shower, wrote some more, took an hour for lunch to watch TV and give my brain and eyes a rest, then worked again until dinner around 5 or 6, and sometimes put in another hour after dinner if I had the energy.

On my new record high day at a writing retreat with my friend Elena Dillon last month, I wrote in five 1-hour sessions between breakfast and dinner and wrote 43% more than when I worked more hours!

I hope my explanation here has helped you see why this is a method you could try. If you want more detailed explanations from other writers, try Chris Fox’s book 5000 Words Per Hour (all of his books are really good) or Rachel Aaron’s book 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love. If you know of a book that could help people write faster, please mention it in the comments.  🙂

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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Wanna Blab? by Kitty Bucholtz

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

Have you heard of Blab? Chances are you haven’t yet. It’s a fairly new social media video platform that is still in beta, but there are thousands of people using it already.

The idea is that you can do a live video chat with up to four people in video boxes (unlike Periscope, which only allows one camera, the one on your phone). It sometimes reminds me of the old TV game show Hollywood Squares. You can allow people to leave the video box and let someone else come in to change up the conversation, or you can “lock the chair” so that only the people you want to be on video are allowed.

You can schedule a blab in advance or you can hop on and start talking. You can even choose to record a blab, but you can’t pre-record it to make it available at a certain time. Like YouTube, anyone in the world can go find your recording (if you recorded it) on the site and watch it at any time, and anyone in the world can watch your live blab.

There’s even a chat box so people watching can contribute to the conversation. Viewers can also click on the hands icon at the bottom of each video square to “give props” to that speaker (like the hearts in Periscope give love). It’s connected to Twitter so you can log in with your Twitter ID, tweet about your blab while you’re doing it, and you can get more followers from inside Blab and send them a message that you’re now live.

The frosting on the cake? It’s easy!

Go to Blab to check it out. You’ll see dozens of people chatting live at any given time. The search bar isn’t the greatest, but you can search for people or recordings, and you can follow people so you’ll be informed when they’re live.

YA author Elena Dillon and I started a new live Blab show last month called Elena and Kitty Blabbing About Books. (Come “follow” us!) We’d been thinking about doing a podcast, but there is a real time commitment to making a good podcast. With Blab, we hit the record button, interview our author guest, hit the stop recording button, and in less than an hour Blab sends us a link to the recording to download to our computer and upload to our blog and/or YouTube channel. We also send the link to the author we interviewed so they can upload it to their sites as well.

We’ve done four episodes already, interviewing Tracy Reed, Alina K. Field, Debbie Decker, and Tracy Lydia Garner. Tonight’s guest is romantic suspense author Beth Yarnell. Click Beth’s name at 7pm Pacific time to watch the show!

Elena and Kitty Blabbing About Books is a weekly show interviewing a new author every Wednesday from 7pm to 8pm Pacific time. If you’re a published author and would like to know more about being interviewed on our show, please email us at blababoutbooks AT gmail DOT com.

And if you read fiction and like to hear authors talk about their books, join us each week! It’s lots of fun and you may find a new author to try.

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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Compete with Yourself and Win by Kitty Bucholtz

February 10, 2016 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , ,

Everyone has a few personal tips and tricks to help them write more, and most people are willing to try something new to see if it helps. I’ve found a good number of people respond well to a healthy fun competition, but sometimes I start feeling bad if I compare myself to someone who always seems “ahead of me.”

Therefore, just in case it’s helpful to you, I wanted to let you know about a quick and easy writing competition you can have with yourself. (Compete with your friends if it doesn’t make anyone feel bad!)

Over ten years ago, I found this “Don’t Break the Chain Calendar” on the Writers Store website. In the description, it says that Jerry Seinfeld once said that he would write a big “X” on every day that he wrote new material…and so this calendar was eventually born.

It has 365 numbered squares on it so you can start any day of the year on square 1. The idea is to get the longest chain of X’s you can. I actually like to use gold stars that teachers put on school children’s homework.  😉  It’s fun to see the line of stars growing. Miss a day or three? Just go to the next appropriate square and start again. If you play the Settlers of Catan board game, it’s like getting the prize for building the longest road. Haha!

One of the nicest things about the Don’t Break the Chain Calendar is that Writers Store offers it as a free PDF download! (Check out the rest of the site – cool stuff!) You can also use a regular printed calendar, but you won’t be able to see as clearly how long your chain grows over time.

Cheap, easy, and motivational – just the kind of “write more” writer’s trick you needed, right? 🙂

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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Going the Distance Time Management Class by Kitty Bucholtz

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

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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Another KDP Select Ads Update – This Time Not So Great by Kitty Bucholtz

November 10, 2015 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , , , ,

If, after reading my last two posts about advertising a KDP Select free book (the first one and the second one plus additional information here), you’re thinking that this is a beautiful upward curve toward guaranteed results…well, we’re both wrong.

Not that I thought the results would be guaranteed to continue their upward trajectory, but I didn’t realize I could have such a terrible bomb when things were going well.

Using the same book, Little Miss Lovesick, I made my third 5-days-free promo during my third 90-day KDP Select period on October 21-25, 2015. I paid for three ads (fewer than before), but I forgot to sign up for all the free newsletters until after it was too late. (You need a 7-day lead time for the sites I’ve been using. I remembered 6 days before.)

In May 2015, my 5-days-free yielded 7312 downloads.

In August 2015, the same five days gave up 8108 copies.

Looking great, right? My October results came to only 662 copies. Did you see that – 662!!!

I honestly think there is a lot more owed to those free-to-list-in-our-free-book-newsletter emails than I realized. Forgetting to sign up with the 30 or so that I did all the other times was the only real difference in October.

Interesting, huh? Of course, there could be any number of other factors that I didn’t realize. But I think not signing up for the free sites was a big factor.

So when you’re thinking about how to advertise your free book, and wondering how much you can spend on paid ads, keep in mind that all of those free newsletters might be enough to get you a good start!

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