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What Does Love Mean? by Kitty Bucholtz

February 9, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, love, romance

Valentine’s Day is coming up and I won’t be with my husband, I’ll be on a writing trip with friends. I’m not too worried about it though. I mostly think of Valentine’s Day as a Hallmark holiday.

That being said, I don’t think you can say “I love you” too much. You never know when it will be the last time, but more than that, expressing to someone that you love them forms and shapes and repairs the foundation of your relationship.

But what does it mean?

This year, the day before Valentine’s Day is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent in the Christian faith. Lent is a time of repentance, turning from the wrongs of the past, and pressing closer to God. It’s a reminder that God loves us so much that he’d be willing to take a bullet to keep us safe.

That’s the kind of love many romance writers weave into their stories every day. It’s most obvious in romantic suspense where one person can literally take a bullet for the other. But it’s in all the other stories where someone says, I’m sorry, I made a mistake, and the other person says, I forgive you because I love you. And then they grow closer than ever.

I love those stories!

Some people theorize that the reason people respond to stories of love and sacrifice and forgiveness and happily ever after is because we are wired that way. Our enjoyment of such stories opens our hearts to the possibility that those tales represent the Truth of why we are here. We are loved, we made mistakes, a sacrifice was made on our behalf so that we wouldn’t be lost forever, forgiveness was offered, and happily ever after is ours for eternity.

That’s a pretty amazing love story. Loved forever. I want that.

Much as I can’t wait for my writing trip, I’m going to miss my husband. I’ll miss waking up beside him every morning, trying to be the first one to say “I love you.” I’ll miss how much he makes me laugh. And as much as I’ll try to deny it, I’ll miss how much he teases me to the point of losing my mind.

Because somewhere in the layers of all of those things, I’ve found a taste of what love is all about – someone who sacrifices to make my life better, who always forgives me, who wants to be with me forever, no matter what.

Love is the answer to why I am here. It’s the answer to why I write about love.

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Time For a Do-Over by Kitty Bucholtz

January 10, 2013 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Romancing the Pages

One of my favorite things about January is getting a whole new year’s worth of do-overs. I loved do-overs as a kid, and I love them even more now. This past year has easily been my worst – three family members died, and over a dozen of my friends’ family members died. And that was just one part of how my year went badly.

Lena, the heroine of “Rescue at Loon Lake”, my story in the anthology Moonlit Encounters, found it difficult to get past her husband’s death while living in the same city. She decides to move to a new town for her do-over. Sometimes that works, but for most people it doesn’t.

A few years ago, I came up with a method that works for me: hitting the restart button. Any of us can hit the restart button at any time of the day, any day of the year. We just need to remember that the button exists.

Restart Your Attitude
The most important tool in your toolbox is your attitude because your attitude affects everything else. It is also one of your most vulnerable tools. When you catch your attitude taking a dive, stop for a mental moment and hit the restart button.

When you’re careful to keep your attitude positive, the parts of your life that are going well will go even smoother. And when life gets rough, a healthy attitude will keep you from getting totally beat up. It’s not always easy, but you can hit that restart button as many times as you need to. A few weeks after my mom’s death, I was hitting it a couple times an hour. It’s part of what kept me from getting caught in a riptide of grief.

Restart Your Actions
Everything you spend your time doing builds who you are. Your actions build your intellect, your career, your character. What you don’t do also shapes who you become. Getting caught up in the thousands of possibilities of 21st century life can derail even our best intentions. Derailment happens to me regularly – unless I remember to hit the restart button.

: Goal!

Over time, I’ve accumulated and shared all the time management and goal-setting information I’ve tried. Every January, I teach an online class to help other writers find the methods of “getting things done” that work for them. When you try something new and it doesn’t work, hit restart. When you keep doing what you know doesn’t work, hit restart. The button never wears out, no matter how often you find yourself using it.

Restart Your Commitment
Your attitude and your actions are important, but you also need to keep yourself committed to your goals and plans. It’s fine to change your mind, but if you change it over and over again, you won’t make any real progress in a given direction.

Feel like giving up? Hit the restart button. What is one tiny thing you can do today that keeps you committed to your purpose? What are the top three things? Don’t let yourself be intimidated by your multi-page To Do list (I know I’m not the only one), just take a deep breath and remind yourself why you decided this is the path you want to be on (whatever that path is).

It’s going to be January for three more weeks. Lots of time to work on a few do-overs in your life. But remember this for the rest of the year – every morning is also a new start. It’s never too late to work on becoming the person you were always meant to be.

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 first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, is now available in print and ebook format. Her next novels, Love at the Fluff and Fold and Unexpected Superhero, will be released in 2013. Her short stories can be found in the anthologies Romancing the Pages and Moonlit Encounters, available in both print and ebook format.

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Win Free Ebooks Today

December 8, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Jacqueline Diamond, Kitty Bucholtz, Lex Valentine, Lex's 30 Days of Christmas, Linda Carroll-Bradd, Little Miss Lovesick

Today is the day that my book Little Miss Lovesick is featured on Lex’s 30 Days of Christmas. Yay! This is very exciting for me because I’ve never had a book featured on someone else’s site. 🙂

My OCC RWA friend Lex Valentine is hosting a whole month of giveaways for romance books of every kind. Today my other OCC RWA friends, Jacqueline Diamond and Linda Carroll-Bradd, join me at Lex’s site. One lucky commenter will win a book from all three of us!

Pop over to Lex’s 30 Days of Christmas today and leave a comment. You could be the winner of three ebooks! Lex will announce today’s winner at the top of tomorrow’s post.

Now that Little Miss Lovesick is finished, I’m working on the notes I just received this week from my editor for Unexpected Superhero. I started reading the notes on Tuesday – ouch. Then on Thursday I looked them over again – not as much of a sting. Today I woke up and thought, “Oh, I know what I want to do!” Now I can hardly wait to get started on the revision. Ahh, the life of a working writer. 🙂

I’m also getting kind of excited about marketing for the first time. It doesn’t seem so daunting to ask other blog owners if I can write a guest post for them. I’ve got some fun ideas, too. (Hint: one is about chocolate.) I’ll let you know when I start leaving my comfort zone and getting out there more.

Happy Reading, today!

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Gazelle Intensity

November 9, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz

I almost can’t believe it, but I met four deadlines last month! I don’t think I’ve ever done that in my writing life. Maybe the only time I’ve accomplished so much in such a short space of time is for school/college. But the point is – I did it.

What I learned from that experience is that I can do more than I think I can. Past experience may tell me that I can’t – until I make an experience that tells me I can. What I have to be careful of is thinking I can always get this much work done. It would be foolish of me to think I can work 10-16 hours a day, six days a week, for an infinite amount of time. For one thing, there is no time for friends or family, little time for exercise or healthy habits, and almost no time for fun.

However, last month I reminded myself that I can work very intensely and accomplish a lot in short bursts. Life is a marathon, and the writing life is a marathon, but sprints are useful and appropriate. (In my half marathon training, I use short sprints in training.)

John and I are participating in Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, a money management course designed to get you out of debt and keep you out forever. In one of the lessons, Dave shows a video of a leopard chasing a gazelle. Even though the leopard can run faster than the gazelle, the gazelle got away! Why? Because the gazelle could make quick leaps out of the leopard’s path faster than he could move to intercept. The gazelle only has to keep this up for a short intense period until the leopard gives up and looks for easier prey.

Dave suggests we use this method to get out of debt. A short, intense burst of effort to pay off everything from credit cards to student loans to the balance on your mortgage. I listen to his radio podcast and people call in saying they’ve just paid off their last debt. Dave asks them how much they paid off and how long it took, then they give their debt free scream. It’s very inspiring! People are getting out of debt to the tune of $20,000 to $158,000 (that I’ve heard) in 12-48 months. John and I will be right in that range, and it’s exciting to know it can be done.

That’s what I learned last month with my writing deadlines. I focused like I have rarely focused before on one project, then another, then another, then another. And I got them all done, on time. I had hoped that on November 2, I would be able to sleep in, read a little, take a deep breath, and go back to a more relaxed lifestyle. But I still have four more time-sensitive projects to finish. At first, that made me feel super tired just thinking about it. Then I remembered the gazelle intensity speech.

I can’t keep up this pace forever, but I can do it for four more weeks. As one friend reminded me on November 2 when I was trying to figure out if I could do all this, I can’t “catch up” on everything that didn’t get done over the last year. But I can pick the most important things to finish now, and re-schedule my other goals for 2013.

National Novel Writing Month is about gazelle intensity. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are finding it can work for their writing life. But it works in every area of life. What do you really need to get done? Not just urgent things, but important things. Piles of paperwork? Haphazard, overcrowded home? Behind in something you could finish if you just really applied yourself for a few weeks?

Think about it and decide what you’re going to do about it. In the end, you’ll not only have accomplished something wonderful, and maybe done something about those monkeys on your back, but you’ll find pleasure in your own personal growth as self-discipline blooms in your life.

I’m nervous about failure, about exhaustion, about missing out on fun things other people are doing, but last month I proved that it can be done! So I’m going to keep it up for another month. See you at the finish line!

[Note: If you want more encouragement and direction in planning your goals for 2013, join me for my online class Going the Distance: Goal Setting and Time Management for the Writer. Here’s to a fabulous and productive new year!]

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 first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was released in September 2011 as an ebook and will be available soon in print format. Kitty has also written magazine articles, devotionals, and worked as a magazine editor. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers where she blogs every Monday. Her next novel, Love at the Fluff N Fold, will be released in late 2012.

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4 Ways to Meet Your Writing Goals

October 9, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Routines for Writers

You may know this has been a hard year for me. Over at my blog, Routines for Writers, it’s been a hard year for all of us. We’ve talked about how to keep going, both personally and professionally. We’ve discussed whether we have any more to offer our readers or whether Routines for Writers has run its course. All three of us have struggled to keep writing through a variety of personal and professional setbacks.

There are so many cliches we could offer each other, and you, to keep writing and not give up. But here are four solid things you can do now, or anytime you need a boost, to keep going and accomplish your writing goals.

(I didn’t mean for this to be so long, but I wanted to share with you what has worked for me. Go to the end for the bullet points if you’re short on time, and come back and read the full post when you have time. 🙂 )

Writing Routines

You can tell from the title of our blog that Shonna and Stephanie and I strongly believe in routines in general, and writing routines in particular. Routines are habits you are acquiring on purpose. I choose to routinely run three days a week because I have a goal of beating my best time in the half marathon I signed up for in January. My habit thus far has been to overeat and carry a lot of extra weight that is not helping me with my running. For my January race goal, I have identified one routine, and one bad habit that I need to change into a positive routine.

In my writing, I have several goals regarding getting my current book into print format, getting my next book out as an ebook and in print, and submitting my superhero novel to Harper Voyager during their open submission period this week. In addition, my 2012 goals include increasing traffic to my web site/blog, creating more online classes to teach in 2013, and learning how to promote my books to increase sales.

It’s great to have goals, but you need to have a plan, too. Just like in Shonna’s post last Friday, I take my big goals and work backwards to break them down into pieces so I know what needs to be done every month to make the goals a reality at the end of the year. When I’ve got that list of monthly goal pieces written down, I can create routines that work for me that will turn the goal pieces into accomplishments. For instance, when my life was calmer, I wrote four days a week and did all my business-of-writing stuff on Fridays. It’s less important what you choose to do, perhaps, than that you create a routine that moves you toward your goal at a pace you can keep up.

Using the “It’s a marathon, not a sprint” metaphor, let me tell you that the training programs for running marathons and half marathons (I only do half’s) suggests running moderately short distances several days a week, increasing your distance slowly, and doing one longer run on the weekend. So I might run four or five miles a day three days a week, then an 8-mile run on Saturday. More 5-mile runs the next week, and then 9 or 10 miles that Saturday. This is the kind of schedule that you can keep up even if you have to get to work in the morning. And it’s a good parallel for making a writing routine as well.

Periodic Reevaluations

When life is going smoothly (or monotonously, depending on your perspective), it can be difficult to remember to check your progress against your goals before the year is up. Several of my friends and I have an unhelpful tendency to wait until November or December, then freak out and try to cram all the rest of the work into the busiest time of the year. Brilliant.

When I teach my goal setting and time management class (coming again in January), I encourage people to check their goals after a month to see if they were on a “get it done” high when they wrote out their list. 🙂 Then I suggest quarterly reviews, taking 15 minutes to see how close you are to where you’d planned to be. At these checkpoints, we can decide if we think we should readjust our goals, and do so if necessary.

Remember, goal setting is about making progress toward something you want. It is not about beating yourself up for what you haven’t accomplished! You need to sit down and think about why you haven’t accomplished what you set out to do, but only because you need to decide if you should change course or just change tactics. You also need to reward yourself for what you have accomplished. That will give you energy to keep on going. (I started a “Done” journal a year or two ago. I write down all my writing-related work that I do on any given day, bullet-point style so I can scan it easily. I haven’t done half of what I’ve set out to do, but I’ve done a LOT and the Done journal helps me stay upbeat.)

Willingness to Change

Depending on how your reevaluations go, you may decide you want to make some changes. It may be that your goals are fine, but the way you are going about trying to accomplish them needs to change. For instance, say you decide to take someone’s advice to get up an hour early to write every day, and two months into that new routine you are exhausted and cranky. You’ve got your pages, but people have started to avoid you.

You may decide that you need to write for half an hour during your lunch break, and half an hour in the car before you come home from work. That way you are getting the sleep you need, and no one feels like you’re ignoring them. I wrote part of Little Miss Lovesick that way. I find it almost impossible to ignore my husband – we’re like little kids who just want to play when we’re together – and this way I made my goals quickly because there’s an end to my lunch break (hurry!) and the car is not an easy place to type and I’m hungry (hurry!).

This weekend, I did a periodic reevaluation for a different reason. My life has been in constant upheaval this year (and for much longer, really) and I knew I wasn’t going to make all my 2012 goals. I needed to see where I was and figure out what was most important to me to get done before the end of the year. I looked at the big picture and monthly goals for 2012 and sighed. Heavily. Then I wrote down what I most want to accomplish before the end of the year. Yikes! It’s still a lot! But I dropped several projects on my original goals list, promising myself I’d look into whether I still wanted to pursue them next year.

Due to my husband’s unemployment and our recent dedication to following through with our Financial Peace University goals, I’ve taken on some outside work. For every hour I take out of my writing week, I’ll have to make some adjustments to either personal time that will become writing time, and/or decrease my 2012 goals again. I just have to keep reminding myself that I’m willing to make changes now to accomplish big picture goals in my “regular” life as well as my writing life.

Decide Now to Keep Going Later

Perhaps one of the best things you can do to help you meet your writing goals is to decide now not to quit when it gets tough. Life is an ebb and flow of good and bad, hard and easy. When times get tough, what is your plan?

Yes, a plan will help you not to quit.

My plan for this particular hard time was to not quit writing altogether, to not focus entirely on the areas of life calling for my attention. My plan was to let writing time decrease, but to make sure I was still making progress every week. Every baby step counts, and I have to keep reminding of myself of that.

My current plan is to work on my writing career with “gazelle intensity” – a Dave Ramsey term he uses to get people totally focused on getting out of debt. When I’m not juggling bills or working temp jobs, I’m working 10-12 hour days to get back on track. I’m giving up some of my personal time and time with John (he supports this – yay!) and I’m focusing on making up some lost time. I started this a few weeks ago and I couldn’t believe how much I got done. I’m exhausted a lot, but it’s worth it because I’m seeing progress already. (I strongly recommend you take at least one full day off from work a week if you decide to do this. You need a full battery each week to keep up this kind of pace.)

The reason I recommend a plan for what you’re going to do when life takes some (or nearly all) of your writing time, and a plan for what to do if you get a windfall of time, is that you can be prepared and make good decisions that much quicker. A few years ago I walked one step at a time into a very deep writing rut. I didn’t know how to get out of it and I didn’t know who to talk to about it. I stopped writing, for the most part, pretending to most of my peers that I was still working away. But I bet I didn’t write 5000 words (outside of my blog) that whole year.

Ouch. If only I’d had a plan for what to do when something like that happened. But because I learned from that experience, when my mom died this year, and so many other pieces of my life seemed to fall apart, I had an idea about how to survive and continue. I decided back then that I would keep going now.

Bullet Points

To meet your writing goals, you need to:

Create writing routines that help you to keep going, step after step after step, getting a little done at a time so that you accomplish your annual goals by the end of the year
Periodically reevaluate your goals and your progress, at least quarterly, deciding if you need to make any changes
Be willing to make changes, either to your goals and/or your tactics in trying to accomplish your goals
Decide now what your plan is to not quit later when times are tough, and another plan for what you’ll do with extra time

I hope you take some time to reevaluate your goals and tactics this week. What can you reasonably accomplish in the next three months? Good luck! I’m rooting for you!

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 first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was released in September 2011 as an ebook and will be available soon in print format. Kitty has also written magazine articles, devotionals, and worked as a magazine editor. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers where she blogs every Monday. Her next novel, Love at the Fluff N Fold, will be released in late 2012.

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