Routines for Writers » Making Goals

Guest Blog: A Routine Path to Publication by Janice Cantore

Kitty Bucholtz — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:54 +0000

My friend Janice is enjoying a milestone moment. A major traditional publisher will release her novel, Accused, tomorrow! I asked Janice if she would stop by and tell us a little about her journey.

Routine
1. A customary or regular course of procedure.
2. Commonplace tasks, chores, or duties as must be done regularly or at specified intervals; typical or everyday activity: the routine of an office.
3. Regular, unvarying, habitual, unimaginative, or rote procedure.

I begin with the definition of ‘routine’ for a couple of reasons. First, I’ve always wondered if the path to publication for my novel Accused was routine. And second, I realized that the very thing that can make a book ready for publication is commonplace, regular, and unvarying.

Accused, my first book with Tyndale House Publishers, is set for release February 1. It’s ironic to me that Accused is also the first book I ever attempted to write, and the first to be rejected many times. This, I’ve learned, is routine; every writer experiences rejection at one time or another. Few writers can write a perfect first draft that is sold immediately to their first choice publisher. (Can anyone?)

I’ve always loved to read, and when I stepped over the line to try and write a novel, the biggest question in my mind was: Do I have the talent to be a writer? When I attended a small writer’s conference and heard a speaker say that anyone willing to work hard and study their craft could be a writer, I set about learning the craft, and I dreamed of having a novel bearing my name published by a traditional publishing house.

I’d been writing police reports for a few years and I had to unlearn “the facts, please, only the facts.” To learn the craft of writing novels, I read a lot of books by successful authors on how to write a novel. I read books by successful authors in my genre, Chandler, Block, Crais, Grafton etc. I also read best sellers in all genres, wondering if there were a similar thread in the prose, a trick there I could learn to help me be successful.

Alongside the reading, I was writing. I had an idea for a suspense novel and I wrote and rewrote, wrote and rewrote. I probably drove friends crazy with, “Can you read this bit and tell me how it sounds?” What helped me the most was finding a mentor who was a published author and then a group of writers to talk to and work with through the learning process.

When I thought I’d finally gotten it all down, and printed out what I was sure was the final, perfect draft of my novel, I was certain publishers would fall all over themselves to buy it. I’d followed directions, hadn’t I? Surely that meant success.

It wasn’t success, it was the beginning of a lot of rejection and a lot more hard work. Now came the commonplace, the regular and the unvarying routine of revision, revision, and revision. I’d read in one writing book that a writer needed to go through their manuscript until they were sick of it, then go through it one more time.

A lot of people at this point might say, “What is the point? Why didn’t you just self-publish and forget traditional publishers?”

Because that wasn’t my dream.

Back to routine. The path to publication for me was a lot of hard work, a lot of study and a lot of writing and rewriting. Now, on February 1, 2012, the dream I pursued will come to fruition. My novel will be published by a large, traditional publisher. But what I’ve found even more gratifying than a publishing contract is when someone says to me, “I picked up your book and couldn’t put it down!”

It was a routine of study, reading, writing and re-writing that produced a book I can’t wait to see in bookstores.

If you have any questions for Janice, please leave a comment. She’d love to hear from you!

A retired Long Beach, California, police officer of 22 years (16 in uniform and 6 as a non-career officer), Janice Cantore worked a variety of assignments – patrol, administration, juvenile investigations and training. During the course of her career in uniform Janice found that faith was indispensable to every aspect of the job. She published articles on faith at work, one for a quarterly newspaper called “Cop and Christ”, and another for the monthly magazine “Today’s Christian Woman”.

With retirement, Janice began to write longer pieces and several novels were born. She has a two-book suspense series in print that she calls Brinna’s Heart Series, The Kevlar Heart and A Heart of Justice (Oaktara Publishing). Janice is excited and honored to now be a part of the Tyndale House Publishing family. Accused, the first installment in her new suspense offering, The Pacific Coast Justice Series, is set to be released February 1, 2012, and will kick off a brand new chapter in her writing career. In addition to suspense and action, her books feature strong female leads. Janice writes suspense novels designed to keep you engrossed and leave you inspired.

You can connect with Janice on Facebook and on her web site.

Tradition!

Shonna Slayton — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:02:50 +0000

Tradition!
(Sung like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof)

So, this year Stephanie is going to be blogging about the emotional journey as a writer and how sometimes writing can be just for you and no one else. Kitty is going to be talking about the self-publishing adventure: how-to’s, stats, and everything else. Me? I’m sticking with my focus on traditional publishing. Same old, same old. What will my blogs look like this year?

I’m thinking lots of writing pep talks to remind me (and you) that traditional publishing is mostly a slow business but that the effort to get there is worth it. Aspiring writers don’t get a whole lot of encouragement:

“Aren’t you published YET?!” –or—

“Sorry, this isn’t for me.”–or worse—

*crickets*

I’d like to be a source of weekly writer love.

I’ll give tips on establishing writing routines so the hard parts of writing become easier over time. (Um, like actually writing instead of reading about writing!)

I’d also really, really like to blog about how a writer transitions from “aspiring” to “under contract,” but I can only control so much of my writer’s journey. I’ll blog about that too.

If you’ve been reading Routines for Writers for any length of time, these three pathways that Stephanie, Kitty, and I are taking will not be a surprise. They have been the topics on our hearts lately; we’re just going to dive full force into them. We hope you enjoy the shift in nuance and continue to pull ideas for your own writing journey.

Retro Post: Stress-free Writing All Year

Kitty Bucholtz — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 08:00:47 +0000

In January of this year, I posted this blog about organizing the upcoming year’s writing goals. Starting January 16, I’m once again teaching this 4-week online class, Going the Distance: Goal Setting and Time Management for the Writer, and I’d love to see you there. This is one of the exercises we’ll be doing in the class. I hope it helps you get started toward organizing your time and achieving your writing goals!

This month we’re all making the handoff between last year’s partially accomplished goals and this year’s fresh new and exciting goals. In the online class I’m teaching this month on goal setting and time management for writers, we’re using an annual planning calendar to find out how many days we really have for writing. Once we know that number and plan around it, we can create goals that can be achieved with a minimum of stress and guilt.

Take a 12-month calendar you can use just for writing. There are pros and cons for using the large laminated year-at-a-glance type, and the monthly flip calendar, so decide which one you prefer and dive in. Begin by crossing off all the days you already know you won’t be available for writing. That list will be different for each of us – birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, public holidays, kids’ school events, etc.

When you’ve crossed out everything you can think of, decide how many sick days you want to plan for. Also choose a number of days for emergencies. (The number will depend on your situation, the people who depend on you at work and home, the number of days last year that something came up unexpectedly, etc.) Count the total number of days you still have available on the calendar, then subtract the sick days and emergency days. This is the number of days you have for the year that you can plan your writing around.

You may also want to plan for some catch-up padding, especially if you’re chronically behind. One way to pad your time is to cross off the last three open days of the month, every month. That automatically gives you a full month of “extra time” for the year – 3 times 12 equals 36 days.

Let’s say you end up with 200 days in 2011 that you can devote X number of hours each day to your writing. Now you need to look at your goals and break them down into the number of hours each will take. For instance, if you can write 500 words a day without a problem, and you plan to write the first draft of a category romance of 50,000 words, it will take you about 100 days, or half of your year. If it takes you twice as long to edit and revise as it does to pound out the first draft, you need another 200 days.

That means you could produce a 50,000 word book every 18 months without stress or guilt. And by stress and guilt I mean feeling like you should be doing something else when you’re writing, or feeling like you should be writing when you’re doing something else. That is the kind of situation this type of planning can help you avoid. After all, you crossed off the holidays and vacation days and birthdays that you wanted to focus on. You’re free!

Now you’ll have to look at all of your goals for the year – which may also include showering every day, sleeping for 6-8 hours a night, driving to the grocery store, etc. – and figure out if you have more goals than can be accomplished in 52 168-hour weeks. If you have too many goals for the next 12 months, you’re setting yourself up for failure. But if you can do the math today and see that before it happens, you can make changes now and end up with a plan that truly can be accomplished.

Good luck!

2011 Revisited

Stephanie Shackelford — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 07:28:15 +0000

Kitty and Shonna and I are taking a short break over the holidays to focus on our families. Instead of new blog posts, we’ll be sending you to a few from the past year that we think you will enjoy.

Time For A New Routine

Getting It Out There

Battling Voices

Success From Failure

Monday – A New Perspective

Setting Categories for your Goals

Shonna Slayton — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:02:48 +0000

To get a handle on my goals, I like to categorize them under big headings:

Production
Marketing
Professional Development

And this year I’m adding another category: Editing. Previously I included this activity under Production, but this year has taught me that it is SO BIG it needs its own category.

Production

Editing

Marketing

Professional Development

Now, as far as filling in those slots under the headings, I’m still thinking. Last year, my overall intention was focused on learning to create great characters. I might just stick with that one again as I’m still learning. Perhaps it will be great characters tied with plot somehow. Like learn how to develop a character through the different phases of plot. Hmm, that would be Character Arc, wouldn’t it?

For Production, since I didn’t write a new novel this year, perhaps I’ll join up with Camp NaNoWriMo in the summer, or *gasp* write a novel one day at a time until it is finished. A slow and steady approach. I’d like to see if I end up with less editing if I went slower.

Editing? I’m so happy to be past my first 50 pages for real now. The next 50 went much faster, but that could be because I’ve gotten lazy again and my critiquer may have something to say about that. So at least for the beginning of next year, I’ll be focused on editing until I get to the end of this WIP.

That leads me to marketing. What I mostly use this category for is sending out my work to agents, editors, or contests. Other uses include watching and taking notes on what others (who actually have a book to market) are doing.

Professional Development happens to be the easiest and most fun of all the categories. This would include taking classes, going to conferences, reading books about writing, reading other novels and taking notes for my writer’s notebook. I really don’t need to set goals here because I do these things routinely. But I do find it helpful to point myself in a direction and be intentional about what I am learning.

So, to sum up our goal setting here at Routines for Writers: Stephanie is going to come up with one word to guide her momentum through the next year. Kitty has a series of Primary and Secondary Goals. And I’m focusing on Categories. Hopefully one of our methods of goal setting makes sense for you and will help you move forward with your 2012 goals.

Looking Forward: My 2012 Goals

Kitty Bucholtz — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:19:27 +0000

One of my annual writing routines is to figure out in December or January what I want to work to accomplish in the new year. It takes me a little while to figure it out because I need to make sure I’m not just creating a big To Do list. And historically I’ve set unachievable goals or made no plan for follow through, so I was always disappointed in myself at the end of the year. Then I learned about S.M.A.R.T. goals. My productivity and self-esteem have soared!

I haven’t yet taken the time to figure out the right wording to make these goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely – I’ll be working on that in the next couple of weeks. But here are my goals in a general sense for 2012:

Top 5 Goals

Self-publish my romantic comedy, Love at the Fluff N Fold
Self-publish a second novel, either another romantic comedy in the same series, my superhero book, or a YA I’ve been working on. Depending on which friend I listen to, I have strong support for any of those being the next book. LOL!
Self-publish a short nonfiction book on what I’m teaching in my online class next month, Going the Distance: Goal Setting and Time Management for Writers
Self-publish a short nonfiction book on the business aspects of growing your writing career
Create and stick to a budget for my writing business, and one for my personal life

Secondary 5 Goals

Successfully begin and complete a change in direction in my blog topics for 2012 here at Routines for Writers, focusing on self-publishing and how I’m looking for wisdom in my spiritual life (We’ll tell you more about this next month!)
Update my author web site in a way that I enjoy and that readers will enjoy
Learn about and implement promotional activities for all of my books, including building a quarterly newsletter
Focus on and create an efficient office, so it works no matter what country I’m in or how often I move
A yet-to-be-determined mystery goal!

I’m still trying to finish a few of my 2011 goals, (see my post about those last week) specifically getting my romantic comedy, Little Miss Lovesick, into print. But I’m trying to balance my work with the fact that I’m home with family and friends for the first time in 2 1/2 years and I want to enjoy them as much as possible in case we move again.

Have you written down your 2012 goals yet? Have you tried to word them in such a way that they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely? If you’d like a little help with goals and time management, tailoring a system that will work specifically for you, sign up for my online class. It’s $30 and runs January 16 – February 12.

Just for fun, since you probably don’t have any weight loss goals for December – LOL! – give yourself a Christmas cookie or a piece of fudge or pie for every goal you finalize this month. I think five main goals and five secondary goals works wonderfully. And that’s only ten cookies after all. Plenty of time to work them off with January’s health goals!

A Word?

Stephanie Shackelford — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:50:58 +0000

Looking back is important in making goals. So is looking forward. In order to keep making progress, you also have to continually evaluate and adjust, using your observations of past, present and future goals and desires to make sure you are headed where you want your life to go. I often get lost in the “forest” of the individual goals and travel in circles. I may accomplish a lot, even check off a lot of goals. Sometimes, though, I realize I haven’t mentally stepped back enough to evaluate if my goals are propelling me in the right direction. I find I’m really at a standstill. Or worse, going backward.

I read an interesting blog this week that gave me a new perspective of how to maintain that forward momentum. An alternative to resolutions . Choose a word or short phrase that encapsulates that “big picture” view of what I want for my life.

This was eye-opening for me. I can see it will be a great help in deciding where to spend my time and energy. And, periodically, when I realize that word/phrase is no longer as great a fit, I’ll be reminded to re-evaluate. It may be I’m being distracted by “shiny objects” and the word/phrase is still appropriate or it may be that it’s time to change focus to the next thing. Whatever that may be.

With just a little thought, I realized that my word for the past several months has been Healing but that I’m entering a new phase in my life-journey. I need a new word. That word is Discovery.

This article also suggested several ways to explore and/or remind yourself of the word/phrase. Some of them, like making a collage or a sculpture or story out of things that remind me of the word, I will do later. A quick and easy one, though, was to create a Wordle . A wordle is a “picture” that contains words written in various sizes, styles and colors. You write out the list, then choose different variations of layout and color. Here’s my Discovery Wordle.

What word or phrase would you choose to define past or future desires, goals, and direction?

How Did You Spend Your Time?

Shonna Slayton — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:02:42 +0000

As I’m writing this blog I’m frustrated with myself for letting so much time slip away from me today. I’ve got one solid day a week that I am supposed to guard jealously for my writing, yet these past few months I’ve noticed I’ve let other activities encroach.

And then when I don’t get much writing done in a week I get grouchy and am tempted to blame my kids, my husband, my messy house, the groceries (do we really have to eat?), the dog, and any other responsibility that took me away from my writing goals.

Pause. Think.

Start over.

I’ve blocked out that writing time and it’s up to me to say no to other activities during those hours. Perhaps I need to go write at the library so I’m not tempted to work on my to-do list at home.

So, my tip for today is to look back on how you’ve managed your writing time this past year. Can you guess how many hours were spent in production—actually writing words? How many spent in editing, research, education, marketing, social networking, blogging, etc.

Or were you diligent to write down the numbers as you went? I started to, once upon a time, but was not consistent. Now that it’s nearing the end of the year I wish I had those numbers in front of me!

Looking Back at 2011′s Writing Goals

Kitty Bucholtz — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:00:05 +0000

It’s that time of year – time to see how we all did on our 2011 writing goals. You know that we take our writing goals fairly seriously here at Routines for Writers. We may or may not accomplish what we set out to do, but we do try to keep track. That helps to hone the following year’s goals so that we’re always closer and closer to creating goals we can accomplish. Very important for self-esteem and momentum.

Last January I taught an online class on goal setting and time management (I’ll teach it again this January) and at the end of the class I posted my goal list along with all the rest of the class. Here are my goals for 2011 along with what I accomplished.

TOP 5 GOALS FOR 2011

Finish Superhero Book
To be blunt – it didn’t happen. I lost my confidence while getting critiqued by my classmates who were more on the literary side. Plus, after the RWA Conference, my goals changed significantly. See below.

Submit Superhero Book
Sort of done. I didn’t submit it officially, but I did pitch it to a couple agents and editors at the RWA Conference this summer. One agent asked me to submit it officially, but the feedback I got from the editors was that they didn’t know how to successfully sell romantic comedies (enough to make it worth their while to buy). So I made a decision not to submit it to the agent and possibly wait for a year or more to find out no editors wanted it – like I’ve done in the past. I made a career change decision. Keep reading.

Write First Draft of Angel Book for Master’s Degree
I thought I’d be able to pound out the first draft of this in my last semester of my master’s degree, but two things happened. One, we found out that John’s job was scheduled to end a few weeks before my final classes, so I had to reschedule everything so that I took nearly twice the load a semester early so I’d finish just in case John didn’t get renewed. That made it difficult to get as much done as I would have if the load had been spread over two semesters. Good thing, though, because John’s contract wasn’t renewed.

Two, I found it difficult to connect with my teacher for my final class where I was to write my book. She and I had completely different ideas about what constituted a contemporary Young Adult novel aimed at the American YA market. I felt like I was fighting her the entire way. By the time I got to the end of the class, I no longer knew what I wanted my story to be about. I’ve got some of the worst writer’s block I’ve ever had on this book. My solution – start over.

Finish Master’s Degree
I DID IT! YAY! There are pros and cons to this of course. The great part is that I did something I really wanted to do. The hard part is that I found myself second-guessing myself and my story ideas most of the time. There were a few times when I really felt encouraged, and I need to keep my mind on those moments. But it’s taken me these last five months to begin to regain my equilibrium. It’ll take me a bit more time to get ahead of the game confidence-wise.

Start My Author Web Site
DONE! YAY! Of course, there is a TON more to do that I haven’t had/taken the time to do. I’ve got a 2-page list of things that need to be done on the site in 2011. But at least I made my goal of starting the site. Next year I can make and meet some of the goals on that 2-page list of mine.

SECONDARY 5 GOALS FOR 2011

Attend RWA Conference in NYC
DONE! YAY! The morning after my last master’s degree class I got on a plane in Sydney and headed for New York. (I loved New York City!) I’d been thinking about the pros and cons of trying digital self-publishing if things didn’t go well at the conference. Doing some research, it looked like something I could do, something I might enjoy doing. So when I didn’t hear anything encouraging about the current market for romantic comedies, I went home with all the information I could gather from workshops on epublishing and self-publishing.

That’s when I altered my goals for the year. My new goal as of July 6th was to get my romantic comedy Little Miss Lovesick digitally self-published by the end of the year. Within a couple weeks, I’d altered the goal to get the book out by the end of September. On September 21, I MADE MY GOAL!

I also wanted to get my book in print before Christmas. I’d made a tentative goal of December 1st, knowing that I may or may not be moving then. Turns out I did move, so now my goal is to get it in print before the end of the year. The more I learn, the more I’m not sure if I can do it. I’ve decided to spend the time needed to do a great job rather than hurry to try to take advantage of the Christmas rush. But I still hope to get it out before Christmas.

Run 2 Half Marathons and the City2Surf Race in Sydney
There is a trio of running events in Sydney that is comprised of the Sydney Morning Herald Marathon and Half Marathon in May, the 14km City2Surf race in August, and the Blackmore’s Running Festival Marathon and Half Marathon in September. We ran the last two in 2010, and we wanted to do the trio in 2011. Unfortunately, I had nearly two semesters’ worth of classes happening at the time of the May race, so there was no way I could train for a half marathon. We ran the City2Surf in August and beat our 2010 times – yay! And John was deep into overtime on Happy Feet 2 by September so there was no way we were going to be able to run that race. Still, we kept running all year. That was a huge win for us!

Visit New Zealand
I didn’t think we’d be able to find time to take a trip between school and work, but work was the key to our trip. John wanted to see Wellington, New Zealand, where Weta Digital is located, to see if it was the kind of place we’d like to live. We only got to see Wellington, not the surrounding countryside or any other towns, but we got to be there for five days! Yay!! It was awesome!

Finish Jessica’s baby blanket (Caroline was born in 2009!)
I’ve been working on this blanket for two years! I still haven’t finished it, but I worked on it. (I tried a new crochet edging that is super cool but incredibly time intensive. Time is something I haven’t had a lot of since mid-2009 when I was halfway done with the blanket.) I have to finish my goal of getting Little Miss Lovesick in print first, then I can work on finishing the blanket. Thankfully, Jessie is happy to get it whenever I finish it.

See More of Australia Before We Move
We didn’t get nearly as much exploring done as we wanted! Very sad. But we had to keep in mind that we were doing other things that were important to us – school and work. Still, we saw a good amount due to our friends. We went to Melbourne for our anniversary in 2010 and we wanted to go back, but we didn’t have time. However, our friends took us on day trips to Hunter Valley (wine country), the Blue Mountains, and pretty drives around the area. I guess the only way to see more is to be on vacation for a while. LOL!

So there are my goals and what I accomplished. Not bad. And here is the reason I believe in both writing down your goals, and looking at them later: you see that you did more than you thought you did. At least, that’s the case with me. I was wondering if I’d accomplished much at all, but I see now I did pretty good, especially considering I was a full-time-plus student for half the year.

If you’ve been thinking that you need to get your goals not only written down, but broken down into workable chunks, take my online class next month. There are no formulas that you have to fit your life into. I’ll give you several ideas on how to proceed and you use what works for your personality and lifestyle. The goal of the class is to come away with a workable plan, and to know how to change it if your circumstances change (as mine did twice in 2011).

How about you? What goals did you accomplish in 2011? Next week I’ll show you a rough draft of my 2012 goals. Think about yours and we’ll compare notes.

A Look Back

Stephanie Shackelford — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:01:30 +0000

This past week I started a new full-time job at the same time I began fighting a head cold. It’s as though my body reacted to the easing of the emotional stress by falling apart. All these months of financial, emotional and relational uncertainty, I have been healthy. Barely a sniffle. Two days before I start a full-time job, sure to put a serious dent in that uncertainty, I woke up with a sore throat and congested head. While the throat has eased, the congestion is migrating to my chest.

What all this means is I have spent very little time writing. No RFW blog post, no stories, no letters, nothing. And very little time to get something written and posted before heading off that wonderful full-time, stress-relieving job.

I seriously considered not writing a post for today, but I don’t like to disappoint people. So instead of just posting an apology, I’m going to link to several other posts I’ve written in the past. I hope you enjoy reading them and I promise I’ll have something original next week. (Unless this chest cold turns to pneumonia. )

I hope you enjoy the look back. I know I did. I’d forgotten about the treasure trove in Bits and Pieces. I’ll be visiting those again soon.

Happy writing!