WRITE NOW! Workshop Podcast: Write a Book, Change the World with Kitty Bucholtz

EPISODE 143I Our guest today is romantic comedy author, Rich Amooi. He's been obsessed with romantic comedies since the 1980s, watching When Harry Met Sally , Say Anything , and other films with great quirky dialogue. Rich's new book, Dying to Meet You , is his 14th romantic comedy novel. In our interview, he talks about where he got the ideas for some of his books, his writing process, and how he...

EPISODE 142T Between my entrepreneurship class for foreign-born women here in Sweden and listening to Stephen King's On Writing in audiobook form on my way to and from work, I have business and writing on the brain right now. So I thought it would be a great time to share with you how I try to keep track of the big picture when I get lost in the dirt and the details of having a writing business. T...

EPISODE 141E In today's Encouraging Words episode, I want to encourage you that you are probably not a person who doesn't try their best. Sure, maybe you could do better if you had more time, or better materials, or any number of other things that make the situation different. But right  now , with the time and resources you have, you probably are doing the best job you can. If you can learn...

EPISODE 140I Today's guest is the love of my life, my husband, John Bucholtz . :-D He started writing Middle Grade books a few years ago, and today he's sharing how he finds time to write despite several international moves, a motorcycle accident, and full-time employment. Like many writers, he started writing in elementary school. But it wasn't until about ten years ago that he wrote his fir...

EPISODE 139I Our guest today is former BBC reporter, James Blatch . You may recognize him as the co-host of the Self-Publishing Show podcast (formerly Self-Publishing Formula) with Mark Dawson. He shares with us the long journey of writing his first book, which should be out in a few months. James tells us how he started his first novel when he was about twenty, but it didn't go anywhere. Then got...

EPISODE 138I Our guest today is Laura Frantz, historical romance author of nearly a dozen books of faith, romance, and courage. Her latest book is A Bound Heart , the story of two people sold as indentured servants and expelled from their beloved Scotland, but destined to be together in the Americas. Laura writes in a log cabin in Kentucky! She and I have a lot of fun talking about food in Colonia...

EPISODE 137I Today's guest is Cassidy Carter , whose new book, Love on Location , just came out with Hallmark Publishing. Hallmark is all about sweet romance, usually with some humor on the side, and Cassidy definitely delivers. Cassidy tells us about her writing journey, starting at Carina Press, taking a break with her children, then coming back with a slightly different genre at Hallmark. She's...

EPISODE 136E My birthday vacation last week led me to the idea for this month's Encouraging Words episode. Taking some time off, and doing and seeing creative and amazing things I've never seen, I feel like I came back to my life a new person! I not only felt refreshed, but I felt more creative and ready to jump back into my writing. Whether you're planning your next vacation, or just need a break...

EPISODE 135I Today's guest, Amanda Hudson , is a writer who has recently experienced burnout - not being tired of doing what she's doing, but burnout in the medical sense of the word. Amanda had so much advice that we decided to break our interview into two episodes, so here is the second half starting from where we left off last week. Let me know if this is helpful, and if you'd like a book on th...

EPISODE 134I Today's guest, Amanda Hudson , is a writer who has recently experienced burnout - not being tired of doing what she's doing, but burnout in the medical sense of the word. If you've been listening to the show, you know that I've been struggling to understand burnout and heal from it myself. Amanda lives in Sweden where employers and the public health system support a deeper understandi...

EPISODE 133I Today's guest is Samuel Parker , a suspense/thriller writer talking to us today about his latest book, Border Son . I really enjoyed this story, possibly because it wasn't the "usual" type of suspense book I'm used to. Samuel says it's not the usual build-up-and-crescendo-three-times kind of structure. He sees the scenes and writes to those, often something simple but building in inte...

EPISODE 132I Suzanne Woods Fisher is back with us again! In October 2018, she spoke about strong Quaker women , and today we're talking about the Amish. Suzanne's interest in the Amish comes partly through her grandfather, who was raised Plain. There is an appeal to simplifying your life, but there's more to our fascination than that. To capture the real essence of her characters, Suzanne tries to...

Elizabeth Goddard is the award-winning author of over 40 novels of adventure, romance, and suspense. Today we talk about her latest book, Never Let Go , book one in her new series, Uncommon Justice. The main character in Never Let Go is a forensic genealogist trying to find a missing person. Elizabeth first heard of this kind of work in a news story and thought it was so interesting she wanted to...

It's the first Sunday of the month, so it's time for another Encouraging Words episode! Today I share about a message I heard at church last week from a guest speaker, Paster Steve Warren of C3 Church Amsterdam. His message was on vision - having a vision for the year, and for your life. He reiterated something we all know, but don't always think about a lot: The direction you face matters. The di...

New author Erin Bartels joins us today to talk about her novel, We Hope For Better Things . While this is her first published book, Erin has been involved in the publishing industry for over fifteen years. She shares her story of how the book came about, how long she researched it before she started writing, and much more. We had a great discussion on diversity in writing and "us vs them" in writi...

Today's fabulous guest is my own audiobook narrator, Catherine Gaffney ! Catherine is a stage and screen actress, and a voice over artist and audiobook narrator. Catherine joins us from her new studio to talk about how you can find the best audiobook narrator for your book. We covered a lot of areas, but some of the highlights included the idea that when writing your book, you might want to read s...

Today's guest is the fun and multi-talented writer, Sean Gaffney . He has written professionally for theater, film, television, and the web. He has also taught most of these forms of writing for universities and arts organizations. In our interview, Sean and I cover a wide range of topics, but it all comes back to one thing - story. How do you write a compelling story that makes people want to con...

Forensic specialist Jennifer Dornbush is back on the show! You may remember her talking to us about how to turn a movie into a novel back in September. This time she's helping us understand how to plot out a mystery, thriller, suspense, or crime story. Jennifer has a couple of acronyms that will help us build a foundation for our story. She also shows us one surprising element that's in nearly eve...

Although I find it embarrassing to share such painful and embarrassing and deeply personal parts of my life, I have not found much truly helpful information about how to recover from burnout on the Internet. So I'm sharing with you anything that I've found to be useful as I recover. I had a real hit-bottom moment last Sunday. I couldn't stop crying and John and I had to leave church not long after...

A friend of mine asked me to help her understand a little about publishing because her father had written a novel and she wanted to make sure he didn't get taken advantage of. This is some of the information I shared with her. There are two main ways to publish a book - traditional publishing, and self-publishing (also called indie publishing). When sending your book to a traditional publisher, th...

Two weeks ago , we talked about how to create and prioritize a short list of your most important goals for the year. Today, we'll discuss how to break down big goals into small pieces you can work on every day or week or month. There are two main ways to do this - plan toward a specific date, or plan a certain amount of work per period. Let's say you want to submit your completed manuscript to Hal...

Will Dages joins us today from Findaway Voices , part of the larger company, Findaway . Will is Head of Product there, which is perfect for him since he's an avid audiobook listener and the kind of guy you can tell really wants to help you, the author, succeed. After a quick background into how they started and how the company works, Will explained the process of how you go about making an audiobo...

The beginning of a new season - be it a week or month or year or whatever - is quite often a good time to stop and think about what you've accomplished recently, what worked, what didn't, and what you want to accomplish in the next season. In this episode, I suggest several ways to go back through the last year and remember what all you did. It's likely far more than you think! Then you can compar...

I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer . Amanda is a popular musician, and her indie approach to her music and her fans reminds me a lot of the indie approach to self-publishing books. The thing is...Amanda isn't afraid to ask her fans for what she needs. If she's going to be in a city playing a gig and needs a place to crash, she gets on Twitt...

Today's episode is taken from a live writing workshop I taught at my church in Malmö, Sweden, in November 2018. In this first portion of the talk, I discuss the "why" of your writing and how that "why" will help you choose topics and stories that will impact your audience to a greater degree. (See the entire brilliant clip of comedian Michael Jr. on his YouTube channel here .) Knowing your "why" w...