#406 Writing Well: Stay Consistent in Your Writing During the Holidays

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Hey, Kingdom Writers, welcome back to this episode where we're going to talk about how to stay consistent in your writing during the holidays. My name is Shelli Hitz, and I am one of your hosts here on the podcast. And I thought this would be a good topic to cover because I know it is a busy time of year and you may feel guilty for not continuing your writing right now, or you just may be trying to find a way to make time for it. And so I'm going to give you three thoughts on this of how to stay consistent in your writing during the holidays. And number one is just sometimes you need to take a break and it's okay to take a break. You can give yourself permission to take a break and then restart the thing. I think that sometimes we fear is that if we take a break, we, we won't come back to it. So just give your brain a time frame and say, okay, I'm going to take a break for this week. You know, through. From, you know, Christmas through New Year, or, you know, the week before Christmas through New Year. Maybe it's two weeks. I mean, you can decide, you get to. To set the schedule. But ask the Lord. You know, we talk a lot about business meetings with God and so basically about prayer and intimacy with God and asking him. So maybe you just need to pause this right now and just take a nice deep breath.

And ask the Lord, say, am I to take a break from writing this holiday season? And if so, when. And then if he says yes, you're to take a break, then that's your answer. So, number one, sometimes you need to take a break. Number two, you might want to focus on smaller projects or smaller wins. So maybe during the holidays, instead of really working on things that take more brain power, so to speak, work on something that's smaller or that's a quicker win or that feels fun to you right now and maybe take a break on your book, but you can still work on other things. So maybe you work on creating a lead magnet for your email list. Maybe you work on some social media posts or graphics for Pinterest. Maybe you're working on a blog post and there's all sorts of things that you can be doing, depending on where you're at in the process and what kind of marketing platform you have already. But you can always take a smaller project on and say, I'm just going to work on this one thing. I know for me, there are certain tasks that just take a lot of brain power and I feel more drained and I need to really focus when I'm working on those projects. And then like yesterday I was working on creating some content for Pinterest and that just does. Doesn't take as much brain power for me. It might be might for you, but I was on Canva and I was, you know, creating some pin descriptions and titles and I was doing some things like that, and it just didn't take as much brain power. So I kind of did that at the end of the day when I was already tired. But there might be a smaller project or a smaller win. So maybe right now you could pause this, this podcast and just say, God, what is it that I'm to work on during this season? Should I continue to work on my book? Or are there smaller projects or smaller wins that I could work on during this time? Show me what to do, give me wisdom and guidance, and I truly believe that he will. And if you're in Christian Book Academy, you can just post in our private group and ask, you know, for some ideas and we can brainstorm with you or on my next steps coaching call, you can brainstorm that with me. And then so number one is sometimes you just need a break, so give yourself permission to do that. Number two, you might want to focus on a smaller project or smaller wins during this busy season. And then number three, capture ideas when you're on the go. So instead of thinking about needing to sit down and spend two hours writing or, you know, whatever, you know, we always talk about 15 minutes at a time. But instead of even thinking about, like, doing it in your office or at your writing station, wherever that is, do what you can while you're on the go. So maybe you're waiting in line at the grocery store and you get out your phone and you have an idea. You get out your phone and you send yourself an email. You know, you type it out and you send yourself an email. I had a Christian Book Academy member say that that was the primary way she wrote her book, was typing on her phone. It's like sending herself emails on her phone in just the little snippets of time that she had. Maybe you are waiting in line to pick up your child at the school, and so you use the Otter AI app or a similar dictation app, and you decide that you're going to just verbally capture some content that you can use later. I love that for myself because I'm a verbal processor. Even though I'm an introvert, I'm a verbal processor. My, my husband C.J. is not. So that doesn't work well for him. So for him, he actually sends himself text messages. And it's so funny. He has this, this whole, like, test text thread of messages that he has sent himself over the months. And he knows exactly, like he knows what's in there and where to go to find it. That would drive me crazy because I like having my content organized in like folders and buckets and things like that. But it works really well for him and his brain. So you do you. I always say, don't try to shove around, peg into a square hole. So do what works best for you and just find ways to capture ideas when you're on the go. Sometimes it just means carrying a small notebook with you wherever you're going. I bought a bunch of just little ones. They're like the little spiral bound notebooks that fit in your pocket or in your purse, and those are perfect. Like, you could jot down little ideas or things that you're, you know, stories that you want to do or, you know, just jot down those ideas as you. As they come and whatever works best for, for you. The app I mentioned is Otter AI O T T E R A I and it's free for a certain amount of minutes a month. And it's just a great way, if you're a verbal processor, to capture ideas on the go. So we've talked about, number one, sometimes you actually do need a break. So give yourself permission to do that. Ask the Lord in a business meeting with him what it is that you're to do during this season. Number two, you might want to focus on a smaller project or smaller wins during this time instead of continuing on. Maybe your book project or something, a big marketing project. But also, number three, just capture ideas when you're on the go. So when you're waiting in the grocery, grocery line or the school pickup line or you're in other places, you might be able just to capture an idea really quick. So sometimes even when I'm with family and friends and we're at a party or something, I will get an idea and I'll just say, excuse me for one minute, and I'll just, I want to, you know, capture this and I'll just write it down and so it's not like you're being rude or honestly go to the restroom and do it real quick in there. But, you know, just have a way to capture the ideas when you're on the go. And then a bonus tip I wanted to say is if you're really wanting to stay consistent and move forward and make progress on your book, you may want to consider accountability. So especially during a busy time, having accountability partners can really be helpful. And this is something that we have. We have used all sorts of different ways to help you to have accountability in our membership Christian Book Academy. But just a few months ago, we launched progress pods and our members are loving them. I mean, they're, they're so saying that it's helping them to finish and publish their book or it's helping them to finish their first draft or get to that next stage or just feel like they're making progress. Every week you'll meet with a group of peers and you'll just set one tiny step, like, what is your next tiny step? And we hired an accountability expert and we use his system and his software, so it's really working well. And we would love to get you hooked up and connected in one of our progress pods. So you can join us@christianbookacademy.com and we would love to get you connected. But whatever you do, I just encourage you to enjoy this season. I know I have said many times I'm a redeemed workaholic and it's been easy for me many times to just work through the holidays and through all the things. And I've realized, like, relationships are so important and I've always valued them, but I'm realizing even more the older I get. I'm close to 50 now, getting close. And it's just, I don't want you to miss out on those, making those memories, having those relationships. And yet you can do both. You can still either have a smaller project or a smaller winner. You can capture those ideas on the go, or you can capture those 15 minute segments of time that you have and then you can do both. But I encourage you to be present where you're at with your family. And I hope that God just really blesses you as we celebrate his birth this month. And let me pray for you, God, thank you so much for every Kingdom writer listening right now. I just pray that you would give them wisdom on what path you want them to take this month during the holidays and if they're to take a break, that they would not feel guilty that you would remove any sense of guilt from them, that they would just be able to enjoy the break and then come right back, that they wouldn't lapse out at all afterwards. Or if they're to to do a smaller project or have a smaller win during this time, show them what that might be. And I just pray that everyone would just have the idea of which strategy would work best for them to capture ideas when they're on the go. And maybe it's a little bit of everything of, you know, using their phone to email themselves or using an app like Otter AI or a small notebook in their pocket or purse. It might be a combination of everything. But Lord, I just pray you would give them wisdom. And I just pray, most importantly, that you would allow us to just make so many good memories this holiday season, this Christmas season, that celebrating the birth of Jesus and what you have done for us, the birth, your birth was just the beginning. What you did for us on the cross opened up the way for us to have eternal life with you and to be forgiven of our sins. So thank you so much for all that you have done and we want to celebrate you this Christmas season. So we thank you God, and we just pray that you would continue to bless the work of our hands, bless our writing, bless our minds, that the ideas that might come and give us ideas through dreams, give us ideas through other people. Just Lord, give us God ideas. And we pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. Amen. Friends, we are so glad you're here and we pray that you have a very merry Christmas.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven and to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom writers.