Blisscraft Life With Christina Katz

If you have never taken a challenge with me, consider signing up for the new round that begins on Monday.

If you have enjoyed taking writing and freelance challenges with me in the past, you should take another. Because you deserve it!

If you like to receive daily prompts of any kind, you should try my challenges, because they are thought-provoking and creatively inspiring.

In fact, I can give you ten reasons why you should take a challenge. Here goes:

1. You are more than the external goals you set. Who helps you take care of your creative growth and development? This is something I do for folks who embrace a sense of their ever-evolving potential.

2. You are more than your to-do list. Life is never going to stop being busy. Don’t keep waiting for things to slow down, because they won’t. Just jump in and do a challenge because they all fit in a busy schedule.

3.  Your creative potential is huge. You may not be surrounded in life by folks who consistently affirm this. Well, good news. I see your potential and I would love to see you express more of it.

4. You have real-life responsibilities. I know you do. So do I. So does everyone! We are not going to let the fact that we are grown ups prevent us from continuing to expand creatively.

5. You have down-time every day. And if you don’t, you should probably take a bit here and there. Taking a challenge with me for personal and professional growth can help.

6. Your heart and soul love creativity. If your life is feeling stale, flat, and unprofitable, then it’s time to excite your heart and soul with creative growth.

7. Winter is an exceptionally creative time of the year. I adore winter. The short days and long nights inspire me to be more thoughtful and introspective and I encourage you to let them do the same for you.

8. Personal growth is empowering. If you are feeling frustrated or stuck in any areas of your life, taking on personal growth challenges in the New Year can really lead to more happiness and personal satisfaction.

9. You can experience growth in a short time. I hear it again and again from people who take these challenges seriously. Professionals experience immediate boosts of inspiration and productivity. Why not you?

10. You don’t need a lot of money to express yourself more. I created my challenges with low price tags so more people could benefit from working with me. Take advantage of my challenges while they are here because my offerings are always in flux!

Here are the challenges that begin on Monday. You must register by Sunday, January 4th at 9pm (that’s tomorrow!) to participate in the first round of 2015.

Then please keep in mind that a new round begins the first Monday of each month.

And don’t miss my brand new challenge, Unwrap Your Creative Gifts. My daily creativity challenge designed to awaken your creative confidence. Click on the badge to register today:

Receive 21 excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days. Click on the badge to learn more and register:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

Anyone who is looking to become a more facile and joyful parenting article writer should take my Article Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful and skillful parenting essay writer should take my Essay Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful rewriter and polisher of her own words should take my Grammar & Punctuation Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become more brave about selling work should sign up for my Sell Your Writing Challenge.

Taking this article writing challenge has given me a bank of article outlines to begin the new year and a way to keep on creating more and more when I get to the end of my current list. I highly recommend it for the writer dry of ideas, needing some sort of method to keep her inventory supplied, or just starting out and learning how to create ideas for herself. The best $20 I’ve spent to further my career.  ~ C. Alexander

During 21 Moments I discovered ideas for many intriguing subjects I wanted to write about that had not occurred to me prior.​ An excellent kickstarter to writing for pleasure as well as potential profit.  ~ M. Clair

Once again Christina has aimed her arrow and hit the bull’s-eye with a useful daily challenge. The Grammar & Punctuation challenge helped me efficiently revise current article drafts, keep an eye on tricky punctuation mistakes I shouldn’t be making, and hone my word choice and sentence structure. Writers can expect this challenge to be an effective continuing education tool to help them improve their overall writing.  ~ R. Franz

I like taking online writing classes or workshops, but by far I got the most writing out of 21 Moments. It really clicked with me, that a moment is just a segment of time. Since I don’t have a lot of time due to my day job and other commitments, doing the moments really fit into my schedule.  ~ J. Huspek

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.

~ Winston Churchill

Up and at ’em! Get up earlier (or go to bed later).

Exponential productivity. Consider your most productive time of day and work then.

Keep it simple. Don’t make a big “Look-What-I’m-Doing!” festival out of your work. Just feel good about getting your work done each day.

Stay grounded. Share your satisfaction with getting your work done in a low-key way with people who care and cheer you on.

Choose support wisely. Talk to supportive people about your writing success, but don’t mention it to people who have historically proven incapable of cheering you on towards your creative goals.

Steer clear of “Crazy-makers.” Short definition: folks who interfere with you getting your work done. Stay away from them for 30 days and see what happens. 

Be as social or anti-social as you like. Don’t bow to peer pressure. Trust your gut to decide how little or much to work each day. You can make the decision daily to suit your comfort level and needs.

Balance your act. Recognize that big writing goals require communication of your intentions and needs, while still requiring you to be mindful of others’ goals and needs. It’s all a big balancing act — so pace yourself.

Check it off. Have a method for noting what you’ve drafted that feels festive to you. (Gold stars, anyone?)

Carry it over. Once you discover you can get and sustain writing momentum, stay as productive and engaged as you can throughout the rest of the year.

Consider this a writing workout. Think about the marathoner. How does he get and stay in shape? It’s all about the daily workouts. So is this.

Enjoy the writing ride. Walk away from your daily work with a clearer understanding of what makes your creativity hum. Keep making adjustment until you are as productive as you can be.

Whatever you are writing, your creative capacities are worth their weight in gold. Happy writing productivity, writers!

So much inspiration, so much time! Please subscribe to the Create, Share, Prosper blog and sign up for The Prosperous Creative ezine for exclusive discounts you won’t find elsewhere. Click on the Enter School tab above to put your creativity to prosperous use right now. Like words? Check out my Etsy shop. And you haven’t seen anything, if you haven’t seen all the helpful offerings in my online shop. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing this post with fellow creatives!

~ Photo By Pete Markham

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The menorahs have been lit. The presents have been opened.

The holiday sales have switched to clearance sales.

And look out because they are going to start putting the Valentine’s Day gifts on display next!

You may still be entertaining or you may be hibernating.

You may be traveling or you may be curled up reading a good book.

In the meantime, how creative are you feeling?

If you are not sure you want to know the answer to this question, check out my new daily creativity challenge, Unwrap Your Creative Gifts.

Unwrap Your Creative Gifts is a 22-day creativity challenge that begins Monday, January 5th.

Each day, you will get a reminder of what you already know deep-down inside: you are an incredibly creative person and the world needs your gifts.

Maybe you have taken time to consider your gifts and imagine how you might contribute more creatively to the greater good. Maybe you have not. Maybe you have just been too darn busy lately to think much about what you have to offer.

Regardless, this 22-day challenge will light a fire in your heart and motivate you to actualize your full creative potential all year long.

And if you think other people are more creative than you, by the time you complete this challenge you will remember that you are just as expressive as the most creative people you know.

I bet you have put a lot of energy in recent months into taking care of gifts and celebrations for others. Now maybe it’s time to do something special for yourself.

Cultivate your unique gifts. You have them in abundance. We all do.

I hope you can join us for a 22-day celebration of all the gifts you have to offer!

Learn more and register here.

We’ve moved beyond Thanksgiving at this point in the year, but I hope gratitude has not worn out its welcome in your home office yet!

The best way to create reachable, satisfying goals for next year, is to sit for a moment in quiet gratitude for all that you have accomplished this year and all the years leading up to this year.

Can you feel that? It’s a great feeling if you can tune in to it.

If you can’t feel it, maybe you should wait on those goals for next year.

Because setting goals from a feeling of frustration or impatience is just about the worst way to approach goal-setting.

And don’t be surprised if you don’t get as much done as you like and don’t enjoy as much as you’d hoped, if you start your year off from a negative state of mind.

I am feeling so grateful today for all that I have accomplished in 2014 thus far. I am humbled by all the awesome women I have worked with over the course of the year. And I have also been fortunate to serve so many editors whom I genuinely like and respect.

And you should have seen the 30-something new parenting articles I wrote this year. They were totally cool and I really enjoyed crafting them. I enjoyed it so much that this was the year that I started showcasing some of my creative approaches in Article Writing Challenge to benefit and inspire other freelancers. And I even noticed the inspired results in my some of my students who took the challenge.

I also created 12 new monthly columns for my fourth time around as a newsletter columnist for Willamette Writers.

I created four freelance writing challenges in total throughout the year. And I continued to offer some of my 21 Moments writing challenges part of the year. I created my first online video course. It’s called, Writer Platform Success: Assess Your Strengths & Skills Now. This course allows many more writers to work with me on their platforms at their own pace than ever before.

This year, I also taught five sessions of classes and two rounds of Dream Teams, which means that many of my students were repeatedly published and several of my students were able to create, polish and launch new books. Congratulations to…

• Carol Alexander author of Homestead Cooking With Carol: Bountiful Make-ahead Meals
• Lara Krupicka author of Bucket List Living For Moms: Become A More Adventurous Parent
• Christa Melnyk Hines author of Happy, Healthy & Hyperconnected: Raise A Thoughtful Communicator In A Digital World
• Marianne Peters author of Declutter For Good: Share Your Stuff & Reclaim Your Life
• Sarah J Swofford, MPH author of From Ouch To Ahhh: The New Mom’s Guide To Sex After Baby

There are a few more books launching in 2015, if you can believe it. And I am proud that all of my students’ books make the world a better place.

I also started a new type of Dream Team, the Essay Writing Dream Team, which has been beyond fun and has produced excellent results, some of which have already been published.

I also launched a new book this year, The Art Of Making Time For Yourself: A Collection Of Advice For Moms.

In addition, I launched a short workbook called Creative Knowing: 50 Self-reflection Questions For Women.

I discovered a handy quote-making app called Insta-quote and created dozens of quote badges, which I distributed through Instagram and other other social media outlets.

This year, I also recorded a conference call about Unlock Your Writer Platform Profits, which is available as an MP3 if you missed it.

I have some ongoing monthly writing career consult clients, whom I treasure dearly.

And last, but certainly not least, my husband Jason and I created an Etsy Store called Words, Glorious Words! We are so close to making our goal of creating 50 items in 2014. Only a few more to go over the holiday break…

I updated my annual list of movies about writing and the writing life, which now totals 292! Next stop 300, folks.

So that’s my year in a nutshell.

You can probably tell that I was never lonely or bored.

In fact, I was always happy and prosperous.

The whole story is: I had an amazing 2014 and I can’t wait to set my goals for 2015.

Join me in this process by rounding up what you accomplished in 2014 before you set your goals for 2015.

And before you commit a single idea for 2015 to paper, be sure to congratulate yourself for all that you have already done.

So much inspiration, so much time! Please subscribe to the Create, Share, Prosper blog and sign up for The Prosperous Creative ezine for exclusive discounts you won’t find elsewhere. Click on the Enter School tab above to put your creativity to prosperous use right now. Like words? Check out my Etsy shop. And you haven’t seen anything, if you haven’t seen all the helpful offerings in my online shop. Thanks for reading and thanks for sharing this post with fellow creatives!

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But do we know you?

What do we know about you?

How will we continue to learn about you?

How have you set yourself up for success by creating a platform that works for you in the long-haul?

If you are not sure what the answers are to these questions, then I suggest you take my Udemy Class, Writer Platform Success, 24 Questions To Answer Before You Build Your Writing Platform Using The Platform Bingo Method.

When you register for this Udemy class in December, it’s half price.

Because this is the perfect time of year to be thinking about how to create or update your best platform.

So don’t delay, you can get started brainstorming your best platform in minutes!

Please use this coupon code to get the course at half-price!

And if you’d like me to review your Platform Bingo Worksheet and discuss your platform goals for 2015 with you, simply register for a phone consult with me in December.

Here’s to your writer platform success in 2015!

Seth Godin’s teachings have always been a gift to me.

I often feel, when I listen to what he has to offer, that he is speaking about me, so no wonder I love him so much.

I also always learn a few new things and hear a few things I need to be reminded about.

I hope that you will enjoy listening to this interview as much as I did.

Today is my birthday, so this is my birthday gift to you!

Let’s make the world a more thoughtful place simply by being in it, and by listening to more Seth Godin.

Happy birthday to me and thank you, Seth Godin.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/seth-godin-on-the-art-of-noticing-and-then-creating/5000

Wow. It’s hard to believe that my writing challenges have been going strong now for almost two years now.

I guess one reason is because I continue to get feedback like this glowing review for my article writing challenge:

Christina Katz has outdone herself again! Taking this article writing challenge has given me a bank of article outlines to begin the New Year and a way to keep on creating more and more when I get to the end of my current list. I highly recommend it for the writer dry of ideas, needing some sort of method to keep her inventory supplied, or just starting out and learning how to create ideas for herself. ~ Carol A.

Creating tools that help writers succeed in ways that are meaningful to everyone involved is what makes my writing career tick.

I know that writers have doubts and challenges some writers face every day. My goal is to help writers get past any immediate hurdles and get to the most enjoyable job of writing.

For writers, writing does not fill only one or two needs. For those of us who love to write, creating fills many needs. And the process is just as valuable as the product.

Everything I offer reflects my holistic attitude about writing, writers, and the writing life. I hope that you will make good use of my inexpensive, helpful tools and resources for writers in 2015.

Start Date Change For All Challenges

All of my writing and freelance challenges will begin on the first Monday after the first of the month.

Therefore, the December 2014 challenges will begin on Monday, December 1st at 12:15 am because this is the first Monday of the month.

ALL challenges that I administrate (21 Moments and all of my Freelance Writing Challenges) will start on the first Monday of each month from now on. They will no longer begin on the 1st of the month, unless the first happens to fall on a Monday. (This is the case for December 2014.)

Remember, instead of every challenge starting on the first, every challenge will begin on the first Monday and then run for 21 or 20 days thereafter.

The Last Day To Register For Challenges Will Be the Sunday Prior To The Start Date By 9 pm

So, for example, you have until this Sunday at 9 pm to register for the first three rounds of 21 Moments and all four of my Freelance Writing Challenges.

All Of My Challenges Run 12 Months Out Of The Year Starting In January 2015

Now that I have the start dates and the administration for challenges under better control, I can run them all year-long rather than just certain months. This means, I will offer my challenges during December and over the summer from here on out.

Yay!

A Couple Suggestions

Please note, I do not recommend taking more than one challenge at the same time.

My suggestion is to take one challenge per month to help you pace out your writing career progress.

If you have not taken a challenge in a while, register now for a creative boost that will help you become more prolific and successful in the long run!

And always remember to provide me with your e-mail address if it is different from your Paypal e-mail.

Thank you! And thank you for all of your suggestions over the past two years that I have been offering challenges.

In December 2014, you can sign up for the following challenges

Receive 21 excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days. Click on the badge to learn more and register:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

 Receive 21 more excellent examples of great writing in your inbox daily for 21 days:

Anyone who is looking to become a more facile and joyful parenting article writer should take my Article Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful and skillful parenting essay writer should take my Essay Writing Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become a more thoughtful rewriter and polisher of her own words should take my Grammar & Punctuation Challenge.

Anyone who is looking to become more brave about selling work should sign up for my Sell Your Writing Challenge.

Because who has time to stop writing and talk to people when there is a word count to meet?

Thanksgiving Gumballs From Archie McPhee

I am a veteran journalist, author and coach with over a decade and a half of experience and a wealth of techniques to share. I am focused on making the world a saner, more expressive place. I help folks become more creative for personal enjoyment, professional development and transformational growth. Whether you are a professional creative or hope to become one some day, I can help you embrace your personal strengths, explore your creative possibilities, and evolve incrementally into your most inspiring self. If you are ready to achieve creative consistency in your life and career, email me about monthly coaching calls. To learn more about increasing your creative confidence, please check out my online school. Stay tuned for ways to save money by becoming a Beta User for my next new course by subscribing to The Prosperous Creative. And don’t forget to get these blog posts delivered to your inbox, so you never miss a post. If you appreciate my work—school, products, blog and social media posts—you are welcome to make a contribution of any size at any time. Thank you for your support!

Happy holidays to all of my fellow writers!

Clicking on the suggested links is half the fun.

Sometimes they are just items that are good quality and reasonably priced.

Other times they are humorous.

Happy clicking!

The Word “Writer” In or On Gift:

Writer necklace LINK & LINK

Writer definition necklace LINK

Writer definition print LINK

Writer bookends LINK

#writer t-shirt LINK

Writer Way street sign LINK

“You are a writer” poster LINK

Writer’s Block Soap LINK

Small Gifts For Writers:

Your favorite everyday pen in several colors LINK

Journals LINK

Pads LINK

Blank books LINK

Personalized mugs LINK

Writer bumper stickers LINK

Soaps LINK

Lotions LINK

Banned books mug LINK

First lines of literature mug LINK

Posters for writers and writing instructors LINK

Air freshener LINK

Funny Band Aids LINK & LINK

Note cards and bookmarks LINK

Stress Ball LINK

Temporary Tattoos LINK

Ink stamps LINK

Gum LINK & LINK

A fun flash drive LINK

Literary switchplates LINK

Magazine holders LINK

A dammit doll LINK

Starbucks or coffee shop card LINK

Tea or tea shop gift card LINK & LINK

Picture frames to display articles or book covers (the floating kind work well for various sizes)

Funny or colorful sticky notes

Large clear jars to collect all your sticky notes

Travel cup that does not leak LINK

Lip balm LINK

Baseball cap LINK

Fuzzy socks

Sturdy slippers

Quality hot chocolate

A wall or desk calendar LINK & LINK

A set of pretty hooks LINK

Fun reading glasses LINK & LINK

Glasses cleaning kit LINK

The latest version of Strunk & White LINK

Creativity books LIST

Kitchen timer for timed writing LINK & LINK

Fingerless gloves

Ornament in bookish theme LINK & LINK

Book plate stamp LINK

Great writers finger puppet set LINK

A puzzle of famous writers LINK

Best Essays of the Year 2014

Best American Short Stories 2014

The Best American Magazine Writing 2014

To Be Continued…

Photo by asenat29