5 Summer Projects for Writers

Plan now to make your summer productive and fun! May is so hectic with school ending, graduations, upcoming June weddings and more. It’s a transition from structured school activities with our kids to the relatively unstructured days of summer.

Productive summer

What can you accomplish in a summer while sitting at the pool, watching ball games and chillaxing?

  • Join the 21st century. Get up to date on current books in your genre. Read the latest award winning books, but don’t just read them for pleasure. Mark great characterization, chart plots, memorize stirring lines. Take in literature for a season.
  • Walk down memory lane. Clean out your files. Discover bits and pieces of previous writing that may have composted enough to need more attention now. Re-read your diaries and highlight interesting events, fun language, insights into human nature. Follow the path the writing dictates.
  • Get up early. With the early sunrises, plan an early morning date with your writing notebook. Sit out on the deck with a cup of coffee and write for an hour before anyone else in the house stirs.
  • Start something new. Put aside the frustrating projects that seem to be a a deadend. Buy a new notebook and start something totally different, something you’ve never dared to try before. You can go back to old projects in the fall, if you want, but give yourself permission to try something totally outrageous.
  • Finish something. Revise the manuscript you stuck in a drawer five years ago and vowed someday to pull out and do something with. Shameless promotion — The Novel Metamorphosis: Uncommon Ways to Revise can make this process simple.

I’m trying number 4. Starting something new and different. What are you planning for your summer project?

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