Summer is here!

Summer is here and the kids are out of school. Maybe you can sleep in a little more, and dinner is certainly easier to make—just throw some steaks on the grill and open that container of potato salad you bought yesterday at the deli.

You would think that with the arrival of summer you would have more time to write. Right? The days are longer making it easier to stay up at night; the kids don’t have activities they need to be driven to every afternoon. Maybe the workload at your job is a little lighter.

This all sounds good in theory, but the reality is, summer takes up a lot of time. Things don’t change much if you still need to get the kids to daycare or summer day camp, and your evenings are just as packed as they used to be with getting everyone home, dinner, bath, and bedtime. If things in your day-to-day routine haven’t changed, and you still want to do summertime fun stuff—going to the pool, the lake, the cabin, the beach, the parties at the park, the parades around the 4^th of July—your weekends are even busier than they were before. Never mind fitting in family vacations.

So what does this do to your writing? My kids have only been out of school for one day, and already my writing schedule is out of whack. Did I get anything done their first day off? Nope. Would I have?  Yep.

It’s important during these next three months to guard your writing time. If you used to be able to write one or two hours a day, try to keep that going. It’s easy to let the time go by taking the kids to the park or sitting on the porch with the neighbors sipping daiquiris while the kids play in the water sprinkler.

My daughter is asking to go to the zoo, have playdates, have a movie night with me. And I absolutely want do those things with her. For sure! She’s eleven, and soon she won’t want to spend any time with me. But you know what else I want to do this summer? I want to publish Summer Secrets. I want to finalize edits in Running to Love (not the title anymore, but still) and get that ready for publication (formatting, book cover and writing the blurb) this fall. I want to keep writing this blog and figure out the mysterious newsletter thing everyone says authors need to have. I want to keep writing my 3^rd Tower City Romance book. I need to edit the second one. No, I’m not going to be able to fit all that into the summer, but I’m not going to fit any of it into these next three months if I allow them to slide by in a haze of bug spray and suntan lotion.

I think of writing as my (second) job—I have a publication schedule I want to stick to. I don’t want to take a three-month vacation from writing.

So, it’s best for me to remember that when I’m tempted to stay up until 2 am and sleep until noon. I’ll remember that when my daughter wants to watch Moana for the second time that day.

Time alone is good for kids, and it’s good for me, too.

Only, I’m not alone—I’m with my characters, and it’s a nice place to be on a sunny summer afternoon.

Photo credits: Pixabay.com