Writing Plan: Summer Edition

Writing Plan: Summer Edition -- Photo of someone coming down the pool slide.
Will you make a splash this summer?
This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group’s topic is Summer Writing Plan. We were asked, “What adjustments will you make to get through the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer?”

We have 4 more days of school this year. Our son will be moving up from middle school to high school. It doesn’t seem possible we’ll have two in high school next year. But that also means for the next 9 weeks or so, I’ll have them underfoot for more of the day than I’m currently used to. They LOVE to sleep in. And by that I mean until noon or so. Then they wake up ravening beasts who want fed and entertained (which now usually means driven around to either be dropped off at a friends or to pick up said friends who are likewise transportationally challenged.

Luckily our schedules shouldn’t change too much except to open up more free time for everyone, both over the summer and next school year as I’ll only have 1 drop-off/pick-up time instead of two.

Writing Plan: My Big To Dos

June

  • Add 8,210 words to BHT to bring it up to 90k by July 1 — 328 words/day
  • Halfway point for Jack of Hearts (Stop laughing! it’s only ~2,300 words per day to get to 35k by mid June.)
  • Outline JoH using 9 sentences for structure and fine tuning.
  • Pitch Workshop, online
  • Get business cards reprinted with current info

July

  • Continue working on JoH
  • Attend National RWA Conference in Anaheim toward the end of the month
  • Take lessons learned from pitch class & combine with story bones for sequels to BHT

August

  • Continue working on JoH — need 70-75k by end of Sept
  • Analyze scenes for Revealed, Sweet Temptation and Flower Queen’s Daughter to see where to improve or rewrite

Writing Plan: My Big How Tos

  • Get Up Early and get working by 7am to take advantage of a quiet house
  • Focus on priority goals first: BHT & JoH before everything else
  • Track time spent writing in spreadsheet
  • Take advantage of other writers doing sprints via twitter or chat rooms
  • Limit Facebook Games until after lunch

YOUR TURN:How does summer affect your creative schedule? Does it enhance or impede it?

And if you’d like to read about how the rest of my accountability group answered, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Kimberly Farris *
* Angeleque Ford * Danie Ford * Emma G. Delaney

3 thoughts on “Writing Plan: Summer Edition

  1. I like how detailed your plan for the summer is. I believe you can get JoH to the halfway point by June and hit all your other goals.

    I’m planning to have a productive summer. I have a list of things I want to accomplish. The keys will be managing my time better and planning/scheduling things.

  2. Congratulations on having such an aggressive summer writing plan! My writing plan includes the rest of the year. Summer is a blessing in many ways. When I hit a block, I go for a walk in my prairie, take a bike ride, soak in the sun. I always return to my keyboard with renewed energy. The summer challenge is that I’d rather give in to my garden than stay at the keyboard. Blessing and curse. Isn’t that always the way!

  3. Thanks, ladies. It looks good on paper, I think I just need to get through this week. Last week of school and just about anything that can go wrong or manage to screw up my schedule has also piled into this week.

    Your distractions sound so lovely, Carol!

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