Chaos is coming

How to keep writing when summer demolishes routine

Last week, I bent your ear about how I hate word counts and love timers, and to my grand surprise, not one of you called me out. Not a one!

There were two things I truly expected blowback on. The first is privilege. I told you last week that I set my timer for 90 minutes. Yeah, that’s right: an hour and a half. Who am I, Marie Antoinette? Only a princess has that kind of uninterrupted time.

Even if nobody said it, I’m sure some of you thought unkind things about hearing that I have 90 free, uninterrupted minutes every day that I spend making art.

I am tremendously lucky to have so much control over my time. But I’ve lived through plenty of periods of less time and attention, during which I still used a timer set for 15 or 20 minutes. As any working parent knows, you can get a lot done in 15 or 20 focused minutes.

Which brings me to the other reason I thought my post might get some of your hackles up: Summer is coming.

For some, summer is a word that evokes joy and freedom: ice cream! Swimming pools! Fireflies! Vacations! But most writer parents I know see summer as their adversary, the bad guy in the story coming after their time, routine, and focus.

Summer means kids out of school. Routines go by the wayside. Vacations are fun but require extra time to plan, organize, and pack for. Schedules often change week to week, which makes it hard for anybody to find any kind of rhythm. Even when parent writers I know do have downtime in the summer, they’re too tired or behind on adulting to bother with writing.

The truth is a sustainable writing practice is built on way more than word counts and timers. The writing practice that will see us through summer and beyond is the one that can adapt.

If you’re Team Timer like me, maybe you keep using your timer in the summer but knock back your expectations, going for 15 or 10 or even 5 minutes¹. If you’re a Word Count Warrior, you can reduce your targets to 300, 150, or 75 words. Whatever small target you set, I urge you to commit to celebrating each time you manage to adhere to it. And give maximum grace when it simply doesn’t work out.

Another key summer strategy: Go lo-fi. Laptops + pools = impractical, to say the least. Print pages and carry them around with you to read or mark up. Summer is the season to bust out all those adorable notebooks you were given at holiday time. I’d say use the good pens too, but when I’m on the go, I usually end up using the crappy ballpoint at the bottom of the bag I never want to write with but carry just in case I don’t have anything else². Which always happens in the summer.

Next, let’s go for small assignments³. Rather than attempt to undertake massive edits, work small. You could focus on the rhythm and musicality of the language (discussed at length in this episode of Writing in the Dark) or experiment with word choice, sentence length, or paragraph order.

If you’re drafting, try index cards to jot down character details, snippets of dialogue, or images associated with setting or story. There’s no law that says your writing practice needs to be Doing Big Things—many of us confront macro issues by starting at the micro level.

Another option: Lean into nourishing practices that don’t involve writing sentences. Listening to podcasts, reading in your genre and/or craft books, and even taking a silent, solo walk where you let your mind wander around your story are super valuable exercises that can fit into a segmented summer lifestyle. Often we discount these writing-adjacent activities, but I find them crucial to forward progress. Also? They’re fun. I love spending a run or swim puzzling out plot or talking to my characters. Writing is allowed to be fun, especially in the summer.

Here's my last suggestion for trying to shoehorn writing into the chaos of summer: Don’t. For many of us, summer evokes our carefree, younger days, when joy was ours for the taking. The nights are long, the fireflies are out, the beach is calling. There’s watermelon, iced tea, and popsicles. There are adventures in new places, reunions with friends you haven’t seen in too long, and plenty of naps to be taken. Go ahead and bust up your routine. Tell your characters and memories you love them and you’ll be back in a little bit. Take a day off and delight in the wildness of the present moment. Your writing will be there when you’re ready to get back to it.

1. Yep, 5 minutes counts!

2. Still better than a pencil

3. More on this in Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird