Many of my full-time writer friends take time off during the summer from their normal writing regiment that they follow during the rest of the year. If they have kids, summer is the time they go on vacation with their families and spend more quality time with them, and if they don’t, summer just seems like a time that they take a little break.
Not for me. Summer is my optimal time to write. I teach PreK during the rest of the year, and though it is only part time, it takes prime time away from writing. But when school is out, the writer in me beams and does a Snoopy dance. Writing Time! Writing Time! I’m about to have more Writing Time!
Today, my first day of summer break, I woke up and said, “I am only a writer today!” I wrote for FOUR hours straight this morning. It was amazing! With no day job to have to worry about, or school to bring my own kids to, I could just be a writer. When I am absent for the rest of the year on Twitter or in the blogosphere, I suddenly emerge as if from a cocoon and start tweeting and reading blogs and commenting. I wish I could be better about it during the other parts of the year, but it’s too hard. All I can do during spring, summer, and fall is squeeze in as much writing time as I can, and social networking gets pushed to the side.
But not in the summer! Yippee!
Now, it helps that I have a husband who works from home and helps with the kids so I can go off to write at a coffee shop or the library during the summer. He did that today, and I am so grateful. The few camps that my kids are signed up for later this summer will help give me time to write, too (as well as curb summer boredom for them). I’ll be able to write, and then have quality mom time, too, instead of working at a day job and have to take away quality mom time in order to write.
So, let’s cheer on the arrival of blue skies, berry season, popsicles, the opening of the outdoor pool, and more writing time!
Welcome Summer!
-Nicole Marie Schreiber
Revision comes in many shapes and sizes, and to be honest, I find most of them quite painful. I love what happens as a result of revision. My manuscripts are better, cleaner, truer and more alive because of the process, but it hurts. That’s okay. I eat chocolate at 10:00 am and swig coffee and play with silly putty and I get it done.
I never would have noticed the error if I hadn’t decided recently to make a fictional family tree of the descendants of Miriam Seligman(n), known as “Savta” (Grandmother) in Blue Thread. As I went back over the electronic version of the manuscript, I discovered that about half the time I spelled Savta’s last name as Seligman. The other half of the time…you guessed it. Seligmann.
I find it harder to write in the summer. In Portland, the sun calls and the pace of life seems to pick up. There are great writing conferences to attend, not to mention arts fairs and music festivals, farmers markets and bike-in movies. The light lasts long, the kids are out of school, and nothing seems as important as sitting on the porch and simply enjoying life. And yet… writing must continue.
