Summer vacuum – the time of little writing

Updated and republished

Hooray! Summer is here; warm, lazy days, extra wine, days out with the family and friends, a holiday away.  Mmm.

We have two scenarios before us:

The first:

You have a deadline looming, your fans are waiting, your muse is bashing away in your head with fantastic scenes you simply must write. And then you’re speaking or attending conferences and festivals. No time to have time off. Guilt sets in…

The second:

Mentally and emotionally, you’ve ground to a halt with your writing. Perhaps like me you had a book out in the spring  (Double Stakes) and/or a short story in a collection (Fate: Tales of History, Mystery and Magic) maybe it’s your body and Stone Age brain instinctively reacting to the longer days, the warmer air, the luxurious leaves and colourful blooms in the garden. The urge to get outside is almost overwhelming. But shouldn’t you be writing? Again, guilt sets in…

But let’s introduce some balance here…

1. Nobody can work 365 days of the year. Well, they can, but what a dull person they’d be, and probably an early inhabitant of the graveyard.

2. Set realistic goals. Halve your usual target and prepare for that goal to be disrupted as friends and family visit, children return from university, or neighbours invite you to barbecues or lunchevery few days.

3. Sales dwindle in the summer, so don’t stress about the sales figures. (Actually, stressing sales figures at any time is not good for you.)

4. View your holidays as research trips if your conscience is bothering you. Not just Roman walls, medieval castles or mosaics, but an opportunity to watch people out of their normal environment or see other environments altogether. And swimming in the (hopefully) warm, salty sea gets you in touch with your tactile side.

5. Snatch time when doing other things to do small writing tasks like looking things up, sending an email to a blogger, drafting a dialogue. Amazing how you can think through a scene while mixing a salad or watering the plants!

6. Work on a little project. I’ve just put together ‘The 500 Word Writing Buddy‘. It was a compilation of articles from the past few years of my writing and publishing column in The Deux-Sèvres Monthly.  I worked on it intermittently over the one summer then printed out some paper copies for selling at local fairs and fetes and sold out at a fair that Christmas.  It’s now updated – another summer project a few years later – and also available widely as an ebook.

So, relax a little while the sun is shining and read a good book or two…

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P.S. If it’s really hot where you are, you may find this post helpful about keeping your house/hotel room cool.

 Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers –  INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO,  AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO  and RETALIO,  and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories.  Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA,  Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.