Friday, May 30, 2014

Summer Writing Schedule

When you have small kids - or older kids - or a husband that works at home - finding time to write in the summer months isn't the easiest thing. In my last post, most comments said to either skip the housework and let it be dirty or put a writing schedule in place - or both.

If my house is a mess, I have a hard time concentrating (which may be 90% of my problem lately), so skipping the cleaning isn't going to work for me.  More power to you if it works for you.

I had the schedule worked out more than a month ago.  As soon the words, "I'm going to have a great summer," came out of my mouth, my husband announced he has to travel for work this summer. On top of that, my small person's school already had wait lists for many of the weeks of summer camp.

So I threw my schedule on the ground, stomped my feet, and screamed like a three-year-old. Not really - but I wanted to.

This morning, I got out the family calendar and made a writing schedule around vacation, research trips for my novel, and summer camp for my small person. I have a writing conference in the middle of the summer, which should be motivating since I need to have part of a manuscript ready to go in a couple of weeks. My plan is to write while the small one is at camp and to write early in the morning on the weeks when there is no camp. Vacation is vacation, so I'm not going to write a word.  And experience has taught me that the week before school starts isn't going to be productive, so I'll count that as vacation too.

When I add it all together, I will have a minimum of 125 hours to write, not including writer's conference time or weekends. That's a lot of hours, and not so much that it should require me to stop cleaning or make my small one feel ignored.  I feel optimistic.

What's your writing plan for the summer?

Tonja

5 comments:

  1. Oh boy...my plan is to what I can when I can. That's my plan.

    Hugs and chocolate!

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  2. I should create a writing schedule for the summer, but I'm not organized enough to do that. My plan is eerily similar to Shelly's...write what I can when I can.

    Best of luck to you!

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  3. If I did it when I had time I wouldn't write 2 words this summer. There's always something else more important to someone.

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  4. I love how you came up with your writing plan--I need to do that. Next week, my two small people are going to camp, so I plan to get lots of hours then.
    But I need to set up a plan like this for the rest of the summer.
    Like you, I can't let me house get totally messy either. :)

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  5. Kudos to you for making a plan! Knowing the amount of hours seems to me to be encouraging - like, it's finite, innit? Perhaps it's less overwhelming than just thinking, "Gah, I've got so much to do!!!" :-)

    As for me, I've more of a desire than a plan, and that's simply to break out of my slump and start bloody writing again. :-)

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