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Lessons from a Surprising Summer of Writing
How’d your writing summer go? Long-time readers might remember my penchant for writing “seasons,” distinct pockets of time, with definite beginnings and endings, and there’s no better writing season than summer. Ninety-ish days, bookended by two holidays. So how’d you do? For me, it was the summer of surprises, and lessons learned. The Thing I Knew on Memorial Day As the summer started, I was writing my novel, Mid-Lives. It was in the final phase and I had given myself a deadline of 1 July (after I failed to meet my original 1 April deadline). I beat that July deadline by a week. Turns out having a box set of…
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When a Book Hangover Spills Over Into Your Writing
If you recall last week’s post, I wrote about book hangovers. Those are the books you read that you love so much that you find it challenging to start the next book because you just want to bask in the halo of the book you just finished. This happened to me recently when I re-listened to Charm City Rocks by Mattew Norman. Turns out the halo/hangover from that book not only caused me to listen to anything other than a new novel but also manifested itself in my writing. The Genesis of the New Project A few weeks ago at church, a friend of mine who is an actor started…