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 seven new-to-the-world Bruce Springsteen albums that I know I’ll want to listen to is a fantastic incentive to complete the book. I finished the book at lunch on 27 June. I opened the box set that afternoon. T’was a great day.
The Thing I Didn’t Know on Memorial Day
I expected to finish a book this summer. I did not expect to start and finish another one. Or that it would be a romance collection of meet-cutes, some of which end on a happy note while others end on with bittersweet vibe.
I mentioned this project last month, but didn’t complete it until the middle of August. Eleven stories, two of which are north of 10,000 so that’s novelette territory. It comes out to about 71,000 words, which, when I put the file in Vellum, shows as a page count of about 250, assuming a trim size of 5×8 in. The good thing about that size and page count is that I’ll be able to price it competitively, and maybe have a new-to-me reader give my stories a chance.
I enjoyed writing my novel. I loved writing this story collection. After a years-long effort on the novel—and this year’s concerted effort since New Year’s Day—writing short stories was such a breath of fresh air. Every few days, a new scenario. Every few days, a story completed. Next day, start a new one. It’s the sprint type of writing I haven’t done in a very long time.
What I love most about it, however, is the out-of-the-blue nature of it. On Memorial Day, I was only thinking about the novel. I assumed I would return to an in-progress story sitting on my hard drive. But that’s not what happened. Now, as Labor Day is upon us, I have this whole new thing to put out into the world I never saw coming. Those are some rarified writer moments.
And they haven’t stopped.
The Thing That Keeps Going
At the day job, a trio of us are fiction writers. One is an accomplished speaker, historian, and published author: David Falloure. (Visit his website and see what Counterclockwise is about.) The other is Karah, a vibrant writer with an ebullient spirit that lights up rooms and a deep understanding of story, who is looking to get back to writing fiction. The three of us talk about writing every day and one day we came up with the idea that the three of us should write a story based on a common story prompt.
To keep things on as level a playing as possible, we asked another co-worker who is an avid reader—I joke that her reading speed is Warp 9—to come up with the prompt. She did, and she delivered the prompt to us via email.
The day I received that email was not a good day for me. They happen to everyone right? So when I read the prompt, my instant first idea was dark and depressing. I had the whole story, more or less, mapped out within a few minutes. But what surprised me was the darkness of the tale.
I think y’all know that me and ‘dark fiction’ rarely go together. It’s just not what I usually have in me. But I had just written a collection of short stories that were completely out of the blue for me, so why not lean into the darkness and give it a try.
I did. And that story failed.
I tinkered with the dark story for a couple of days, even after my own personal darkness evaporated in the light of a new day. Nothing came. The story fizzled. So I tried a different approach, not as dark.
What emerged flowed out pretty easily, and I decided that if I just slightly tweak it, this new tale might be story #1 of a sequel to my Meet-Cute story collection.
The Writing Lessons from Summer 2025
Don’t be afraid to change your story.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, my novel, Mid-Lives, was a novel five years in the making. From the jump, I had the last chapter in my head, with a certain POV character. Everything I wrote from 2019 to early summer 2025 was aiming for that final scene.
Until the night before I finished the book. I struggled with how to make a certain character say the words I wanted to write. Wasn’t happening. So then I asked myself who else could say those words? The answer caused the last chapter to spill out in a rush. Fantastic feeling that came about because of doubt. The serendipitous joy of writing.
Don’t be afraid to try something new.
I love rom-coms. I enjoy romances. Heck, I never re-read books yet I re-read a book for the first time in decades this summer and it was a romance. But I never, ever, thought I could write straight-up romance fiction.
Until I did. Eleven times over. As I tell folks, I am my first reader, and eleven times this summer, I floated out of a room having finished a romance short story. I loved learning a new genre. I loved channeling all the things I’ve absorbed from rom-coms into my own fiction and giving it my own spin.
It was an educational and enthralling summer of writing.
So how’d your summer of writing go? Are you ready for the next season of writing?
I know I am.