5 Ideas: What Will You Do This Summer?

Even though we have job obligations over the summer, we live, at some level, on an academic calendar. The semester is over, grades are submitted, and the beginning of June represents an opportunity for thinking about how we want to spend our time and what we want to accomplish, especially as writers, by September 1 and by December 31. Some recent research suggests that it takes an average of 66 to change a habit, so the summer timeframe offers not only a good deadline for a project or two but also period during which to cultivate long-term habits. We’re revisiting 5 posts to those those ends.

So You Want to Develop Your Website

We wrote this post two years ago, when we overhauled our websites that summer. It’s full of advice, links, and author websites we like. With Generation Space: A Love Story due out in February, we’re already starting to think about publicity, and we’ll need a website that focuses that book in ways our current websites (HERE and HERE) don’t. Do we create a separate website for the book, do we rework our current websites, or do we shift the look of this blog to work as a website for the book as well? Stay tuned.

So You Want to Write Nonfiction

Anna has a couple of nonfiction book projects in the works, and we’ll both be thinking about essays and articles to pitch as the publication date for Generation Space approaches. This post is a short list of good, practical reminders from books about nonfiction writing.

So You Want to Write Fiction

Doug has a complete draft of his novel and plans to dive back into the work of revising. This post from a couple of years ago provides practical advice and big ideas from a few writing guidebooks.

So Want to See Something Through to the End

We’ve written a lot about perseverance and grit in life and the writing life, both on this blog and elsewhere. We’re working on book projects, both together and separately, so we we know the difficulty of sticking with something big day to day and month after month. Here’s a post from last year, with some ideas drawn from Jordan Rosenfeld‘s book about persistence and writing.

Tips from Pico Iyer

We can’t go to Japan for months at a time of living relatively unfettered on a mountain, but we can take some lessons from the ways Pico Iyer approaches life and writing. The device sabbath, or scheduling our online time, may be key for us, especially since we’re both now on Facebook and Twitter, and, in a bold move that we’ve managed before, we’ve planned a big retreat for the end of the summer.

BONUS: 5 Great Notebooks 

Sometimes, it helps to splurge a little on a new notebook or two or a few favorite pens in different colors, either as a symbolic fresh start or a reward for progress. Here are five of our favorite notebooks.