Tag: Summer

Posted in Uncategorized

Summer Writing

Posted on by beckylevine

Well, we’re not even a week into summer vacation, and I can already feel the shift in patterns–the patterns of the day and the patterns of my writing. Things are slowing down, which is wonderful, but which I also have to remind myself to roll with–let my brain unwind along with the schedule. We’re not taking any big trips, but we’re scheduling plenty of Summer Fun around the bay area, and that takes a different kind of planning. There’s sleeping in and staying up later, board games and reading in the sunshine. It’s all good.

As long as I don’t let the writing drift away on the clouds of relaxation. 🙂

  • I thought I’d throw out a few tips for keeping the writing going during the summer and invite you all to drop your ideas into the comments. Between all of us, we can manage to have a fun and productive summer. Sleep in, but not too long. If we don’t have anything planned, my son will sleep till 11:00 at least, and, oh, there are so many mornings where I could just lie in bed and daydream or read. I’m working on getting myself up and about an hour or so later than usual, and letting myself move more slowly than I do during the school year. I figure I’ll get better at this as the summer goes along!
  • Take your work to a new place. I’m getting outside a lot more this week. I’ve got a nice new laptop, with a more powerful battery, and there’s always an extension cord if I need it. Maybe you’ll need to schedule a few evenings out a the coffeehouse to write–maybe I will, too. There are a couple of Netflix movies still lying around the house that I”m not that excited to see–maybe the guys need a movie night without me around!
  • See about reducing some of that social networking. This one is big challenge for me, especially when summer can feel more like tiny pockets of time that lend themselves to dawdling, more than to intense productivity. But I’m working on it. I’m going to try & chunk out the time I spend on Facebook & Twitter and keep it away from my concentrated writing. I’ll probably also reduce the number of blog posts I put up–it’s writing time, yes, but it’s not BOOK time.
  • Don’t wait for kid-time to just come along and rear its head. Around here, that leads to a lot of gray time where I and my son aren’t really doing anything–separately or alone. If I make the tiniest effort to pull something together for us–guess what? We both have fun, and whatever we’re doing adds that little bit of structure to our day that lets us relax and enjoy the rest of the day. (Hey, kind of like plotting!) Like I said, we’ll play board games, get our books out together, do some easy outings, and–yes–check off a few chores on the list. And I’ve decided that one summer goal for me is to get better at Mario Kart. Since this pretty much entails learning to keep Yoshi on the road, improvement should be possible. Hand-and-eye coordination, folks. And video games together are more social than video games alone.
  • Stay present. Again, this is a biggie for me–since I tend to live a good percentage of my life in the future: worrying, planning, just thinking “out there.” If you’re one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld characters, there’s probably some value in this, or at least humor. Not so much in this world. My goal this summer is to enjoy what I’m doing while I’m doing it, and move as gracefully and happily from one thing to another as the day rolls. And one of those things will be writing.

What about you? What tricks do you use to enjoy the summer and get your writing done? What works best for you?

Posted in Critique Groups, Critiquing

Friday Five: How to Keep Critiquing Strong Through the Summer

Posted on by beckylevine

Okay, the solstice may not have hit, but as I mentioned last post, summer’s pretty much here. For some of us, that means kids out of school, family visits, vacations from work to someplace with lounge chairs and margaritas. As wonderful as these changes are, they can make writing…and critiquing quite the challenge. With schedules shifting and calendars filling up, it can be tempting to let the critique meetings drop, to write your way through as much of the summer as you can, but procrastinate actually getting stuff to your critique partners.

Resist that temptation.

Your critique group keeps you in touch with your writing and your current project, even if you feel like you’re mostly just showing up. Your critique partners will check in with you, you’ll end up talking about a character or a big plot point, and you’ll at least think about what you might write next. You will be critiquing work from the other members (yes, we pretty much always manage to make time for our commitment to others, even if we back off from that same commitment to ourselves), and that will keep you musing about strong setting, active dialogue, and how to weave some humor into a voice.  You’ll find yourself motivated to grab a few more minutes each week to write, and you’ll see that you are making progress–even if it slows down from the pace you’d like to set.

And, at the end of summer, you’ll find yourself still connected to your WIP, instead of having to find that connection all over again.

Here are a few tips to hold onto your critique pattern for the next few months.

1. If you’re in an in-person group, get everybody to bring their calendars to each meeting. Confirm that your usual meeting will work for everyone, or at least for the majority of the group. If too many people are scattering in the next couple of weeks, or cleaning for and entertaining those in-laws, set a new date for the next meeting. It’s okay if you’re a week late, and it’s okay if the one lucky member who’s spending the summer in France emails in their critiques. But schedule that time.

2. If you’re in an online group, shoot for the same kind of check-in. Email around and find out about everybody’s plans for the summer, and make sure your usual submission/critique schedule will work. If it looks like there’s going to be a bigger-than-usual gap, try to work something out for the “empty” time. Maybe you’ll email every couple of weeks for status reports and motivation; maybe you’ll commit to at least reading the submissions from the member who wants to submit to an agent in the fall. Find some way to avoid the void! 🙂

3. Be imaginative about where and when you read and critique. Maybe you’re used to a few hours of school time when you can sit quietly with the submissions from your group, but now the kids are home. Can you take them to the park for some run-around time? Are you up for allowing a few more hours of TV and/or video games during the summer months? Are you traveling? Can you critique on the plane without getting airsick? (Not mentioning cars here, because you don’t even want to THINK about me critiquing on a windy road!) What about pool-time at the hotel?  If you’ve got family visiting, let them know you will be mysteriously disappearing a few times while they’re there. Offer to drop them at a museum or a trailhead for a bit, then find a nearby cafe or bench to get your critiquing done.

4. Again, if you’re meeting in-person, consider shifting the location of your get-togethers. If one or more of you have small children at home, see if the other members will come to your houses. Yes, the kids will be distracting; yes, as soon as the group shows up, the shy ones will need Mommy or Daddy’s attention, and the non-shy ones will want everybody else’s. Work with it. Get a movie going at low volume in the same room (I can recommend any of the Land Before Time movies for a WIDE range of ages!)

5. Don’t beat yourself up too much if your focus isn’t as tight or if your critiques don’t go quite as deep as you usually shoot for. Yes, giving your critique partners your best feedback is important, but it’s just as important to keep rolling along with what feedback you can provide. It’s much better for everybody to swap a few basic ideas for improvement than to drop your creative exchange altogether.

Overall, be flexible and gentle with yourself and your critique partners. I’m learning big-time these days that baby steps can lead to big productivity and keep us sane! Odds are, nobody will make it to every meeting this summer, or be on-time with every submission to an online group. And, sure, you may see the intensity of your critiques drop a bit. That’s okay. What’s important is to not let the whole summer slip away from you, to keep touching base with each other and keep at least some feedback flowing.

It’s another time to remember that our writing is important to us, that it’s one of the things in our lives we love and need. It’s another time to make sure your current project is on your to-do list–somewhere near the top. It’s another time to commit to our WIPS and to the critiquing that keeps them going.

You can do all this and enjoy the sunshine. I promise.

Posted in Critique Groups

Commitment, Persistence, & Downright Stubbornness

Posted on by beckylevine

This post is dedicated to Terri, Beth, & Cyndy–thanks for keeping me on your calendar, guys!

Summer is here. For so many of us, this means a shift in structure, in organization. Even if you are working full-time, there may be a vacation coming up, with plans to make, shopping & packing to do. If you have kids, they may hit the camp circuit, but there’s still more free-time to fill and maybe more driving them around from place to place. If you’re like me, you’re happy to have a child who sleeps in, but you’re also wanting to spend more time with your kids, since that’s what summer is for.

In the midst of this, we all face the struggle to stick to our writing, to keep on track with a current project. Still, writing can be done at home, in bits and pieces if necessary.

Unless you’re in an online group, critiquing typically means getting out of the house. Even if you do critique online, it can be harder to get to, if you’re on the way out the door to take the kids to the pool, or if you’re dug into the closet-cleaning project you’ve put off all year. As another thing to schedule, perhaps another time-slot for which to find day-care, critique-time may look like something you need to reschedule, or even push away, during the summer.

Try not to let this happen.

If you’re in a strong critique group, you know how important it is to your motivation and productivity. If you let the critique part of your life slip for 10 weeks (or the twelve that some other people’s children seem to have!), your writing will most likely slip along with it.  What if you’ve just spend the last 5 days at Disneyland. Or you’ve spent a week camping in the Blue Ridge mountains. You’ve had a wonderful time, but–of course–you haven’t been doing any writing.

Getting together with your critique partners will remind you not just that you should get back to your project, but that you want to.

What if you’re busy packing. You’ve got that Alaskan cruise to get ready for; the kids need new bathing suits, and you need a good-to-see-you present for the great-aunt who lives in one of the port cities. In the middle of this all, you have a critique session scheduled. For a couple of your chapters.

The feedback you get at that meeting will simmer in your brain while you’re on the cruise, and you’ll come back with a better understanding of that character who should be doing a bit more growing, or that plot point you need to add for more tension.

Even if you aren’t getting as much writing done as you like this summer, your critique sessions will keep that writing present in your mind. If you have nothing to critique, which can happen these months, bring your laptops or notebooks and write. Even if those are the only pages you produce that month, you produced them. You’re that much further along on the path. Even if you spend the time brainstorming with the other writers, about their novels, you’re waking up your brain, spurring it on to think creatively about something other than which sunscreen to buy or how much watermelon the refrigerator will hold.

Do what you can to keep your critique time on the calendar. If you need to reschedule a meeting, reschedule it; don’t cancel. If you need to bring the kids along, think about moving your usual meeting place. Swap the coffeehouse for the bookstore, where each kid can get a book to read and a pastry to eat. Or figure out who has the best video-game system and see about using that for the critique base this summer. (Yes, if Caroline Ingalls had owned a Wii, she’d have let the girls play while she and Pa put up that house!) Ask an older kid to play parent’s helper, and offer a bonus if you don’t get interrupted, and there’s no blood or fire visible by the end of the meeting.

Of course there will be times when a meeting cannot happen. People get sick, or sun-burned. Long-family vacations fill up the weeks. The county fair comes to town. Life happens.

Try, though. You have made a commitment to this group, and it is not just a commitment to be there for the other writers; it is a commitment to be there for yourself. As the title says, be persistent–be stubborn. Challenge yourself to honor your critique time this summer, to keep it as a top priority.

It will pay off. Honest.

Posted in Reading

Reinstituted: Summer Reading

Posted on by beckylevine

It’s official. I will be adding in specific time this summer for reading. Not just reading, but…yes, I”ll say it: PLEASURE reading!

The last few days have been pretty jitter-buggy around here, with my writing on hold for fun family stuff. It was hard at first, but then I really saw that I’ve been applying just a bit too much pressure to myself. How do I define “too much” pressure?

  • The amount of pressure that makes you step away from productivity and cross the line back into spinning fruitlessly in your own socks.

That would be the technical explanation.

I will write and write and write this summer. My editor just sent me an email saying that The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guidewill probably be on its way to copy edits soon. (Whee!) I’m going to get that first draft of the YA done, done, done–if not by June 30th, but soon after. I’m going to play outline with another nonfiction project.

And I’m going to do research. Four more books have shown up (mysteriously!!) in my mailbox, all about Chicago history and women and garment workers and “fun.” I’ll be making my way through those.

But I am also making a commitment to myself to push all of those away for at least a short time–30 minutes or an hour–as many days as I can. I just grabbed three more books by Tamora Pierce at the library today, and I feel like my son when he discovered Terry Pratchett. Ms. Pierce can keep me in relaxed, curl-up-and-dream reading ALL summer long! When I was a kid, even a teen, that was my favorite thing about summer–all that reading time. Reading whatever books I felt like, rather than something a teacher thought I should pick up. I want that back.

Son and I are discussing going with the whole siesta thing. Our house is almost 100 years old (I think!) and insulation is not in it’s vocabulary. So, during the summer, from about 2:00-4:00, it tends to bake a bit. We use fans, and it’s tolerable, but the brain synapses don’t always fire so great. We’re talking about meeting on the couch with books and popsicles, pointing the fans straight at ourselves and declaring it READING TIME.

Okay, I’m talking about it, with strong hints that this would NOT be a good time for video game noises. But he’s listening. And nodding a bit.

Frankly, I see this as therapy. And recharging. And a recognition that the word vacation IS an important part of the summer months.

What about you? Got your summer reads picked out yet? Your nesting/escaping spot in the house, or by the pool? Fridge stocked with your favorite cold drink?

Let’s all relax together this summer…just a bit and just enough!