Happy Summer—Don't Forget to Write
Who needs the Summer Solstice when you have 80 degree weather
There are roughly a dozen topics I considered for this week’s newsletter—debriefing my super-fun event at Carmel Clay Public Library, showing off my new-and-improved office setup, again whining about just how much effort goes into TikTok for introverts—but the warm weather has reminded me of my favorite summer topic:
Lamenting just how hard it is to write and work when the sun shines outside my window and a nice, long walk is calling my name.
Over the almost-two-years I’ve written this Substack, and in the past few months I’ve officially dubbed myself a published author, I’ve spoken and thought a lot about motivation. I’ve learned the hard way just how easily it comes and goes. And as any of you who are author-inclined and make it to one of my events will know, I’m not afraid to share some of my hard-won wisdom.
But I will warn you, I am a hypocrite. As everyone on Earth knows, it’s not always easy to practice what you preach.
Especially when the weather is nice and the outdoors are calling your name.
Contrary to the image currently painted in your head, I’m not writing this during a sunny afternoon. It’s a little after eight o’clock, the sky is in shades of pale yellow and blue instead of bright pinks and oranges, and the rest of the world outside my window is so dark I can hardly tell a truck from a tree. In lieu of a well-lit space, I’m typing this by way of a desk lamp pointed directly at my keyboard so I can actually see what I’m doing.
But the idea of summer—of warm days spent avoiding sunburns and using the heat as a limitless excuse toward unending ice cream—is always hard for me as an author. When the outside is just so nice, how can I spend my life indoors?
That also usually translates to why should I work when it’s so easy to do literally anything else?
And this is the part where I freely admit my own hypocrisy: I know I have the answers to my own problems, but that doesn’t make implementing them any easier.
Especially when I’m still out of practice from my whirlwind book tour for ADA HOLLOWAY’S HAD ENOUGH.
So what’s a girl to do? How can I save face and be productive at the same time? Is it a matter of listing all my motivation techniques and practicing them until something sticks? Turning to fellow authors and creatives for lesser-known tidbits? Asking my cats for help?
(That last one is extra ridiculous because my cats would never do anything they didn’t absolutely want to do. Especially if it requires effort on their part.)
I’ve made no secret that pre-launch, I was so proud of my consistency. I had a word count goal I met, stayed on top of my social media planning, and even found time for events, interviews, and website-updating with little headache.
Post-launch, however, has been a different story.
I think part of the problem, unfortunately, is that habit building takes more time than I’d like to admit. A quick Google search tells me that cementing something into your daily routine can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.
A hallmark 2009 study on habit creation found that habits developed in a range of 18 to 254 days; participants reported taking an average of about 66 days to reliably incorporate one of three new daily activities—eating a piece of fruit with lunch, drinking a bottle of water with lunch or running for 15 minutes before dinner. Consistent daily repetition was the biggest factor influencing whether a behavior would become part of an automatic daily routine, says Lally, who was the first author on the study.
The key word in this study, of course, is daily. I’ve never been a daily writer—at best, I’m lucky to average 3 times a week—and that’s also contributing to my aimlessness.
Not only am I not consistent, but I’m not practicing my habit enough to even make a difference.
I’d like to say that this is where everything changes, but I know myself better than that. I have an actionable goal—at least 1 hour a day of work but especially for 3 days a week—but that won’t get me anywhere without discipline.
So while I won’t be drawing the curtains closed (I’m much too-fond of the natural light), I have decided it’s time to get serious. I’ve done it before, and I can do it again. It’s time to start acting like an author.
And as we slowly do come close to summer, I’m aiming to have a positive update to share. Writing is hard, and I hope sharing the struggles as much as the successes is as interesting to you as it is to me.
I personally find it nice to learn that everyone else is human, too.