How I set myself up for success to write a novel over summer break
- Brandi Bradley
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
I am a university instructor, which means I am wrapping up my semester in the next few weeks.
And I am so freaking excited!
However, entering summer session means I only have one thing on my mind. I am going to write a novel over summer break.
I do not have the opportunities to write everyday during the academic year. I have always been a working writer in the sense that I have had to manage writing my novels between the responsibilities of holding a 40-hour-a-week job, parenting, and spousing. I don’t write everyday; I write when I can. Writing is my vocation, meaning I am drawn to it. But knowing I have to earn a living doing something else means that I have to sometimes resist my vocation in favor of my occupation. And sometimes I have to prioritize my vocation so I do not go crazy.
But in the summer, I don’t have to choose. I can just be a writer, which is getting the words down, but also promoting, connecting, presenting, and selling books.
Last summer was the first time I felt like I could fully embrace it. I had a new novel out. I wasn’t living through a renovation. I had learned enough about the business to know where to direct my energies. And I was in the development stage of the novel I am writing this summer.
I have high hopes for myself over the next few months, but like everything else in my life, I have to make a plan for it or else it will be unnecessarily challenging.
My summer break goal is to have a rough draft ready by August 1.
Here is what I have done to set myself up for success:
I made the outline cards for my process wall. When I am working on a project, I break all the scenes down into bullet points, and then I list those bullet points onto note cards and hang them on the wall of my writing space. I need visual representations of tasks in order to complete them, and having a card to pull off the wall is a tactile action that will keep me motivated.
I got out the calendar. I have 100 days to complete this project, and luckily for me, I received a 100-day tracker notepad from a monthly subscription box I received from Cloth & Paper many years ago. I found it when I was sorting through my supplies. I have now placed that in my planner with a sheet of reward heart stickers.
I have my writing playlist for the project ready. I even added another song this week. I always create a playlist of the songs that I think my characters will like. There are not always songs that I like, but usually by the time I am done, I will have learned to like them all. I look up the songs that are popular at the time of the events of the novel, but I also look up songs that would have been loved by my primary characters when they were 14, 19, and 25. There are typically formative times for people that helps develop their music tastes.
I have identified my golden hour! Mid-morning is my best time to write. I am a morning person, but my creative juices really start to hit at 10 am. I can work in the early morning or late afternoon, but the enthusiasm is not there. I’m still waking up early in the mornings and I am tired in the afternoons.
I’ve accepted that this is happening. Often when people have to be self-motivating to complete a project, they won’t be. They will write when they “feel like it”. They will back-burner their creative projects. They will allow themselves the freedom to extend the deadline. I have more than once started a project with a wishy-washy deadline only to watch that deadline pass with nothing to show for it. But once I have decided something is happening, set a firm deadline for it, then it’s happening. This draft will be ready by August 1 because I have decided that it will be and I have accepted that it is happening.
Wish me luck and be on the lookout for process videos on Instagram and TikTok over the next few months.
Also know that this website will be seeing some changes as I work to develop a new space for readers to see more behind the scenes footage on writing my mysteries.
Also, remember that my previous novels are available for purchase on this website! Click on the link and visit the store to get your signed copy of Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder, a southern noir about small towns with big secrets.
Or if your favorite mysteries are why people make unexpected choices, check out Mothers of the Missing Mermaid, a novel about a young woman who learns her mother is not actually her mother.
Paperback copies are signed by the author and shipped directly to you!
Comments