Preparing for Fall: A Writer's Guide to Life After August

August is a notoriously "dead month" in publishing. Agents, editors, and directors are out of the office (probably with bags of unread manuscripts and galleys and other piles of paperwork); authors are tinkering around with writing schedules, catching up on reading and research, and maybe getting a few words added to their in-progress manuscripts; and normal people are doing whatever it is that normal people do...going on on vacation, living up those last days of summer before school starts back, everyone gets back in the office at work, and life-as-usual resumes.

In the writing world, this August slow period is the calm before the storm. The last four months of the year are insanity--and that's putting it mildly. Never mind the back-to-school rigamarole, the impending holidays, the changing weather that manages to surprise everyone every year, and all that other stuff that goes on in Pumpkin Spice Season. In the publishing world, fall means book awards, fall releases (often the biggest of the year), writing conferences, acquisitions pick back up, everyone starts thinking about the next year, and so on. Whatever side of the publishing world you're on, September means it's back to the grind, writing, reading, editing, promoting, submitting, etc etc etc, and trying to cram as much as possible into the end of the year.

It's busy​.

Despite the fact that I dread being uber-busy with the kind of lackluster passion only the truly lazy can pull off, fall is my favorite time of the year. Fall is pumpkins and hot apple cider, changing colors and falling temperatures, darker days and softer clothes. In my house, fall decorations come out, the horror movie schedule is made, spooky new releases I've been dying to read shuffle their way to the top of the reading queue, and everything starts to smell like cinnamon and cloves. I start spending a lot of time in craft stores and clicking around on Pinterest, thinking about stuff I'll never bake and never sew.  My daily usage of quotes from movies like Hocus Pocus and The Nightmare Before Christmas become even more than usual and I start stocking up on soup-making supplies. And, once the kid goes back to school and the days start to wane (which, here in Alaska, can't come quick enough after the wretched endless summer daylight hours, ugh), I settle in for the most productive writing time of the year. For me, there is nothing that sets the mood for a more productive writing day than cloudy skies and blissfully grey days. It truly is a harvest--all that idea-percolating and reading and inspiration sowing I've been tending to all summer is finally ready to be harvested, word by word.

So, with that in mind, here are a few of my tips and techniques to getting back to the writing grind after the summer lull. Know when to write, and when not to write. If you're an early morning writer, write in the morning. If you feel more inspired in the evening, write when the sun goes down. Adhering to a writing schedule and scheduling writing time are not the same thing. Make time to write every day, but set yourself up for success by choosing a time (and being flexible) when your writing will be the most productive for you. For example, I tend to write better at night, when distractions are low and the natural darkness lends itself to my stories' settings (usually between 11pm and 3am). But, I set aside time to write blogs and answer emails and other writing tasks first thing in the morning, when I'm sipping coffee and eager to get some checkmarks to start off my day (usually between 7am and noon). I'm useless during the middle of the day (that's when I do stuff like errands and chores and wander around the Internet thinking about anything other than writing), and I'm totally fine with that. Find your own schedule, and don't let anybody tell you that you're doing it wrong.  Gauge writing success by story progress, not word count. We've all fallen victim to the standard of counting words instead of enjoying the process of writing them. Yeah, word count is important and there's a pretty strong correlation between approaching a word count goal and completing a draft (and, yes, we all know that Stephen King defines a good writing day as a Six Page Day), but--and we all know it's true--sometimes a mere 100 words of really great stuff is a heck of a lot better than 2000 words that basically suck. Instead of relying on word count to make you feel productive, try to gauge by story progress. If you only write a few hundred words, but spent hours researching something and are in love with what you wrote, then that trumps word vomiting out a whole bunch of yuck that you're going to have to feel bad about writing tomorrow. Or, maybe you didn't write any actual paragraphs, but you plotted out a stellar outline and got some really impressive one-liners stitched in. Cool. Quality is better than quantity, IMHO. Those big word count days will come; there will be days you get so sucked into the story your fingers just can't keep up and you blast out a number of pages that makes even Mr. King blush. But there will also be days when it's like squeezing blood from a stone. Both are okay. Just keep writing. And, finally, find what inspires you. Read. Watch movies. Play with your kid. Go to the library. Wander around outside. Chat with your friends. Lose yourself in Reddit. Whatever it is that you do that 1) relaxes you and 2) inspires you - DO IT. And do it often. Inspiration is like fuel for creativity. Without it, your creativity well runs dry, and that is true for the most novice to the most seasoned of writers. Being a "full-time writer" doesn't mean you're a veritable fount of nonstop ideas and imagination, and it doesn't mean than Name Brand Authors are some kind of creative geniuses, either. Really, it just means you've figured out how to keep your well full and set up good writing habits that help you write. This blog has 99 ways to get inspired to write...there is bound to be at least a few that work for you.