One Page at a Time

It’s hard to write in the summer, or at least I find it to be so. One might think that my job as a teacher would allow for prolific writing opportunities in the summer, and it might, except for the fact that I also have children with complete inabilities to sleep in during the summer (despite their resistance to waking during the school year. Go figure.)

If you follow my blog, you know that this summer has also been particularly challenging in terms of my health. (If not, you can catch up here). And while I would like to make significant progress on my second book this summer, I am also reminded by the heat and the smell of summer flowers that this is a season to slow down.

In a little over a month, my kids will be swept up into long school days and after-school activities, and I’ll be introducing a new class of college freshmen to the art of critical analysis and persuasive essays. I want to enjoy this time.

But I want to write, too. I want to write because I love to write, because when I don’t write for a few days in a row, I feel actual sadness, because writing connects me to my inner guidance system and helps me feel a sense of purpose and joy in my life. And so, for now, while the days are long, and the cool evenings are filled with fireflies, and my girls lay on the trampoline to eat their popsicles, I’m writing one page a day and ignoring all the tweets about the 10,000+ word days other writers have accomplished. I’m also doing one or two marketing tasks a day for Lifeline. (Oh, and by the way, I did just get back from a super fun trip down south, the details of which will be included in next week’s July newsletter, including how to get your hands on a signed copy of the novel, so make sure to subscribe to that here.)

I’m enjoying my kids. I’m reading books. I’m hanging by the pool. I’m having fun, and I hope you are, too, even if it’s only one page at a time.

In the late spring, our neighbor invited the girls over to see that a robin had laid eggs in a nest above her porch.

Each day, the girls climbed a ladder to check on the eggs, and it quickly seemed evident that one of them wasn’t going to hatch. The kids began to worry about a blue jay getting the egg and checked more frequently on the birds. But one evening, the new hatchling was there—a sweet and simple reminder for me during my most challenging time this year that everything, everything, happens in its own time.