WRITING

How To Write Through the Summer

Medium is a sleepy town

“One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.” — Jeanette Walls

I’ve read about it and noticed that summertime is a slower time for online writers. This is not true everywhere, but it seems to be the case for some of us on Medium.

I know that my reads have gone down quite a bit from the beginning of the month.

Kids are out of school. People are on vacation which will most likely last through the end of July.

Since many school districts go back early in August, I think it will pick back up again in late August into early September.

Most of us will write throughout the summer, but are we reading as much online? I am still trying to get as many reads in as possible although it is definitely hard with the influx of summer activities coming our way.

And, then there are summer vacations…

I love to vacation. Who doesn’t? We all need some summer sun and vitamin D in our lives.

I know I can fit in some reading and writing while on my two planned vacations next month, but my dedicated time to writing and reading will definitely decrease while I am gone.

An article sparked my interest yesterday on this subject.

Mike Lewis ponders if he should save his good articles for the fall.

That really got me thinking. I’ve written some articles lately that have flopped but I thought they were pretty good. Sure, maybe they weren’t and that’s why they flopped but it still had me thinking.

I have a few drafts right now that I think are going to do really well, but I’m thinking I need to save them so they don’t get lost in the Medium toilet bowl.

But, then again, I don’t want to put out shit articles just to stay afloat.

Why? Because I love writing. I don’t want to write just to get something out there. I want to share with people and if it’s a shit article, I am not sharing.

So what should we do during the slow summer months?

Write fun articles. Write about your summer travels or things you like to do during the summer.

Make it relevant to the season.

During my first little trip of the summer up to Canada, I wrote about my travels. Being out in nature and exploring new places sparks my creativity and my brain floods with ideas.

We explored for hours and went out for several meals, but there is still downtime in the morning, pre-dinner, and after when I was able to read and write.

Basically, I used the time that I would previously spend scrolling on social media to read and write instead.

What else can you do to catapult your writing through the summer?

I plan on starting my book next month. I will be in Vegas for 8 whole days for my daughter’s dance competition and I’ll have a lot of time on my hands. Plus, being a sober girl in Vegas for 8 days, I will run out of things to do really fast.

I will continue to write on Medium, and so should you, but I am going to be saving some of my really good ideas for September.

I’ll keep the fun, upbeat summer activity stories that are relevant to summer. Most publications have different prompts to follow for inspiration, as well.

Build up your social media presence

My Instagram is doing pretty well but I am not as active as I would like. There is only so much time in the day.

Also, my Twitter is definitely lacking so I am going to use the summer months to dive deeper into Twitter because let’s be honest, I barely know what I am doing in that space. I tweet from here and maybe do a few retweets.

Research other ways to market your writing

We are writers. We want people to read our work. Yes, it is also therapy for me, but I want it to resonate with other people.

I started writing to be able to get my story out there for other people that might be struggling. I do write about a lot of other things but sobriety and health are my passion.

This is another reason why I am saving some of those good ideas for articles until the fall.

I want people to read them. I don’t want them to die a quick death.

We writers spend a lot of time crafting our articles so we don’t want them to go stale.

How else can we market our writing?

LinkedIn is something that I haven’t gotten into yet, either so I am going to start there.

Learning SEO and affiliate marketing are on my list, too. I have an inkling about what I am doing with my SEO description but diving deeper will propel my writing, I am sure of it.

I want to learn more about affiliate marketing because I’ll want to promote my book when it’s finished so I might as well start now. I run at a slower pace when it comes to things like this.

Building a personal website might be a great way to begin marketing yourself and your writing, as well. I created a site earlier this year but it’s since gone stale because Medium takes up a lot of my time.

That brings me to my question…

What are your plans for your summer writing?

Will you also save your best ideas for the fall or just keep putting out content regardless if it’s slow or not?

Let me know in the comments. I am always looking for new ways to grow.

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Thanks for reading!

Much love, Michele