Summer Is Here. Let’s Make it Count!
On building a writing practice that actually moves your book forward—this summer and beyond.
There’s a particular quality to the first few weeks of summer that I recognize in myself and in the scholars I work with—a kind of forward-leaning anticipation, a sense that this is when it finally gets to happen.
Teaching is in the rear view, the calendar clears, and suddenly the book that’s been living in the back of your mind all year feels close enough to actually touch. That feeling is worth honoring, because the reality is that the summer season provides an opportunity to think more deeply about your research than you can during the school year.
What I want for you this summer is not a heroic sprint — not “protect your mornings” or “write 500 words before coffee” or finally implement the system that’s going to change everything. You’ve heard versions of that advice, and you may even recognize that the problem was never a missing technique.
What I want for you is something slower and more durable: a practice built around how your brain actually works and the summer you’re actually living, not the idealized version of scholarly life that, candidly, has never existed for most of us.
That kind of practice moves faster when you have someone alongside you — someone who knows academic publishing, who can look at your project and your process together and help you find the next right move. It’s not about accountability in the punishing sense. It’s about clarity. And clarity, in my experience, is what actually drives the work.
I have spots available this summer in the Writing Strategy & Structure Program, and my rates have recently changed. If you fill out an inquiry form by May 20th for a June start, I'll honor the previous rate (read on).
Here’s what I’ve watched happen for scholars who’ve done this work:
Dr. Meaghan McSorley, after working together during the summer following her first year on the tenure track, wrote that our sessions helped her recognize and overcome some specific mindset roadblocks she didn’t even realize she had around writing and that this fundamentally changed her research process.
Dr. Briana Barner told me that working together helped her prioritize the projects that matter most and find better ways to manage her time as a neurodivergent person and parent.
Dr. Megan Reynolds described leaving our sessions feeling empowered and excited to move forward—not because I gave her a pep talk, but because we did the slower, more honest work of building a writing and work management structure that fit how her brain actually works.
The Writing Strategy and Structure program is built around you specifically—your manuscript, your workload, your writing process, your life. Here’s what’s included:
An initial Strategy Session to cut through the noise: clarifying what the book needs right now, so you’re not spending your most precious writing time spinning in the fog of competing priorities.
Four tailored coaching sessions to support planning, decision-making, and the barriers that tend to surface—perfectionism, competing demands, the fog of a heavy teaching semester.
An Editorial Snapshot — a bird’s-eye read of an extended abstract of your book that I bring into our sessions as a thinking tool.
Email or WhatsApp support between sessions for the smaller moments of course correction and accountability that often matter as much as the formal sessions do.
A Closing Session to consolidate what’s working and map out what comes next.
The program rate just increased, and any newsletter reader who fills out the coaching inquiry form by May 20th and begins coaching in June can lock in the previous rate of $1850.
After you submit the form and I have had a chance to determine whether we are a good fit, I will invite you to a free discovery call to discuss the program further and answer any questions you may have.
If your book has been waiting for this summer, I’d love to be part of what makes it move.